Organizational Permeability to Environmental Conditions: Local Police Agency Assessments of Threats Posed by Disasters, Accidents, and Terrorism

Kadee L. Brinser, William R. King

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Organizations are expected to assess and respond to environmental conditions. For police agencies in the post-9/11 and post hurricane Katrina era, the environment includes assessing the threat posed by terrorism and disasters. We use organizational contingency and institutional theories to predict the permeability of local police chiefs’ assessments of various environmental threats and what factors affect the sensing process. We use survey data from 350 police agencies to explore the dimensionality of agency assessments on disasters, accidents, and terrorism. Our findings indicate that local police chiefs view environmental threats as having three dimensions. Additionally, institutional sovereigns have a greater influence on agency assessments of threat than do contingency factors.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)387-409
Number of pages23
JournalPolice Quarterly
Volume19
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2016

Keywords

  • contingency theory
  • disaster
  • institutional theory
  • police
  • terrorism

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Organizational Permeability to Environmental Conditions: Local Police Agency Assessments of Threats Posed by Disasters, Accidents, and Terrorism'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this