Intelligence-Led Policing Acceptance and Policing Effectiveness: The Roles of Organizational Change, Innovative Behavior and Knowledge Sharing ^†

Abstract

The study was conducted to examine the linkage between ILP acceptance and policing effectiveness, and to examine the relationships between organizational change, innovative behavior and knowledge sharing practices. Using the quantitative approach, data was collected through a survey from 400 police officers in Abu Dhabi Police (ADP). The data was analyzed for the measurement and structural model, using Smart PLS software. The results of the hypothesis testing suggest the relationship between ILP acceptance and policing effectiveness is significant, and readiness of change is significantly related to ILP acceptance. Furthermore, innovative behavior, knowledge sharing, climate of change and process of change are related to readiness of change. The study concludes ILP enforcement is fundamental for public safety, but the implementation model should consider the factors of organizational change.

1. Introduction

Intelligence-led policing (ILP) is a policing philosophy that emerged aggressively as a consequence to the 9/11 attack [1], although it has been used since 1990s. ILP, according to [2], refers to a model which pertains to managerial law enforcement with a purpose to bring the crime intelligence approach to the front position, particularly in decision making. Thus, it is imperative to further comprehend the structure as an operational process within the sphere of the enforcement of the law units, which include both the similarities and differences. On a same note, intelligence-led policing encompasses the analysis of information for the development and implementation of strategic actions for the purpose of efficiency towards diminishing the occurrence of crimes [3]. ILP offers innovative approach in the law enforcement functioned by the police force heading towards a better and more precise and systematic policing. However, utilizing the ILP as a means of governance faces a great challenge because they will be forced to ensure that their respective countries do not bear the losses, in terms of resources that are necessary to ensure appropriate use of identified ILP systems. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (2017) suggests that the ILP model does not only offer a modernized approach in identifying a countermeasures plan against the threats of terrorism and organized crime, rather ILP could also be applicable to routine proactive police management.

Over the past decade, significant changes have transpired in the Abu Dhabi Police (ADP) modernization program [4]. As the program continues, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government has provided sponsorship to ADP, which eventually has fostered several projects, including the ILP. Giving the citizens fast responses in safety is the priority of the ADP [5]. Moreover, safeguarding public safety is fundamental; integrated, simplified and effective system [6]. Thus, provision of ILP comes with the mission to create positive impacts on the citizens, including public trust.

However, ILP is an innovation that shall take some time to go with the traditional factors and restrictions of policing operations. It is a transformation that requires changes to the traditional practices. Hence, understanding the police institutions change strategy is fundamental. One of the prominent models that explains changes in organization is Korler’s. It has become a subject of investigation within the policing institution by [6]. However, the use of Kotler’s leading change model, although significant, does not provide a generalizability to the policing institutions because of the method selection. In addition, the change climate, process and readiness have not been addressed and emphasized in past ILP change management studies [7] Likewise, ILP is a system that requires acceptance among the police officers. Therefore, from the lens of behavioral studies, it raises the question of whether innovative behavior and knowledge-sharing practices determine the police officers’ readiness to accept ILP. One of the foremost concerns in the formation and implementation of ILP is the knowledge sharing. Nevertheless, challenges are faced in this area, given the fact that both the information as well as the importance of knowledge is considered significant in the operation of policing. However, it is observed that behaviours with regards to maladaptive information, including values and cultures of policing, persists to influence the gathering and sharing of information and knowledge to every unit of the police department. Research related to ILP has not given sufficient discussion on how knowledge sharing and police officer’s innovative behavior are playing the role in ILP adoption intention and practices. Thus, it opens an avenue for further examinations. As a result, the study was conducted with the following objectives. First, is to examine the relationship between ILP acceptance and policing effectiveness in ADP. Second, is to determine the factors that shape the ILP acceptance and police officers’ readiness from the lens of organizational change theory. The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and define the purpose of the work and its significance.

