Introduction

In response to the changing environment, police agencies in recent years have adopted a number of different approaches to deliver their core services. The most common approaches adopted have been Community Oriented Policing, Problem Oriented Policing (Thurman and Zhao 2004) and Intelligence-led Policing. However, these approaches have not made any fundamental change to the way that police agencies carry out their business to the extent that, for example, Compstat (see Willis et al. 2007) or the United Kingdom National Intelligence Model have.

Radical changes in the New Zealand economy placed pressure on the New Zealand Police (NZP) to develop and implement three extensive change management programs. The first change management program called Policing 2000, commenced in 1996. This was an integrated business transformational program which comprised of ten major projects that were to be implemented in several phases over the following 4 years (Doone 1996). The second program, introduced in 2008, was called Policing Excellence and comprised of 12 change management workstreams (New Zealand Police 2011a). The third program was introduced in 2011 and subsequently encapsulated the Policing Excellence program, was called Prevention First (New Zealand 2011c).

This paper will use Mintzberg’s (1978) strategic analysis framework to discuss and compare the extensive changes that the NZP have made since the late 1980s to increase their service delivery efficiency and effectiveness. The discussion will focus principally upon the NZP’s initial change management program, Policing 2000, within the context of the changes within the New Zealand government sector and the organisational changes instituted later by the NZP. Organisational changes that were implemented in the 1990s will be compared with the post-2010 changes and whether the later changes provided a structure that increased the efficiency and effectiveness of the NZP’s service delivery will be discussed. The comparison between the two major periods of change will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each change program, as both are radical and may be viewed as being instrumental in changing the way that NZP deliver their services. While it is not the purpose of this paper to use a statistical approach to measure the success of the three programs nor to suggest a generic detailed organisational change management program, the paper will highlight and discuss a number of key issues in the design, development and implementation of the three change management programs.

Framework for Analysing NZP Change Management Programs

Every organization must adapt and maintain a relationship with its environment in order to survive and advance (Snow and Hambrick 1980). To adapt and maintain a relationship with the environment, organizations must design and implement appropriate political and operational strategies. The development of strategy should be a regular part of organizational management and should include systematically scanning the environment, assessing the organization’s capacity and needs, and adapting the organization’s actions in light of changing goals (Cohen and Eimicke 2012). It must be acknowledged when designing and implementing suitable organizational strategies that not all strategies are deliberate plans that have been developed in advance of a managerial decision (Mintzberg 1978). It must also be appreciated that there is a distinction between strategy formulation and strategy implementation (Snow and Hambrick 1980), and that strategies can take many different types or forms.

Making a distinction between strategy formulation and implementation is advantageous as the design aspects of strategy formulation can be identified as a separate and distinct phase from the execution-focused, strategy implementation. Snow and Hambrick (1980) maintain that the “formulation/implementation dichotomy is useful conceptually, … it implies that strategy is developed consciously and purposefully” (p. 527). While Mintzberg (1978) claims that strategy can be viewed as a set of “consistent behaviours” by an organization within an environment, and that a strategy may also be considered to be the organisation’s response to the changing environment. However, organizational strategies can emerge unintentionally.

Strategies, whether intentional or unintentional are called Emerging Strategies (Mintzberg 1978). Emerging Strategies may be viewed as a pattern of sequential decisions in the strategy development process and in the actions of an organization. Snow and Hambrick (1980) note that these strategic decisions will typically be directed at maintaining an organization’s relationship or “alignment with its environment and managing its major internal interdependencies” (p. 528).

The second point that Snow and Hambrick (1980) make is, that distinguishing between strategy formulation and implementation, and intentional and unintentional strategies enables organizations to make decisions based on their organizational goals and to allocate the resources necessary to achieve their goals. Mintzberg (1978) claims that strategy formulation follows the important pattern of management mediating between the two forces of “a dynamic environment and bureaucratic momentum” (p. 934). An organization looks for methods to maintain a relationship or mediate with the environment and to manage the “distinct change-continuity cycles” within the environment (Mintzberg 1978, p. 934).

