Police officers make decisions at the street level in a variety of situations that have direct impact on quality of life, justice in society, and individual freedom. These decisions inherently involve the exercise of discretion, since successfully performed police tasks are linked to the officer‘s choosing among alternative courses of action. Appropriateness of unsupervised decisions taken under street contingencies remains questionable in terms of police-behavior legitimacy. Law enforcement agencies seek ways to control excessive discretion to avoid undesired consequences of police discretion and maintain organizational legitimacy. Traditionally, organizations developed reward and sanction structures that aimed to shape officer behavior on the street. Recent perspectives, on the other hand, emphasize that it is imperative to manage discretion by employing a value-based approach that requires the agency to encourage subordinates in the exercise of certain behaviors simply because they are believed to be right and proper. This approach depends primarily on beliefs, values, and attitudes of employees rather than external contingencies of environment. Drawing on expectancy and value-based approaches, this study examines the factors affecting patrol officers‘ discretionary decisions to enforce law in the Turkish National Police (TNP). The reward expectancy concept was derived from the expectancy theory of motivation, which uses extrinsic rewards in structuring discretion. Regarding the value-based approach, public service motivation (PSM) represents the intrinsic motives of officers in this study, while selective enforcement corresponds to the attitudes of officers. Discretionary behaviors of officers on the street were conceptualized as responsiveness, which refers to the degree to which officers iv are willing to respond to street contingencies. The study tested the mediating role of work effort between reward expectancy/responsiveness and public service motivation/responsiveness relationships. Samples of the study were drawn from uniformed patrol officers in seven provinces of Turkey. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Responses of 613 patrol officers were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The study developed four latent constructs and validated their measurement models by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Structural equation modeling was used to investigate causal and confirmatory relationships among latent variables. Findings of the study suggested that reward expectancy did not have a statistically significant relationship to responsiveness. The study did not find a significant association between reward expectancy and work effort of officers. This finding was found to be attributable to the fact that officers do not believe in the fair distribution procedures of rewards and they do not value organizational rewards. Public service motivation of respondents, on the other hand, indicated a strong, positive, and statistically significant relationship with both work effort and responsiveness. These results indicated that intrinsic motives of officers in the TNP are more powerful in explaining officer responsiveness to street contingencies. As hypothesized, officer attitudes toward selective enforcement negatively influenced officer responsiveness, indicating that officers‘ beliefs and values influence their discretionary behaviors. Among the demographic characteristics of participants, only age of officer indicated a negative significant relationship to responsiveness. This finding suggested that motivation decreases as age increases. Contrary to v other findings in the literature, this study found that intensity perceptions of respondents was positively associated with responsiveness. The study revealed some policy, theoretical, and methodological implications. The findings suggested that the TNP should either completely eliminate the existing reward system or revise it to motivate officers to be responsive. A leadership practice that promotes PSM and discourages selective enforcement was also suggested. Contrary to research that emphasizes the role of extrinsic motivation on police discretion, this study empirically reported that intrinsic motivation has an even stronger effect on officer behavior and needs to be taken into account in future studies. The study contributes to an understanding of police discretionary behavior in the TNP, which has unique characteristics of structure, culture, and law. The limitations of the study in terms of its dependency on officer perceptions and concerns about construct validity were discussed and future research was suggested.

This dissertation emphasizes the importance of the human factor in the organizational change process. Change - the only constant - is inevitable for organizations and no change program can be achieved without the support and acceptance of organization members. In this context, this study identifies officer attitudes toward organizational change in the Turkish National Police (TNP) and the factors affecting those attitudes. The Officer Attitude Model created by the researcher includes six main factors (receptivity to change, readiness for change, trust in management, commitment to organization, communication of change, and training for change) and five background factors (gender, age, rank, level of education, and work experience) to explain officer attitudes toward change. In order to test this model, an officer attitude survey was administered in Turkey among TNP members and the results of the gathered data validated this model.

This study examines the variations in the practice of implementation in different implementation structures using the case of police education reforms that were undertaken by the Turkish National Police (TNP) in 2001 and 2003. Differentiations and similarities in the top-down and bottom-up structures while practicing the process of implementation were investigated in this study. First, the study provides a comprehensive understanding of the process of implementation and structure of implementation. Second, the study introduces TNP education reforms and explains the reasons for the reform. Third, a quantitative approach is used to measure the success of the TNP educational reforms. Specifically, multiple regression analysis, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and post hoc tests are used to clarify if police performance in the TNP has improved since the reforms. Fourth, the study uses a qualitative approach to find out how features associated with top-down or bottom up approaches were involved in the process of implementation of the educational reforms. Finally, based upon the views of the participants in the qualitative analysis, the study examines the variations in the practice of implementation between decision makers and the street level bureaucrats.

This exploratory research is the first one among occupational information seeking behavior studies that focuses on information seeking behaviors of the crime scene investigators. The data used in this dissertation were gathered via a self-administrated survey instrument from 29 cities in Turkey. Findings obtained from the data analyses show that there is a strongly positive relationship between the experience of the crime scene investigators and the use of personal knowledge and experience as a primary information source (experience is operationalized with age, service years in policing, and service years in crime scene investigation units). The findings also suggest that increasing of the level of education is negatively related to relying on immediate colleagues as an information source among the crime scene investigators. These findings are consistent with related literature and theory. The data analysis shows that crime scene investigators work in cities with higher population rates have more complaint scores than those who work in cities with lower population rates across Turkey. The findings from the data analysis may suggest valuable implications to defeat the barriers between crime scene investigators and information sources. The researcher drew a proposed theoretical framework of an information behavior concept in the context of crime scene investigation that may help those who are interested in the phenomenon and its applications to other contexts.

