Free critical thinking on performance measurement in modern police organizations

Q. 1. In the article, Sparrow provides insight into performance measurement strategies in the current police organization. He aims at educating police executives on the importance of police work. He also explores the prevalent mistakes concerning performance measurement that tend to be overlooked. Sparrow’s concept entails widening the dimensions of performance measurement and effectively choosing the metrics that match the different types of police work. Sparrow’s concept of broadening the frame in modern police organizations involves recognizing the features of the various classes of work operating in a complex organization. He outlines the classes of work and their characteristics including functional work, process-based work, and risk-based work.
Functional work harmonizes workers possessing similar skills and requires modernization and application of contemporary skills and tools. Quality and quantity serve as metrics in this class of work. Process-based work entails any repetitive work activity. Due to the nature of work activity, organizations utilize process design tools. Sparrow’s concept, however, underscores the risk-based type of work and emphasizes its difference from the other classes of work. Risk-based type of work is problem-oriented and focuses on specific issues in an organization. Risk-based work is effective in identifying problems in organizations, and it’s integral to the performance success of any organization.
Performance measurement can be applied to the work of a salesman whose job is selling various household items to customers. The number of items sold serves as criteria for measuring the performance of a salesman. The time taken to sell a specific number of items is also used to measure the performance of a salesman. However, this is not the most important or the only aspect of Sparrow’s work that is important to measuring success. Sparrow notes that watching overall trends is important, and that these trends can determine the overall success or failure of strategies used within an organization; using certain indicators gives managers and leaders of an organization a better understanding of the events happening within the organization. For instance, if there is an overall upward trend in sales but a salesman has a poor showing for a single day, a manager may not be worried; however, if the downward trend continues, re-adjustment must be considered based on the indicators that the manager or team leader deems most important. Q. 2. There are several barriers that limit the capacity and ability of police organizations in improving performance measurement in the organizations. One of the barriers includes a narrow focus on crime in society. Crime control is only a single part of the many different objectives for a police force, and more components should be explored. The narrowness of the crime focus does not encompass other problems and behavior patterns that affect the society.
Corruption is also another barrier to changing the performance measurement model in police organizations. Eradication of corruption in police organizations will also help to eliminate the barriers to the improvement of performance measurement models in police forces, regardless of other measures—corruption is a corrosive force in any kind of police organization. The current measures of performance emphasize the reduction of crime rate without preserving the integrity of processes in the police organization. Failure to preserve integrity contributes to the prevalence of forms of crime including manipulation of crime statistics in police organizations. Broadening the framework in police objectives can eliminate the barriers.
Ensuring that leaders are properly trained to deal with the many different situations that may arise in police work is fundamentally important. These leaders must be able to deal with situations related to law enforcement, but they also must be adept at handling interpersonal issues between individuals on the force. Sparrow notes that leaders on the police force perceive their jobs as extremely complex, and suggests that proper training is incredibly important for the overall success of a police force as an organizational unit. Q. 3. Police organizations and other government programs are hesitant to utilize performance measurement to direct their resources and workers for various reasons. One of the reasons is that they fear exposure of the high levels of inefficiency in the organizations. Many public organizations operate inefficiently, and it is in their best interests to conceal the incompetence from the public. The introduction of performance measurements will result in a conflict of interests in the organizations. Performance measurements are also accompanied by distinct costs that many government programs and organizations are unable to meet due to the limited budget they are allocated.
There is also the simple fact that police organizations are currently very powerful in many places in the United States. Some of these organizations have corruption inherent in their practices, as can be seen with some of the recent events documenting suspect death. When corruption is exposed, those who are threatened by that exposure always complain that exposing their practices is unfair or unethical—this does not mean that practices should not be exposed, but that people who are complaining loudly about more transparency in police organizations should be closely scrutinized.