Police research and planning units have been in existence for decades, yet little is known about these types of organizational functions. This study compared research and planning staffing arrangements within American police organizations with the reported implementation of innovative practices to assess the association between unit existence and innovative practice. Utilizing a national survey of police practices, we found that agencies with formal research and planning units reported significantly greater levels of innovative practices than those without units. This study suggests that investing in research and planning may have a positive influence on the adoption of innovative police practices. As expectations for more progressive and sophisticated policing intensifies, then a promising pathway may be building the internal capacity via research and planning-type functions. Results from this study are of value to leaders and researchers who want to understand the organizational mechanisms that support innovative police agencies.
Networks are developing alongside traditional bureaucracies as viable entities for addressing wicked problems. This alternate organizational model requires that administrators learn to manage and lead in more horizontal power-sharing structures. Public administration scholars trace the rise of networks in the United States back to the 1990s, yet the settlement women of the Progressive Era established a managerial and organizational precedent for using democratically anchored governance networks to affect social change. This article examines the work of the settlement women and explores how contemporary network managers can adapt and apply valuable but frequently overlooked managerial lessons from the field's history.
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