‘Fitting In’ or Falling Out: The challenge of difference and the costs of conformity in reforming policing cultures in the UK

• In Event: Police culture revisited: The implications for voice, silence, and other harmful outcomes

Abstract

Order and discipline are defining features of the police mission and there are clear synergies between the desire for social order within the policing role and a desire for order and conformity within policing occupational cultures. A culture of conformity percolates throughout policing - in terms of both conforming to organisational working practices and conforming to informal occupational cultures - and acts as a tool with which to maintain social order. Any threats to this conformity (in the form of difference, challenge or change) potentially disrupts this carefully crafted equilibrium. Using evidence from policing research in the field of police socialisation, policing diversity, police leadership and police attrition, this presentation will explore the underlying motivations for conformity in policing and examine how it manifests across different levels of the organisation. Conformity can work to ‘benefit’ both individuals and organisations - individuals because social acceptability and ‘fitting in’ takes prominence over identity coherence and organisations because by subtly exerting indirect control of employees’ identity in this way, they can enjoy a certain degree of normative compliance. However, the presentation will also suggest that the hugely powerful appeal of conformity within policing simultaneously fosters silencing behaviours, generates a fear of speaking out, and suppresses organisational voice, ultimately hindering challenge and meaningful change.

Author

• Sarah Charman, University of Portsmouth