Strategic options are not made in a vacuum, but reflect the dominant social, economic and political paradigms of the time (Cohen and Eimicke 2012). The possibility that patterns or cycles form within the formulation and implementation of strategies suggests that strategies may not “change in [a] continuous incremental fashion”, but could change “in spurts, each followed by a period of continuity” (Mintzberg 1978, p. 941). People in organizations do not respond to incidents continuously but react in discreet steps to events that are large enough in size for them to understand (Mintzberg 1978). As a result of the continual changes in an environment, organizations form and implement strategies in continuous cycles.

The complex relationship between formation and implementation and between intentional and unintentional strategy can examined by establishing phases of an intended strategy. This relationship is presented in Fig. 1. As illustrated in the Figure, there are two types of strategies: intended and realized. An intended strategy becomes a realised strategy upon implementation and maybe called a deliberate strategy (Mintzberg 1978). However, during the implementation of an intended strategy, the strategy may become unrealised due to a number of factors, but at the realised stage, further strategies can also emerge from unforeseen opportunities. Furthermore, strategies can change their form during realization and can become “formalized as deliberate”, leading them to become identified as intended strategies (Mintzberg 1978, p. 946). This implies that strategies may have an incubation period during their formation as an emergent strategy.

Fig. 1
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Types or forms of strategy

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The major problem with undertaking an analysis of the strategies that an organization has developed is that strategy is usually viewed as being purposely developed and in advance of the decision that is made (Mintzberg 1978). Problems may also arise when attempting to identify as to whether an organization has developed a strategy or whether the organization is responding to a particular change in the environment, or if it is responding in a familiar way and whether the response is “a continuation of, not a change in, strategy” (Snow and Hambrick 1980, p. 528). Whether a strategy is an intended strategy appears to be based on what has worked previously (Mintzberg 1978).

New Zealand Public Sector Reforms (1984 – 1990)

From 1984, New Zealand implemented a radical series of economic and labour market reforms designed to eliminate government debt and to create an internationally competitive economic environment. The government reforms were the most thorough in New Zealand’s history, and the changes ranked amongst the most radical and comprehensive undertaken anywhere in the world (Boston et al. 1991; Boston et al. 1999). The scope and the scale of these changes was significant, involving commercialization, corporatization, privatization, the restructuring of numerous government departments, the introduction of a new form of public financial management, and major changes to industrial relations (Boston et al. 1991, 1999). It was also intended that the reforms would provide a more responsive public service (Gorringe 2001).

There was pressure from the public for the NZP to become more accountable for the use of public funds and to deliver better and more focused services. The NZP also faced additional pressure from the political emphasis placed on the public sector to do more with less (Gorringe 2001) and the new emphasis placed on government programs to be effective (Salamon 2000). This created the backdrop for three NZP change management projects: Policing 2000, Policing Excellence and Prevention First. In each of these program, the structures, budgets and service delivery processes of the organization were examined and it was intended that the implementation of these programs would improve the service delivery of the NZP while reducing operational costs.

The Initial Response by the New Zealand Police to the Changed Environment of Late 1980s

The NZP are a national police service and are responsible for a full range of law enforcement services and investigations from minor criminal offending and traffic enforcement, to major and organised crimes. In 2014, the organization comprised of approximately 9,063 sworn officers and 2,969 civilian employees and was structured to include a National Headquarters and 12 Districts (New Zealand 2014). The 12 Districts are made up of 37 policing Areas, which encompass more than 380 police stations (New Zealand 2014). Table 1 presents the number of New Zealand Police officers and non-sworn staff, and the number officers per 100,000 population from 1996 to 2014.

Table 1 Number of New Zealand police officers and non-sworn staff members and officers per 100000 population 1996 to 2014
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In the late 1980s, a Community Oriented and Problem Solving strategy of policing, and a decentralised management and delegation of operational responsibilities to the Area level was implemented by the NZP, which was entitled Project Blueprint.Footnote 1 However, metropolitan policing remained centralised and a full implementation of Community Oriented Policing and Problem Solving remained some distance away. Despite the slow implementation of community policing, by 1996, 15 % of NZP resources were devoted to crime prevention and non-crime community problem solving initiatives (Doone 1996).