2. Review of Literature

2.1. Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP)

Intelligence-led policing, according to [2], refers to a model which pertains to managerial law enforcement of which the purpose is the positioning of a crime intelligence approach at the front position, particularly in decision making. Thus, it is imperative to further comprehend the structure as well as the operational processes in the sphere of the enforcement of the law units, which include both the similarities and differences within the organizational units. The purpose is to better understand the influence of the nuances in shaping up the approaches of ILP. [8] also highlighted ILP is a concept in which intelligence and data are used to objectively detect and efficiently handle crime threats. ILP uses intelligence and data to prioritize issues (which may be more subtle), such as a human trafficking ring operating in the neighborhood that the general public is unaware of. To put it another way, although public input is greatly sought and valued in both COP and ILP, objective analysis utilized to establish the most significant criminal threats is the prime priority and mechanism used to proactively police under the ILP model [1]. In order to better comprehend ILP, awareness of who in particular is going to use the term is considered crucial, verification about the context of the application of ILP and where it shall be applied should be sorted out, why is it necessary to apply, and what are the anticipated outcomes for its use. In the absence of the foregoing fundamental frame of reference, ILP from the general perspective is going to be an insignificant concept and of no logical application.

2.2. Organizational Change, Innovation Behavior, Knowledge Sharing and ILP

ILP acceptance entails obtaining and analyzing crime data while taking into account the elements that contribute to crime with the objective of providing actionable information to assist law enforcement in formulating tactical and/or strategic responses to threats in the face of new or changing threats [1]. Policing service effectiveness (PSE) refers to the state of police public services as an institution, with a focus on its efficacy in reducing crime [9]. PSE ensures that civilians are enlisted to assist ADP in critical areas. Crime analysts, for example, assist in identifying the persons who commit the most crimes, as well as crime patterns, so that ADP may better target recurrent and repeat offenders.

Knowledge sharing is the voluntary transmission or dissemination of information from one individual to another or a group within an organization [10]. As one of the major variables in this study, the process of knowledge sharing shall be investigated to assert its relationship to ILP. Brodeur and Dupont’s definition of knowledge-based policing or knowledge as it applies to police, according to [11], may be divided into old and new knowledge. Old knowledge may be defined as information that has historically been acknowledged within the area of law enforcement and is also linked to criminal activity. It is a knowledge that is assembled by way of traditional law enforcement approaches in resemblance to handling of informant, investigation, as well as investigative interrogation. Conversely, Ratcliffe goes on to say that, as a result of rapid technological progress, a new kind of knowledge has emerged, with a deeper awareness of crime and police efficiency in combatting and reducing crime, as well as a new era of accountability. Thus, this so-called new knowledge encompasses a wider perspective and interpretation pertaining to intelligence involving approaches pertaining to crime mapping, trend, along with demographic analysis and strategic intelligence with the use of open-source information.

When comparing old and new intelligence, the new intelligence is conducted by people who spend the most of their time at the police station and may or may not be civilians working in a sworn setting. In the realm of policing, the slow paradigm shift with regards to the information that is supposedly significant and of value has taken most law enforcers into uncharted territory; furthermore, it is perceived to have potential for the alteration of dynamics in relation to the value within policing. [12] claimed that knowledge sharing plays a significant role in the development of positive attitudes with respect to diversity within a team. Additionally, knowledge sharing is also causative to a variety of non-traditional work-related effects, such as those that affect team atmosphere and employees’ readiness to change. Hence the following hypothesis is proposed:

H1. 

There is a significant relationship between police officers’ knowledge-sharing behavior and readiness of change.

Innovative behavior refers to the use of a new concept, product, procedures in accomplishing tasks at work or in the company [13]. Workplace innovation is defined as a social process that includes cooperation with workers and corporate peers, as well as the support and refinement of new ideas in order for them to be accepted. As a result, employee satisfaction was associated with organizational support for innovation, which was linked to innovative behavior. As a result, workplace support and opportunity increase the effectiveness of achievement and encourage creative behavior [14]. Employees develop creative solutions in the organization [15]. Hence, employee behaviors are important to the organizational innovation goal. Furthermore, they assert that good ideas are built on creativity. As a result, it is important to raise awareness of the importance of people and their unique characteristics in the success of creative initiatives. Hence, the following hypothesis is offered:

H2. 

There is a significant relationship between police officers’ innovative behavior and readiness to change.

