National Culture and Police Organization in Germany and the United States.

CULTURE; POLICE; CORPORATE culture; WESTERN countries; CROSS-cultural studies; DEVELOPED countries; BUREAUCRACY

UNITED States; GERMANY

This article is about problems of adaptation of institutions from one western industrialized nation to another. It makes a distinction between organizational craft, which fosters adaptation, and organizational culture, which often inhibits it. Following Heady's suggestion, the concept of bureaucracy is used as a framework to compare the organizational culture of policing in the United States and in the Federal Republic of Germany in order to show why American police institutions were not adapted successfully in Germany. The organizations are compared in terms of both structural and behavioral elements, which are grouped into two models: one of rationalism (German) and one of empiricism (United States). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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