In 1992, NZP developed a comprehensive Strategic Plan. This plan was set in the context of the ongoing public sector reform, and was developed in response to rising crime trends and a desire to improve the service delivery effectiveness of the NZP. The plan was based on a private sector strategic planning model and defined the NZP’s mission, values, strategic goals, strategies, critical success factors and a series of implementation programs. The overall vision was the achievement of Safer Communities Together through the implementation of a series of 22 strategies and a Community Oriented Policing model (New Zealand 1992). The plan was linked to both the Government’s 10 year social and economic strategy, and the NZP’s Annual Business Plan (New Zealand 1993). The business plan provided the basis for output negotiation and the Government Appropriation of funds.

The Strategic Plan included a sophisticated business change model which was to transform the way policing was undertaken in New Zealand and was designed to be implemented over the following 4 years. The model of change that the organization selected was an integrated business process re-engineering and change management model with a heavy emphasis on people skills, business redesign, technology, and performance measurement. The NZP expected significant improvements in performance with additional resources from within the organization being made available for frontline policing, and in particular, for crime prevention, community and other problem solving policing initiatives (New Zealand 1992).

One of the key policing strategies documented in the Strategic Plan was to dramatically improve the business and information system infrastructure of the NZP. By world standards, the NZP had reasonably reliable and robust financial and criminal information systems. These were, however, neither comprehensive nor sophisticated enough to meet the challenges posed by the Government, the NZP or the community leading into the 21st century (Small 2000). To support frontline policing and to upgrade technological systems, the organisation, in 1994, obtained the Government’s approval to invest $200 million in capital and operating expenditure to develop an Integrated National Crime Information System (INCIS) over the following 8 years (New Zealand 1993). This was a major undertaking and the NZP approached the challenge as a business transformation program using project management, business tools and change management techniques.

The initial results of the Strategic Plan were successful in a traditional sense, with a reduction in reported crime, a reduced road toll and an increase in the clearance of a number of different types of crimes (New Zealand Police 1994). The level of reported crime, the number of crimes resolved, the percentage resolved and the number of road fatalities from 1990 to 2013 are presented in Table 2. However, during the development of the Strategic Plan and the implementation of new systems to support the wider Government reforms, several problems emerged when attempting to apply the model to some aspects of policing and the broader criminal justice field. These problems were:

Table 2 Level of reported crime, number resolved, percentage resolved, number of road fatalities and fatalities per 100,000 population from 1990 to 2013
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Table 3 The 10 policing 2000 projects
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  1. 1.

    the absence of an unambiguous research base upon which to make choices and to develop strategies;

  2. 2.

    deficiencies in information systems which did not provide sufficient quantity, quality or consistency of data to support strategic analysis;

  3. 3.

    inadequate research and evaluation infrastructure to identify and evaluate new or alternate initiatives;

  4. 4.

    the impact of politics on the process of strategic development and implementation; and

  5. 5.

    the limitations inherent in attempting to quantify social costs and benefits in economic terms and to establish clear causal links (Doone 1996).

In regard to point Number 5 above; the problem was not related to cost per se. Under accrual accounting and economic costing methodologies, cost may be established to a reasonably accurate degree. However, the problems that the NZP faced was in calculating the benefits to be gained and establishing clear links to the outputs which produce social benefits (Doone 1996).

As well as the problems encountered in implementing the plan, the environment was changing rapidly and extra reporting requirements had been imposed by the Government on government agencies. Significant changes had occurred in the environment since the plan was developed, such as major changes in technology, resource constraints coupled with increasing demands from the Government and the public for better performance and greater accountability. There was also a growing appreciation of the importance of working in partnership with the community, NGOs and other government agencies, and a recognition that the NZP were only part of the broader public safety solution (New Zealand Police 1996a).

As a consequence of the problems and the changing environment, in 1994, the NZP realised that the Strategic Plan needed to be re-focused and updated. During the development of a new Strategic Plan, NZP identified the need for a fundamental, but more comprehensive and targeted change management program. The result was Policing 2000, an integrated business transformational program which covered ten major projects that were to be implemented in several phases over the following 4 years (New Zealand Police 1996a). The program was to provide the framework for frontline staff to deliver better, more effective services to and with the community. The strategies it encompassed used technology to reduce paperwork and administration, return staff resources to the street, adopt a strong customer focus for policing, and develop people skills and expertise to enable NZP to improve their performance (New Zealand Police 1996b). The ten projects are presented in Table 3.

