ACED Researchers
Arjen van Witteloostuijn
Nathalie Vallet
Ad van den Oord
Sofie Rogiest

Collaborators
Consortium of 15 partners across Europe

Description
Police forces in the EU face serious challenges. Integration in the EU have increased the necessity of cross force collaboration. Technology has created new capabilities for criminality but also possibilities for the police. Changes in the public opinion and in political expectations have created more challenges. Responses to these challenges and exploitation of opportunities require major cultural changes and structural reorganization in police forces, but these are far from trivial and how they need to be implemented differs from one country to another. So far, change management in police organizations has not been addressed in a comparative interdisciplinary study with a European scope.

Based on a study of police forces in 10 countries across Europe, COMPOSITE will improve the planning and execution of change initiatives in the police, show how such initiatives can be better aligned with the cultural and societal context per country and explain how the negative process effects can be mitigated. A further aim is to improve both, the individual police organization per country and joint European capabilities.

The project delivers:

• Extensive comparative strategic analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for police organizations in 10 European countries and best practices to meet current and future challenges.
• A comparative analysis of planning and execution of the change processes, focusing on the impact of leadership, professional and organizational identities and societal expectations.
• A managerial toolbox containing instruments for training and consultancy and the Annual European Police force monitor to plan and execute changes responding to known and yet unknown challenges and opportunities.

The consortium contains universities, business schools, police academies, a technological research institute and a consultancy firm. Police forces from ten European countries are directly involved in both the research and the dissemination phase of the project.