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Many authors describe police culture as a relevant determinant of officers' health, policing behavior and reaction to change. Investigation of such relationships requires an appropriate instrument for measuring police culture.

This paper proposes a questionnaire containing 20 values that are characteristic of police culture (e.g. masculinity, loyalty, solidarity). In an online survey, 153 German police officers described their last workgroups in terms of how typical these values are. Besides conducting item and factor analyses, multiple regression models were tested to explore the effect of group characteristics on police culture.

A four-factor solution, comprising (1) conservative-male culture, (2) institutional pride culture, (3) team culture and (4) diligence culture, seems to fit the data best. Significant predictors of the police culture total score are percentage of male officers, average age of the group and service in a problematic district.

Overall, the results indicate that police culture is a measurable multidimensional construct, which substantially depends on the composition and the operational area of the workgroup. A limitation of the study is the retrospective and subjective assessment of cultural values.

The questionnaire presented in this paper depicts the culture of police workgroups in a differentiated way and is able to detect cultural variation within the police. Future research could draw on the questionnaire to investigate determinants and consequences of police culture.

On 4 April 2002 the Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI) officially took over from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). This historic symbolic change of name arose from the Belfast Agreement, the subsequent Patten Commission and a long period of consultation and persuasion. Like so many UK police organisations the RUC had exhibited evidence that it recognised the need to address the issue of internal communications but had not been involved in any in‐depth assessment of its internal communications, nor did it have a written internal communications strategy. The use of communication audits had also been limited. By applying a validated audit methodology, this paper examines the position internal communications had within the RUC. Using a triangulation approach, the research encompassed structured interviews, the international communication audit questionnaire, and a critical incident approach. The results showed a general dissatisfaction in respect of communication and specific dissatisfaction in relation to particular areas of the organisation. The implications of the findings for the fledgling PSNI and other police organisations are discussed in the context of the role of communication strategies.

Police officer perceptions of their own legitimacy can be important in shaping aspects of their performance and other organizational outcomes. The current study uses person-environment fit theory to assess the effects of value congruence with top managers, immediate supervisors and coworkers on officers' perceptions of self-legitimacy.

The study used a cross-sectional survey of nearly 250 front-line police officers from seven municipal police departments in Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky to examine the effects of perceived value congruence on officers’ self-legitimacy. A hierarchical model of fit is assessed using structural equation modeling.

Findings demonstrate that value congruence positively relates to officers’ reported self-legitimacy, suggesting that officers who perceive greater similarity in values with others in the organization will express more confidence in their authority.

Our findings add to research on police officers’ self-legitimacy, and the use of a hierarchical model of person-environment fit might offer implications for future research on police culture.

This paper examines the leadership of police officers in the top levels or ranks of an Australian police organization. The sample consisted of 480 senior police who recorded the frequency of leadership behaviors of the person they directly report to via the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Multi‐regression was used to identify predictors of the leadership outcomes of leader effectiveness and extra effort. The study found that each rank of senior officers had unique sets of leadership behaviors that influence the perception of leader effectiveness and motivation to exert extra effort. The Stratified System Theory was used to explore why each rank had unique combinations of predictors. Finally, the paper discusses the multilevel issues of leadership and the importance of considering rank in relation to leadership at the senior levels of police organizations.

This study adds to the developing literature on how coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) affected policing. Unlike prior research, which focused on police agencies, the authors focus on the perceptions and experiences of police officers. Specifically, about changes in workload or activities during the peak of the pandemic compared to prior to the pandemic. Additionally, officers report on changes in potential second-order effects resulting in changes from the pandemic.

The data come from the survey responses of 167 police officers from seven police agencies of various sizes from around the USA. The authors assessed mean level differences between organizations using a general linear model/ANOVA approach and report a standardized effect size.

There is a considerable heterogeneity in police officers' perceptions of organizational and operational changes made by their police agencies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that perceptions of some changes were more strongly by the agency than were others. The study’s results show there are substantive differences in how police officers from different police agencies viewed these operational and organizational changes (i.e. between agency differences). Most of the variance was primarily explained by differences between police officers within the same agency (i.e. within organization differences).

This study moves beyond the monolithic approach to studying how the pandemic affected the police agency and moves to asking officers about their experiences with these changes and the second-order effects of these changes.