The ten strategies were developed from extensive consultation with customers, staff and the strategic partners of the organisation. The program was led by an executive member of NZP, with a full time resource of approximately 100 staff and a part time resource of approximately 50 operational staff who provided frontline input into both strategic development and the design of new systems (Small 2000).

The Creation of Policing 2000

As a result of the rapidly changing social and economic conditions, concern about increasing crime, and the expectations of the government reforms of the mid-1980s, the NZP realised in early 1994 that there was a need to reassess their role, their organisational processes and their structures. The aim of the reassessment was to have the NZP deliver the best possible community oriented policing service to meet government and community expectations (New Zealand Police 1996a).

The program covering the reassessment of the NZP strategic direction was called ‘Policing 2000’. This program replaced the 1992 Strategic Plan and provided a framework for performance improvement and change. A key feature of Policing 2000 was the business process re-engineering (BPR) application to policing. BPR adopted a customer centric perspective and concentrated on redesigning work processes. It was envisaged that the approach would dramatically alter the way policing was undertaken and would provide an environment for optimising the use of resources and for ‘doing more with less’ (Doone 1996). The re-engineering process spanned the entire organization and the strategy of doing more with less extended across all NZP operational and administrative functions (Small 2000).

Investment in Technology

To support the implementation of the Policing 2000 strategies, NZP made a substantial investment in technology. The primary purpose of the investment was to support the business of policing and to provide critical management and crime information. The most extensive technological project was the design and implementation of Integrated National Crime Intelligence System (INCIS), which was developed to support frontline policing and produce substantial gains in individual and organisational productivity.

A Profound Change in Culture

It was envisaged that the implementation of Policing 2000 would result not just in a major change in organisational processes, but would result in a profound change in the NZP culture that would cut across all dimensions of NZP activity (New Zealand Police 1996b).

It was proposed that the culture of the new policing environment would be based on:

  1. 1.

    the empowerment of individuals;

  2. 2.

    decentralisation of decision making;

  3. 3.

    open, honest two-way communication;

  4. 4.

    bottom up innovation;

  5. 5.

    genuine teamwork; and

  6. 6.

    an absolute commitment to customer focus (New Zealand Police 1996a).

However, Policing 2000 was not fully implemented. On 6 April 1998, the Minister of Police announced a review of the administrative and management structures of NZP in response to the overspending of the INCIS implementation budget, and that Policing 2000 was not meeting its original timelines and milestones (Report of Independent Reviewer 1998), and, as a result, would not be able to deliver the estimated efficiency gains.

The Post 2000 New Zealand Police Organisational Change Programs

Policing Excellence

In early 2008, a newly elected Government, in response to the 2007 international fiscal crisis, imposed a review of the NZP with the view of reducing organisational costs. To diminish costs, the NZP commenced the development of the Policing Excellence program, which was a major change program comprising of 12 workstreams or initiatives, owned and driven by individual District Commanders. The workstreams were designed to enable NZP to “become more effective and more focused on prevention”, and to be better placed to deal with changing demands (New Zealand Police 2011a). The program’s 12 worksteams are presented and defined in Table 4 below.

Table 4 The 12 policing excellence programme workstreams
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The workstreams, were intended to increase service delivery effectiveness, free-up resources and increase the use of technology which would enable NZP to spend more time on serving their communities. The aim of the Program was to facilitate the transfer of officer time from administration and compliance paperwork to working more with the public and victims, and prevent problems from escalating (New Zealand Police 2011a).

It was also intended that the implementation of the workstreams would provide benefits across a number of other justice sector agencies. It was proposed that the project would “deliver better outcomes for victims, reassure communities and help stem the flow of cases into the criminal justice pipeline, and provide better and more consistent services throughout the country” (New Zealand Police 2011a, p. 10).

