Summary
Research on ways to improve police effectiveness, as well as how to successfully implement new policing models, has been going on for a number of years, and has shown limited success at implementing new initiatives. The problem this study addressed is the poor understanding of the impact internal organizational barriers have on law enforcement agencies considering the implementation of change. The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to explore the influence of path dependence within the police culture of law enforcement agencies considering new policing initiatives. The population for this study was the 380 law enforcement organizations in the state of Florida. A semi-structured in-depth interview process was used to collect data from a nonrandom, purposive sample of executive law enforcement officers. Dedoose software was used to compile and analyze data. Data collection sought to gather information about the culture of the organization, how successful the organization has been at implementing change, and how the participants deal with change. Two primary themes emerged that related to all three research questions, (a) implementation strategy, and (b) organizational culture. Three major themes, (a) leadership, (b) organizational history, and (c) communication, and two minor themes, (a) resistance behavior, and (b) organizational buy-in emerged for research question 1. Two major themes emerged for research question 2, (a) lock-in, and (b) ingraining. For research question 3 there was one theme that emerged, (a) effective measurement tool. The results contributed to Sydow, Schreyogg, and Koch’s (2009) path dependence theory, finding that identification and controlling of ingraining activities would improve change implementation in highly structured, ridged organizations. Recommendations for practice suggested law enforcement organizations should develop effective implementation management strategies that improve initiative success, develop leadership to improve understanding the barriers of change implementation, improve agency wide communication, address resistance behavior and ensure organizational buy-in, and specifically identify lock-in within the organization. Recommendations for future research included expanding the study to a larger population, conduct the study in an organizational setting other than law enforcement, and conduct a qualitative phenomenological study, to further explore major theme 2 findings for research question 1, organizational history.