Organizational change (OC) is the process wherein a company or organization changes its working strategies or aim in order to maintain a competitive advantage [16]. In this study, OC plays a major component, especially in the innovative approaches that shall ensure policing effectiveness is delivered for the interest of the people. Readiness to change deals with the commitment of every member of the organization along with a shared belief to implement and perform changes [17]. As one of the key factors in this research, being ready to change shall be examined to establishment law enforcement accountabilities and steadfastness towards the enforcement of the law in the perspective of organizational change. Climate change is defined as any job task being changed due to an indirect or direct variables that affect their work [18]. In this study, climate change refers to companies that want to prove that they satisfy society standards through social and environmental reporting, which helps them manage stakeholder perceptions. Process change is a set of procedures wherein top leaders are positioned in order to guarantee an effectual operation, and further refrain from losses that may result from fraud, malfunction of technological aspect, and also error [19]. Thus, based on the discussion, the following hypotheses are offered:

H3. 

There is a significant relationship between climate of change and readiness of change.

H4. 

There is a significant relationship between process of change and readiness of change.

H5. 

There is a significant relationship between readiness of change and ILP acceptance.

H6. 

There is a significant relationship between ILP acceptance and policing effectiveness.

3. Research Method

3.1. The Survey Instrument

The survey instrument consisted of items from seven measures, which were adopted from past studies. Items to measure knowledge sharing behavior were adopted from [20], innovation behavior [21], ILP acceptance [22] and policing service effectiveness [23]. Organizational change was measured as climate of change, process of change and readiness of change and adopted from [24] Two dimensions were used to measure climate of change, which are trust and cohesion. There are four dimensions to measure process of change: participation, supervisor support, quality of communication and top management attitude. On the other hand, there are three dimensions to measure readiness of change: emotion, cognitive and intentional. The items were measured as a five-point-Likert scale and the choices of the responses were listed in accordance with the appropriateness of the variables.

3.2. Participation and Data Collection Procedure

The instrument was verified and validated by two academics who were the expert in the field of organizational policy and information system, and also by the Abu Dhabi Police Strategic Advisor. The instrument was translated to the Arabic language using the back translation method. Then, a pilot study was conducted with 40 police officers that took part in the procedure. The goals of the pilot test were to assess the item clarity, the common instructions used and the survey length. The results of the internal consistency scores for all variables were above 0.700 which suggests a good scale reliability. The population of the study was the police officers in Abu Dhabi. The sample was selected based on the convenient sampling technique. Although the technique is least preferred in any social science study, the convenient sampling technique was considered as the best strategy, given the police officers’ hectic schedule and the impossibility to simply interfere in their daily duties. The sample size was set based on the G Power calculator, which suggested for 129 samples. However, given the higher the sample size, the lower the sampling error, data was collected from 400 police officers. A permission to collect the data was obtained from the Abu Dhabi Police authority. The collected responses were screened for missing values, and the data was also assessed for the common method bias. The respondents were officers from the Abu Dhabi Police Headquarters (31%), Allain (28%). Al Dhafa (22%) and other external areas (19%). The designations included Search and Investigation Officers (40%), Interrogation Officers (32%), Patrol Officers (9%) and others including Operation Officers, Cyber Crime and Traffic.

4. Results and Discussion

4.1. Measurement Reliability and Validity

The data was analysed using Smart PLS 3.3.2. The results of the reflective measurement are shown in

Table 1. Measurement Reliability and Validity.

Construct	Cronbach’s Alpha	Composite Reliability	Average Variance Extracted (AVE)
Knowledge Sharing	0.947	0.957	0.789
Innovative Behavior	0.931	0.948	0.783
Climate of Change	0.902	0.862	0.758
Process of Change	0.955	0.893	0.677
Readiness of Change	0.952	0.913	0.777
ILP Acceptance	0.859	0.899	0.640
Policing Effectiveness	0.908	0.932	0.732

. They indicate the composite reliability scores were higher than the cut-off value of 0.70, whereas the average variance extracted (AVE) were above 0.50 [25].

In addition, the heterotrait-monotrait criterion (HTMT) procedure was also conducted as a strategy to test for the discriminant validity. The results are in

Table 2. Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio of correlations, HTMT.

Construct	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Climate of Change
Effectiveness	0.459
Innovative Behavior	0.645	0.443
Knowledge Sharing	0.544	0.362	0.602
ILP Acceptance	0.423	0.537	0.327	0.326
Process of Change	0.660	0.399	0.409	0.449	0.447
Readiness	0.608	0.443	0.501	0.530	0.397	0.623

, and it indicated the HTMT values fulfill the guideline, which suggests the values should be less than 0.90 [26].