The Program provided a comprehensive framework to enable a new New Zealand Policing Model to be implemented. The model positioned prevention at the front of the business of policing, and placed victims and witnesses at the centre of the NZP response to an incident or event. The Model is supported by the strategies of continuous improvement in external relationships, excellence in leadership and the development of staff (New Zealand 2011c).

The majority of Policing Excellence workstreams were implemented during 2012/13, and were expected to start delivering benefits from 1 July 2013 (New Zealand Police 2011a). As the Policing Excellence program overlapped the introduction of the Prevention First program, elements of Policing Excellence were incorporated into the Prevention First program. It was also anticipated that the benefits from the Policing Excellence program would be reinvested into prevention policing to drive the implementation of the Prevention First Operating Strategy and the New Zealand Policing Model (New Zealand 2011c). It was envisaged that an emphasis would be placed on reducing the number of ‘repeats’ (victims, offenders and locations) (New Zealand 2011c).

Prevention First

The Prevention First strategy was initiated shortly after the appointment of a new Commissioner of Police in April 2011. Prevention First was designed to be the operating strategy for the NZP and to place prevention and people at the forefront of the organization (New Zealand 2011b). The strategy was implemented to operationalise policing actions and enable the NZP to deploy resources to manage calls for service, understand and respond to the drivers of crime, and to foster a change in mind-set that puts prevention and the needs of victims at the forefront of policing. The strategy was designed to ensure that prevention was the responsibility of every NZP employee (New Zealand 2011c). Prevention First was premised on ensuring that all NZP employees understood their role and was to establish a link between operational information and an intelligence-driven resource management and deployment model and the five drivers of crimeFootnote 2 (New Zealand 2013). It was believed that the drivers of crime did not act in isolation, but intersected, overlapped and impacted upon one another (New Zealand 2013). The strategy included three tasks for NZP employees, which were:

  • be aware of and leverage off community services and networks to protect vulnerable people, particularly repeat offenders;

  • act with urgency against prolific offenders; and

  • develop innovative and sustainable, practical solutions using problem solving approaches to manage crime hotspots and priority locations (New Zealand 2011c).

At the same time that the NZP were developing the Prevention First strategy, the Government, in mid-2011, was implementing new performance outcomes for the justice sector, of which all justice agencies were to work jointly towards achieving (Ministry of Justice 2012). The major targets which were set by the Government for the NZP to achieve by June 2017 (as measured against 2008/09 rates) were the reduction of the:

  • crime rate by 15 %;

  • youth crime rate by 5 %;

  • violent crime rate by 20 %; and

  • rate of re-offending by 25 % (Ministry of Justice 2012, p. 1).

To support the justice sector performance targets, NZP determined that they would achieve a:

  • 4 % increase in prevention outputs (by 2014/15);

  • 13 % fewer recorded crimes; and

  • 19 % fewer non-traffic apprehensions resolved by prosecutions (by 2014/15) (New Zealand 2011c).

A pivotal element which enabled the Prevention First strategy to succeed was the Deployment ModelFootnote 3 (New Zealand 2011b). The Model was designed to deploy staff to manage calls for service, and comprised of four major components: Critical Command Information, Tasking and Coordination, Workforce Management and Operational Delivery (or Execution). Critical Command Information described the information that decision makers should consider before making decisions about the deployment of resources, and Tasking and Coordination is the process by which the Critical Command InformationFootnote 4 prioritises operational activity (New Zealand 2011d). The management of human resources was analysed to determine effective management and to ensure that crime reduction targets were achieved. The crime reduction targets were included in the Workforce Management component. The major components of the Deployment Model and the linkages between its four major components are presented in Fig. 2 (2011c, p. 4).

Fig. 2
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New Zealand police prevention first deployment model

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The Deployment Model was founded on three principles: well-informed and well-directed tasking of resources, a better understanding of demand and organisational capabilities, and a clear focus on achieving the right results (New Zealand 2011d). The purpose of the Model was to enable decision makers to deploy resources in a consistent approach across the organization which would focus these resources on the local crime and crash environment (New Zealand 2011d).

