Effects of Organizational Culture on Police Decision Making

This essay discusses the effects of the police organizational culture on a Police officer’s ability to make independent decisions.

Every culture is composed of four elements: “values, norms, beliefs, and expressive symbols” (Peterson, 1979, p. 137). Each police officer is influenced by the police organizational culture during training. After graduation fro the police academy, the officer is influenced by the more experienced officers of the department. Research conducted by several authors has found that peer influence never ceases even after years of experience in the field.

Throughout life, people change their point of views by the impact of the people they encounter and the structure of society. Although people initially joining the organization have the ability to use common sense and encompass a variety of values, cultural and religious beliefs, this soon changes after joining. Throughout history, unorthodox behavior has become an acceptable norm within society due to peer pressure, fear, and longing to become part of the police culture. Adolf Hitler became a famous man who ruled Germany by fear, which led to be one of the world’s prevalent tragedies (Wistricht, 1995).

The police societies retain both negative and positive qualities in their social norms, principles and attitude. “In the field of police, the standard of the performance are based on occupational culture” (Manning, 1978). The negative characteristics of police cultures assumed by Jermier et al. (1991) are “militaristic, uniformed dress, rigid rank hierarchy of authority, unbending rules and authoritative command system,” (p. 173). The police culture teaches false, misleading ideas and norms to alter officer’s judgment, thoughts, associati...

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