PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine what decisions to prosecute, sent to the local police districts from the Norwegian Bureau for the Investigation of Police Affairs (the body responsible for investigated charges against the police), can tell us about the challenges the police face in becoming a learning organization.Design/methodology/approachThe data for this paper were collected in connection with the subproject that studied how the police districts handled the cases they received from the Bureau for Administrative Evaluation. This project was carried out in 2008‐2009 and is based methodically on a study of 33 (of a total of 35) different cases from 2007, which ensures a broad thematic scope.FindingsThe willingness of the leadership to take responsibility for the organization's systematic ability – and liberty – to ask fundamental questions about dominant values and norms, and thus to promote experiential learning, varied greatly. Whether the administrative cases were perceived to belong on the individual or the organizational level had great impact on how the cases were defined when they came back to the local police district, which again decided how the cases were handled. This had consequences for the degree to which the cases were the subject of individual or collective learning processes in the police district.Research limitations/implicationsThe role of the police as custodians of law and order may paradoxically limit the organization's ability to learn from potentially criminal events and cases that come from the Bureau for Administrative Evaluation. This contributes to a weak system focus and a strong individual focus, where individual shame bearers are created and double‐loop learning is avoided.Practical implicationsTo ensure that the learning systems are actually used and function as intended, it might be apposite to have regular litmus tests of the development by analyzing the handling of concrete events and patterns which emerge over time. An important element in this connection is to observe how leaders deal with potentially shameful incidents, both internally and in the public light, and thus constitute the police organization's boundaries to the outside world.Originality/valueThe paper argues that the police's role as custodians of law and order paradoxically may contribute towards limiting the organization's ability to learn from potentially criminal events and cases that come from the Bureau for Administrative Evaluation.

This article explores the ways in which competing institutional logics influence the knowledge base of the police, ideas about good police practice and organizational identities. A tension between the humanistic professional police logic and the instrumental New Public Management (NPM) logic is discussed in the context of policing. While the humanistic professional police logic gradually emerged in the 1960s and 70s, over the past twenty years the police force has been reformed in line with the NPM logic. Through qualitative interviews and a quantitative study of the police force, the article investigates the ways in which the ideas of what constitutes a normative good practice are shaped in relation to these two, opposing, logics. A central finding is that despite many years of NPM as the dominant steering logic, a humanistic professional logic persists. However, the shift towards the NPM logic transforms the knowledge base in a more evidence-oriented direction and affects the ideas of normative good practice, especially among police management.

In this article, we aim to examine whether intelligence-led policing in police practice reinforces the control model of the police organization. We argue that digitalization of police working life resurrects several of Taylor’s management principles, such as greater division of labor, specialization, standardization and focus on measurable and efficient processes. Drawing on empirical research via two cross-sectional surveys, focus group and individual in-depth interviews with 40 Norwegian police officers, we analyze the extent to which this is conditioned by how work processes are organized and how knowledge practices are operationalized and standardized. We show perceptions of standardization that break up policing processes and lead to greater control over which tasks the front line performs and how these should be carried out. As a result, traditional police discretion becomes more standardized, constrained and de-contextualized. This is reinforced by the implementation of intelligence-led policing to manage knowledge within the police organization, which may eventually lead to a more top-down, bureaucratic and fragmented style of policing. Thus police professionalism becomes understood as being greater standardization and organizational control. An unintended consequence is a shift towards digitalized neo-Taylorism in policing, with implications for de-skilling of the police. The results demonstrate a managerialist view of the police organization, in which top-down steering and use of technology ultimately lead to a narrowing of police discretion and a more invisible high-policing style of police that may increase militarization of the police organization.

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