By early to mid-2012, it became apparent to the Police Executive that the NZP needed to better understand how their resources should be redirected, how the resources should be tasked and what this actually meant on a day-to-day basis at the operational and tactical levels of the organisation. As can be seen in Table 5, the operational demands made on NZP had increased substantially, the NZP budget had increased from $861 m to $1,461 m, an increase of approximately 73 % from 1999 to 2012, and calls for service from the public had increased from 319,817 to 772,928, approximately 142 % during the same period. The NZP Executive needed to know how to move existing resources from being utilised in a reactive manner to being used in a proactive manner and how to achieve the 4 % increase in prevention outputs. To redirect available resources to handle prevention tasks, NZP established District Coordination Centres (DCC). The initial role of the DCCs was to use the information gained from telephone calls made by the public to the three National Communication Centres to identify crime trends and hotspots and direct attendance of ‘prevention resources’.

Table 5 The total New Zealand police budget and the number of public calls for service from 1999 to 2013
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The title of the DCCs changed in mid-2013 to District Command Centres to reflect the evolving role in the real time management and the dispatch of resources to attend events and incidents. It had become clear to decision makers that the DCCs were fundamental to the implementation of the Deployment Model and to the workstreams within the Policing Excellence change management program, and that the DCCs were a vital operational component of the Deployment Model. The Deployment Model was vital as it ensured that NZP staff were deployed to the right place at the right time.

Discussion

The New Zealand Government reforms of the mid-1980s, in conjunction with the rapidly changing social and economic conditions, the concern about increasing levels of crime, and the increase in public expectations led the NZP to reassess their role, their organisational processes and their structures. The aims of the Policing 2000 change program were to ensure that the NZP had the capability and the organisational processes to deliver the best possible Community Oriented Policing service to meet both the Government and the communities’ expectations for the new millennium. Owing to Policing 2000 not reaching the implementation stage, the aims of the later organisational change management programs changed to include components of Community Policing and became more philosophical in nature with the intention of changing the behaviour and actions of officers and employees.

As Policing 2000 was not implemented, the NZP appeared to be reluctant to change their approach to strategy development and sought a familiar solution to a new problem which is consistent with Mintzberg’s (1978) theory of organizational strategy development. Alterations to the aims of the change management programs eventuated as a response to the changing direction of different governments (social or conservative), the response of the government to the 2007 fiscal crisis and as a result of the NZP learning more about their business and the effects of change as components of Policing Excellence and Prevention First were implemented. It is uncertain as to the level of understanding and knowledge held by NZP as to how the 12 Police Excellence workstreams would increase the effectiveness of their service delivery, as no research had been undertaken nor had a project design or a plan been documented. The deficiency in evidence based research upon which to form strategy is a theme common to all three change programs.

Langworthy (1986) claims that the reformation or the reorganization of police agencies is “both controversial and mystical” (p. 1) and asserts that from the establishment of the London Metropolitan Police in 1829 to the present there has been little in the way of firm evidence to use when selecting one type of organizational reform over another. Since Langworthy’s observations in 1986, there has been very little research and no evidence-based research that has examined how police agencies design and implement organisational reform programs to increase efficiency and effectiveness (Maguire 2003; den Heyer 2009, 2013).

The absence of research in police reform places police managers in a no-win situation. Police reformers are not able to base their reforms on any accepted theory or best practice. They are also in the position of not being able to justify their change management program or answer their critics. This means that “police managers and critics are perpetually entangled in a debate that has no objective solution” (Langworthy 1986, p. 2).

While the NZP has been able to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their service delivery (based on the decreasing level of crime and increasing services within their current funding), what has become clear over time is, that due to conflicting demands, NZP cannot achieve all of the outcomes that the community and the Government require of them. This has created a challenge for police managers to balance their budgets and their resources, and suggests that output measurement alone is not a simple answer to assess the achievement of the delivery of police services (Moore and Stephens 1991; den Heyer 2009; Cohen and Eimicke 2012). It has also created a situation where the strategy, structures, resources and costs have been continually examined by the NZP to identify better methods and processes that may have increased officer and organisational efficiencies and effectiveness. It was the continual examination of organization processes that resulted in the development of Policing 2000, Policing Excellence and Prevention First.