4.2. Structural Model and Discussion

The structural model was evaluated by following the procedure of (1) the lateral collinearity (VIF), (2) the path coefficients, and t-value and p-value, (3) in-sample predictive power (R²), and (4) the effect size (f²) and (5) the predictive accuracy (Q²). The results are shown in

Table 3. Results of Hypothesis Testing.

Hypothesis	Beta	Standard Error (SE)	t-Value	p-Value	VIF	f2
Innovative Behavior → Readiness	0.114	0.055	2.064	0.020	1.837	0.013
Knowledge Sharing → Readiness	0.199	0.054	3.699	0.000	1.635	0.046
Climate of Change → Readiness	0.171	0.062	2.765	0.003	2.135	0.026
Process of Change → Readiness	0.368	0.057	6.492	0.000	1.647	0.156
Readiness → ILP Acceptance	0.362	0.050	7.265	0.000	1.000	0.151
Acceptance → Policing Effectiveness	0.477	0.046	10.380	0.000	1.000	0.295

R²: Readiness = 0.474, Acceptance = 0.131, Policing Effectiveness = 0.228, Q²: Readiness = 0.295, Acceptance = 0.081, Policing Effectiveness = 0.163.

. The hypotheses were tested by using a bootstrap re-sampling technique with an iteration of 5000 sub-sample.

The scores of the variance inflation factor (VIF) show all values were between 1.00 and 2.135, which suggests multicollinearity is not an issue [27]. The results also suggest all hypotheses were supported and the relationships were all significant. For the predictive power of coefficient determination (R²), the results show 47.4% of the variance in readiness of change is explained by innovative behavior, knowledge sharing, climate of change and process of change. Subsequently, 13.1% of the variance in ILP acceptance is explained by readiness of change, whereas 22.8% of the variance on policing effectiveness is explained by ILP acceptance. Based on [28], the predictions were substantial, moderate, and substantial accordingly. Next, the effect size (f²) values based on [28] suggest that process of change (f² = 0.156), readiness of change (f² = 0.151) and ILP acceptance (f² = 0.295) demonstrated a medium effect size in generating the respective R². Likewise, the other effects sizes were small. The predictive accuracy was assessed based on the blindfolding approach [29]. The results show the endogenous variables (readiness of change = 0.295, ILP acceptance = 0.081, and policing effectiveness = 0.163) exhibited predictive accuracy of the model (with Q² > 0).

The findings reveal that readiness of change is very important to the decision to accept the ILP practices. In addition, what predicts the readiness includes how the process of change is governed, the degree of the climate of change, and equally important is the innovative behavior of the police officers and also the willingness to share knowledge among the police officers. Employee innovative behavior (e.g., inventing, adopting, and implementing new ideas for goods and work techniques) is a significant asset that helps an organization to prosper in a dynamic business environment.

In addition, the findings suggest there is a significant relationship between knowledge sharing and readiness to change. What this suggests is, to encourage knowledge-sharing readiness, individuals must be aware of the need to share knowledge and the benefits of doing so. Furthermore, if their personal or their organization’s social norms require them to share their knowledge, they are more ready for any changes [30]. Workplace knowledge sharing is influenced by employees’ interactions with others, which shows that employees’ willingness to share knowledge are influenced by their relationships with others. The relationships between organizational change, measured as climate of change and process of change, were found to be significant to readiness to change. The employees’ readiness to change is influenced by the environment and process of organizational transformation [31]. Likewise, the significant relationship between climate of change and readiness exemplifies the proposition that changes in work procedure, policies and reward systems influence behavior.

5. Conclusions

The main objective of the study is to bridge the gap between ILP acceptance and policing effectiveness in the policing institution of the Abu Dhabi Police. ILP is a transformation towards a more secured, efficient and robust policing operation. The transformation requires changes not only to the institution, but studies have shown changes were affecting the motivation, readiness and acceptance from the police employees. The study also concluded that ILP is predominantly significant in addressing the need to effectively control crimes and wrongdoings. ILP is noted as encompassing strategic policing such as knowledge-driven policing techniques, data sharing among linked and relevant departments, along with hazard appraisal, which are all necessary to ensure the safety and security of the citizenry. For future research, it is suggested for exploring how the citizens react to the changes and accept the service quality of the policing system. Finally, as technological changes are robust, a future study should also evaluate the policing services across time and to consider the changes within the technological and innovation landscape.