Police, Organization, and Wellbeing: An Ethnography

Based on the study of a police organization in England, this book explores the role of social relations in the ways that people construct, mobilize, consume, and reconstruct meaning about wellbeing. Well-being is a powerful, institutionalized concept in police organizations across England and Wales. With the emergence of numerous policies, strategies, and practices that both explicitly and implicitly address well-being in the workplace, the concept has come to feature prominently.

Well-being is addressed as an issue that needs to be understood intersubjectively by attending to the underlying social issues that shape how it is promoted or denied. After a theoretical exploration of police culture and well-being, the book traverses ethnographic data and captures insights from individuals across the organization’s hierarchy. It explores what individuals perceive well-being to mean and how they make sense of the concept.

The book reveals discernible ideological-laden tensions across the hierarchy in terms of well-being constructions. By exploring these tensions, there is a potential to understand the constructions of well-being and the resultant implications for practice. This book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students in policing, criminology, criminal justice, leadership/management, organizational behavior, and wellbeing.

Given its empirical focus and applicability to practitioners, it will also be of interest to a range of non-academics, including police officers and leaders, public servants, private organizations, policymakers, and human resources professionals.