From ‘what works?’ to ‘who am I?’ : existential research in the extended policing family

Police forces are long established organizations shot through with tradition and confident of their underlying organizational identity. This means that when police practitioners collaborate with academics, they tend to be more concerned with pragmatic questions of ‘what works?’ than they are with existential questions of ‘who am I?’. However, on the fringes of the ‘extended policing family’, where organizational identities are far more fluid, a different picture emerges. These less established organizations are often equally interested in both types of question. This presents an opportunity for academics and practitioners to work together on deeper questions regarding the constitution of the policing landscape. Through the lens of Hatch and Schultz’s (2002) model of organizational identity dynamics, this article profiles one such example which revolves around a research collaboration between the Security Industry Authority – the public body tasked with regulating the UK private security industry – and the University of Sheffield.