Policing 2000 versus Policing Excellence and Prevention First

Policing 2000 was a NZP initiated, NZP centric, customer focused comprehensive change management program conceived to streamline management and administration, and to transfer effort and resources to front line policing (Commissioner of Police 1998) primarily at the Area level. The program was based on the principles of decentralisation and Community Oriented Policing, and was led by a Deputy Commissioner. It was designed to facilitate the operational strategies of firm and targeted enforcement, increase crime prevention and working collectively with others to reduce crime, the fear of crime and the road toll (Commissioner of Police 1998). The objectives of the program was to ensure that the NZP was more efficient in the delivery of quality policing services, more accountable for the delivery of those services and to be supportive of the Government’s public safety objectives (Commissioner of Police 1998). This meant that the focus of the program was on efficiency and accountability, not on the effectiveness of services, although it was expected that greater efficiency and accountability would lead to the achievement of greater effectiveness in terms of public safety outcomes (Commissioner of Police 1998).

The Policing 2000 program was not based on any research findings but was designed to examine how organisational processes could be improved and to identify potential areas that could become more efficient. Business process re-engineering (BPR) was used to examine areas of potential improvement. The program was a comprehensive and broad approach to analyse the processes used by the organisation, and went from analysing the complete process of how an officer orders a replacement pair of socks to how they are supplied, to analysing the process of a Traffic Offence Notice from the point of issue to when it is finalised, either by payment or by prosecution. As a result of the size and multitude of the BPR task and to ensure that BPR would identify the required outcomes, the NZP created a coordinating body comprising of Policing 2000’s project leaders. However, because of the number of BPR projects and the detail involved in the analysis of each project, the project coordinating body became overwhelmed by the project management process. As a result, project leaders and analysts concentrated on the project management reporting requirements rather than on undertaking the actual BPR analysis, causing timelines to be extended and milestones to be missed. This created problems across the Policing 2000 program and eventually led to its demise and Government intervention in 1998.

In comparison, Policing Excellence and Prevention First were designed to not only accommodate cost pressures within a static budget, but to reduce operating costs and to assist NZP with achieving the Government’s outcomes of reducing youth and violent crime, total crime and the re-offending rate. In other words, the programs were driven by the achievement of the identifiable performance measures of reducing crime by 13 %, increasing prevention outputs by 4 % and decreasing apprehensions by 19 %.

The two programs were more targeted than Policing 2000, in that they were to address the five drivers of crime; alcohol, families, organised crime and drugs, road policing and youth. Addressing the drivers of crime was to be achieved by concentrating on three drivers of change:

  1. 1.

    productivity – getting the most benefit from policing, with emphasis on prevention;

  2. 2.

    sustainability – maintaining cost-effective service delivery with available resources; and

  3. 3.

    national consistency – embedding the same Police Model, practices and standards in each District (New Zealand 2011c).

Owing to the linking of the combination of these programs across the wider justice sector, the visibility of the performance measures and the focus on the practical drivers of crime has made Policing Excellence and Prevention First easier for NZP staff members to accept than they did of Policing 2000. The fact that the programs were driven by the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner, together with the achievement of performance measures by November 2013 (New Zealand Police 2013) and the approach of implementing components of the programs as their development was completed, supported the perception by staff that the organization was capable of making changes.

The three change management programs have a number of differences but they also have similarities and support Mintzberg’s (1978) strategy development theory. Policing 2000 was about ‘doing more with less’, which was the mantra of the 1990s New Public Management approach to government agencies and changing the culture of the organization to reflect honesty and a commitment to focusing on customers. In comparison, Policing Excellence was introduced with the view that the organization would become more effective and more focused on prevention. The program also placed an emphasis on victims of crime and the public. A summary of the comparison of the three programs is presented in Table 6 below.

Table 6 Programme components of policing 2000, policing excellence and prevention first
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It appears that the major difference between the programs is that the NZP learnt from the mistakes made during the development of Policing 2000. This is not surprising, given that the Commissioner, who supported the initiation of Policing Excellence in 2008, was one of the major architects of Policing 2000. A cautious approach was taken with implementing Policing Excellence, the program did not focus as much on changing processes to increase efficiency. While the NZP have taken a familiar approach to change, both Policing Excellence and Prevention First can also be identified as emerging strategies which is in line with Mintzberg’s (1978) typology.