Although dominant effects of tasks on individuals' information-seeking behavior is accepted by many scholars, a limited number of studies has been conducted to reveal the nature of the relationship between tasks and information-seeking behavior. In their studies, some earlier researchers categorized tasks according to their complexity while others did the same according to the specifications of tasks. Two of the groundbreaking researchers in this area are Katriina Byström and Kalervo Järvelin who contributed to the understanding of the relationship between task complexity and information-seeking behavior. However, their findings also need empirical support for theory growth. In response to this need, this study attempts to test Byström and Järvelin's findings through a research using different research methods and applied in a police work environment. Other than providing empirical support for theory growth, this research is also expected to contribute to the understudied area of police information-seeking behavior. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from the participants who came from traffic, homicide, and anti-terrorism divisions of Ankara, Eskisehir, and Kirikkale Police Departments in Turkey. The participants identified terrorism cases as the most complex cases to solve, followed by homicide and traffic accident cases. Differences in the information-seeking behavior of three groups of police officers were examined through qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Oneway ANOVA technique and post hoc comparisons were used to analyze the quantitative data. In addition to shedding light on information-seeking behavior of police officers investigating related cases in Turkey, the results provided support for Byström and Järvelin's findings. For instance, the officers investigating more complex tasks used significantly more information sources than the others, while the use of external information sources was significantly higher in more complex cases.

This research study explores knowledge management (KM) in law enforcement, focusing on the POLNET system established by the Turkish National Police as a knowledge-sharing tool. This study employs a qualitative case study for exploratory and descriptive purposes. The qualitative data set came from semi-structured face-to-face and telephone interviews, as well as self-administered e-mail questionnaires. The sample was composed of police administrators who created POLNET, working under the Department of Information Technologies and the Department of Communication. A content analysis method is used to analyze the data. This study finds that law enforcement organizations' KM strategies have several differences from Handzic and Zhou's integrated KM model. Especially, organizational culture and structure of law enforcement agencies differently affect knowledge creation, conversion, retrieval, and sharing processes. Accordingly, this study offers a new model which is dynamic and suggests that outcomes always affect drivers.

Policing is more difficult than ever before in today’s world since types of crime and criminal profiles change as a result of technological development and globalization. Police organizations should review their organizational and operational strategies to improve the fight against contemporary crimes and criminals. Behaviors and performance of police officers are very important in fighting crime. In this struggle, especially today, officers should exhibit organizational citizenship behaviors and perform better. One of the most important factors affecting these two concepts in organizations is organizational support. The literature stresses the social exchange cycle and reciprocity rules in the relationships of organizations and their members. In this cycle, if the organization cares about its members and if members perceive that the organization is supportive, they feel obliged to behave positively, perform better, and help the organization to reach its goals and objectives. If they don’t perceive organizational support, they won’t care about the organization, either. Hypotheses were developed based on these assumptions in the literature. This study tested these assumptions in Crime Scene Investigation units of the Turkish National Police (TNP). Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the relationships among variables of Perceived Organizational Support (POS), Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB), and Perceived Performance (PP). Measurement models for these three latent constructs were developed by deriving the indicators from the literature. Most earlier studies tried to figure out reasons of the OCB. This study has a different perspective that investigates both reasons and results of OCB. A survey was developed to measure the latent variables of the study, and 405 of approximately 3,000 Crime Scene Investigators in the Turkish National Police responded to the iv survey. Results of the study showed that the relationship between POS and OCB is positive and significant. This is consistent with the literature. The relationship between OCB and PP is also positive and significant, and this is also consistent with the literature. However, the relationship between POS and PP is negative and insignificant. This result contradicts the results of previous studies in the literature and can be attributed to the subjective nature of measuring individuals’ perceptions. According to the literature, perceptions are subjective rather than objective; therefore, data coming from reports of individual perceptions may not reflect the actual situation. Demographic information of the participants served as the control variables of the study. Information about the education level, rank, age, gender, size of the unit, and tenure of the respondents was collected by way of the conducted survey, and the effects of these variables were analyzed on the endogenous variable of the study, Perceived Performance. This study found no significant relationships between these control variables and Perceived Performance. Therefore, all these control variables were removed from the Structural Equation Model of the study. This study revealed that the TNP needs to be more supportive toward its members in order to have officers show organizational citizenship behavior and perform better. The TNP should revise its policies, especially regarding rotations from one province to another, working hours, rewards, and overtime pay. These are all indicators of organizational support and will result in a higher performance level among officers.

This study is an exploration of the European Union acquis adoption in the Turkish National Police. The research employed the Diffusion of Innovations, Democratic Policing, and historical background check theoretical frameworks to study the decision-making of the TNP regarding reforms after 2003 as a qualitative case study which triangulated the methodology with less-dominant survey and several other analyzing methods. The data were collected from several sources including semi-structured interviews, archival records, documentary evidences and the European Commission Regular Reports on Turkey. The research interest was about the decision mechanisms of the TNP towards reforms and the rise of democratic policing in Turkey. During the study, internationally recognized human rights standards were given attention. As the data suggested, the police forces are shaped according to their ruling governments and societies. It is impossible to find a totally democratic police in a violent society and a totally violent police in a democratic society. The study findings suggested that reforming police agencies should not be a significant problem for determined governments. Human rights violations should not be directly related with the police in any country. The data suggested that democratic policing applications find common application when the democracy gets powerful and police brutality increases when authoritarian governments stays in power. Democratic policing on the other hand is an excellent tool to improve notion of democracy and to provide legitimacy to governments. However, democratic policing is not a tool to bring the democracy, but a support mechanism for it.