Towards an Integrated Theory of Police Management

Abstract

Although there has been, for many years, a growing body of literature considering aspects of general management in business and commerce, much of it has little direct applicability to policing. Much of the police-related management material is poorly integrated with the realities of policing and tends not to form an academic discipline in its own right. Police management as an academic discipline is best described as the study of the management of discretion in the regulation of community conflict. It is the integration of those two aspects of police work with broader managerial theory that this article considers. The partial paradigm presented here demonstrates what may be considered the emergence of a new and robust academic discipline that presents opportunities for the development of a distinctive body of theory specific to police management. The article reviews the major portions of the paradigm and provides a sketch of the defence of the principles selected.