The softer approach when developing the later change programs was a major strength as was the fact that the worksteams were implemented as they were completed compared with the Policing 2000 approach of attempting to implement ten projects concurrently. The second major strength of the later change programs was that they worked in unison. Policing Excellence laid the groundwork and provided the structure for the implementation of the Prevention First strategy. This ensured a successful implementation of the more tactical Prevention First strategy which enabled the NZP to achieve the four Government-specified outcome performance measures.

The softer approach adopted by NZP to implement change in the organisation, whether by planning or good fortune, supports Langworthy’s (1986), claims that decisions about how policing is undertaken should not be made in a vacuum and without simultaneously considering the effects on the rest of the functional structure.

Has the Service Delivery of the New Zealand Police Improved as a Result of Policing 2000, Policing Excellence and Prevention First?

Policing 2000 was never implemented and as a result, it is impossible to identify as to whether or not it had any effect on NZP’s service delivery. From an examination of Table 2 and Fig. 3, it appears that the Policing Excellence and the Prevention First programs have had an effect on the number of crimes reported, the resolution of crimes and the number of road fatalities. Since the implementation of Policing Excellence and Prevention First, the percentage of crimes resolved and the number of police officers per 100,000 population has remained stable, but the number of road fatalities per 100,000 population has decreased by three fatalities per 100,000 population, the number of calls for service from the public has increased by more than 9 % and the public trust and confidence in NZP has remained constant at 78 % of participants surveyed stating that they have full or substantial trust and confidence in NZP (Strategy Limited 2009; 2014). Over the same time period, the New Zealand population has increased approximately 5 % and the ration of police officers to 100,000 population has remained static. These results indicated that the programs have had a positive impact on the service delivery of NZP.

Fig. 3
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Number of road fatalities, total crime and number of crimes resolved from 1990 to 2013

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Conclusion

Devising a successful strategy for the NZP depends upon defining the appropriate mission and goals and establishing robust external relationships in the operating and political environment. This approach will enable NZP to develop strategy that should be successful in achieving its objectives (Ketchen and Short, n.d.). Ultimately, however, whether a strategy succeeds or not, depends on whether the organization can be coaxed to perform as envisioned in the strategy.

Mintzberg’s theory of strategy development emphasizes that familiar change management tools are often used by organizations to develop strategy. The principal instruments that members of the NZP executive used in the three change programs to influence the improvement of the overall performance of the organization were familiar change management tools; streamlining administration, restructuring and reallocating resources, all of which were supported by a technological platform. It is the last point, technology, which may have been the saviour of the Policing Excellence and Prevention First programs. Policing 2000 had been designed to be supported by an extensive technological capability which was to provide an efficient working environment through the minimization of paperwork. However, the technology was unable to deliver the Policing 2000 objectives and led to the NZP suffering substantial financial difficulties resulting in the New Zealand Government taking court action against the technology suppliers.

An analysis of the three change programs suggests that the later programs were an improvement over the earlier program and that the changes in the environment and in the organization of NZP gave rise to new opportunities and strategy. Policing Excellence and Prevention First are both leading police change management programs that have fundamentally changed the way that the NZP operates and delivers its services. However, the later two programs have created semi-decentralised, functionally-dominated organisational structures that focus the attention of the organization on the development of specialised functional capabilities, encouraging staff to take a limited perspective on crime problems. Although the NZP has encouraged the continuation of Community Policing through the establishment of Neighbourhood Policing, and the targeting of locations and problems of high risk through an intelligence model, the organization still evaluates itself largely in terms of crime related indicators of success. All these factors are consistent with a strategy of professional crime fighting rather than a community oriented police (Moore and Stephens 1991).

The implementation of both Policing Excellence and Prevention First have ensured that the NZP is strategically placed to take advantage of the future environment and that the organization is capable of developing and implementing extensive change management programs that fundamentally affect how the organization delivers its services. Only time will tell whether Prevention First is a realised strategy and is able to build on its initial achievements and whether the altered service delivery structures and methods are capable of delivering the organisational efficiencies sought by Government and the public.