Policing Academics in Public Management Conference

Academics from CPRL and POP were very active in the recent conference (19th - 22nd April 2022) of the International Research Society on Public Management (IRSPM) – the largest international gathering of public management academics outside the USA, and this year held online.  

The panel on “Policing and public management” was convened by Jean Hartley, Nicky Miller, Edoardo Ongaro, and Paul Walley of the OU along with CPRL Vice Chair Phil Davies as well as by international academics in the USA, Belgium and Germany, which enabled comparative perspectives on policing.  

There were fascinating papers from Jo Lambert and Ahmed Kadry on “Overcoming organizational obstacles in policing in order maximise the benefits of the Police Education Qualification Framework” which drew on the experience of working on the degree apprenticeships with North Yorkshire Police. Arun Sondhi and Linda Maguire spoke on “Stress-related psychosocial risk factors among police officers working on rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO) cases: A mixed methods study”. A member of the CPRL Steering Group, Justin Partridge gave a co-authored paper on “Developing and maintaining collaborative information infrastructures across UK Police Services.”

The conference has been hugely valuable. There were a couple of other presentations that I attended that we could think about incorporating into our work.

Dr Arun Sondhi

Nicky Miller, Edoardo Ongaro and Phil Davies were discussants to papers from the US, Netherlands and the UK on topics as diverse as civilian oversight over police and the potential of online self-organisation against crime. To round things off, the OU’s Ian McNeill got a free place at the whole conference for being the panel’s stage manager (handling the tech) and as this was straightforward he got plenty of time to listen and contribute.  

It was a good session with extremely helpful feedback from Jeroen, our discussant. Having sat in on other CPRL presentations too, it was exciting to see similarities in our findings, despite very different topic areas, with the potential for future connections and collaborations with both CPRL colleagues and those from other institutions.

Dr Linda Maguire

If your work touches on public management, whether from a policing angle or from other public service perspectives, do consider submitting a paper to next year’s conference in due course.  It’s great to touch base with local and international colleagues on research, and it’s generally very rewarding.