Officer's perception of organizational arrangements and preventive policing practice: An open‐system approach to South Korean police departments

Purpose - The aim of the current study is three-fold: it aims to empirically investigates the relationship between officers' perceptions on organizational structure and preventive policing practices (PPP) in the South Korean context; it attempts to find what aspects of organizational characteristics will be influential in police officers' day-to-day activities;, utilizing structural equation modeling (SEM), it aims to identitify the complex networks of influences among various organizational aspects. Design/methodology/approach - The current study utilizes data collected from two different samples: a total of 146 randomly selected police officers in a metropolitan police agency, and 60 police officers who were attending a community policing training course. Overall response rate was 73.6 percent. The organizational characteristics investigated include strategic direction, decentralization of authority, system flexibility, reward system, and open-system feedback mechanism. Findings - The results of SEM indicate that officers' perceptions on organizational structure (except open-system feedback mechanism) of Korean police agency do not influence an individual police officer's preventive policing activity. The study found a significant relationship between officers' perceptions on open-system structure and preventive policing practice. Finally, the study also identified a complex network of organizational traits on preventive policing: strategic direction influences all other organizational factors; system flexibility is a prerequisite for the open system; and decentralization of authority influences the open system structure. Research limitations/implications - Although this study uniquely utilized organizational factors measured at the individual level, one may criticize the lack of a more direct organizational measure, such as organizational size, age, task scope, or number of ranks. Future study on this topic will benefit from employing both direct and indirect organizational measures. Originality/value - The current study enhances the understanding of individual perception of organizational characteristics on police officers' day-to-day preventive policing activities.