Organizational structure and systems align different parts of an organization to attain its top performance. The structure of a criminal justice organization impacts the success of such an organization as it tries to execute strategy and objectives. As such, a carefully designed organizational structure forms a basis for running different criminal justice functions and maintaining improvements (Raffaelli et al., 2019). Criminal justice organizations face organizational issues as they try to manage and improve their daily operations. One such organization is the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Description of the Criminal Justice Organization
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the main investigative body of the US Department of Justice which carries out law enforcement and intelligence responsibilities. It is a full member of the country’s Intelligence Community. The FBI is also tasked with protecting American citizens from national security threats, for example, criminal and terrorist activities on American soil. The main priorities of the FBI include protecting civil rights, protecting espionage, fighting transnational crime, violent crime, and white-collar crime, as well as, cyber-criminal activities (Raffaelli et al., 2019).
The FBI conducts professional investigations and collects intelligence to recognize and counter any threat from terrorists, and implements counterterrorism initiatives. It also coordinates other agencies’ counterintelligence work within the country. The FBI protects US critical infrastructure against criminal activities and cyber-attacks. The investigative body locates and apprehends federal law violators in addition to investigating violations of laws. Other functions of the Bureau include implementing quality outreach programs for community partnerships (Raffaelli et al., 2019).
Organizational Issues the Organization is Experiencing
The FBI is facing organizational issues, such as leadership continuity issues, failure to recruit diverse workers with specialized training, lack of quality role specification, and fragmentation of the FBI’s management functions, for example, information technology and human resources. For the FBI to implement management reforms, it needs to address leadership continuity issues due to the period it takes to make major transformation efforts (Berman et al., 2021). The problem emanates from the short tenure leaders have with the Bureau. The issue, further, makes it difficult for leaders to manage the reorganization ripple effect on law enforcement.
Role specification involves hiring the most qualified individuals for a job and assigning the work to the appropriate workers. This issue emanates from lack of thorough interviews on candidates, failure to understand team capabilities. The issue of role specifications is entwined with the Bureau’s failure in recruiting diverse workforce and attracting experienced managers due to the high rate of retirements (Raffaelli et al., 2019). Diverse workers go through lengthy application processes and demanding background checks to get top-secret security clearances. The FBI also faces a fragmentation in its human resource functions, thereby occasioning diluted accountability, miscommunication, and duplication of effort due to its crime-fighting culture that is investigations-oriented (Berman et al., 2021).
Impact of the Organizational Issues and Challenges
Leadership continuity issues impact the Bureau, especially its ability to execute key programs and management functions. The issue, further, affects how leaders implement management reforms and change since transformation efforts take longer than expected. Lack of quality role specification in the Bureau disrupts workflows, hinders communications between agents, and reduces efficiency (Berman et al., 2021). It is also difficult to integrate the Bureau’s management functions and strategic planning.
The FBI’s lack of diverse workforce negatively impacts its trust from minority communities and makes it difficult for the Bureau to understand the real issues affecting the underrepresented populations beyond stereotypes. The fragmentation in FBI’s management functions results in confusion, inefficiency, and lack of accountability, which is coupled with the failure of its comprehensive systems to track and measure agent skills development.
How the Organization Addresses Cultural and Gender Challenges
The FBI has been facing cultural and gender challenges since the days of J. Edgar Hoover, who was opposed to hiring of women as sworn law enforcement officers. Women and minorities have been underrepresented in the Bureau. However, the FBI is committed to hiring talented and committed workforce that reflects the diversity of the American people. As such, the Bureau has mentorship and leadership development programs geared toward making its workforce more diverse (Berman et al., 2021).
The FBI has several committees working and engaging the management to ensure that practices and policies represent everyone in the Bureau. It established a women’s advisory committee to handle issues concerning gender equality, work-life balance, mentoring, and career advancement. The Bureau ensures and promotes equal opportunity for all workers based on merit. The FBI has diversity initiatives that help track and monitor the qualified candidates from minority populations for recruitment and promotion into leadership positions (Glasser, 2016). The organization has organizational practices, processes, and structures, for example, leadership, strategy, and climate that support personnel policies for diversity.
Organizational Behavior Leadership Philosophies and Practices
To mitigate the organizational issues the FBI is facing, the Bureau should apply transformational leadership philosophy, which entails the development of new practices and processes to improve the organization’s success. Leaders should motivate teams through goal-setting, guidance, and inspiration to attract diversity workforce, qualified staff, and solve leadership continuity issues. Transformational leadership would solve role specification issues with managers learning about the interests and skills of team members to assign duties to the most qualified individuals and train agents of the minority populations on how to succeed (Berman et al., 2021).
To address the leadership continuity issue, the FBI should develop a management career track for its agents and develop a pool of managers for recommendations once leadership positions are available. This way the incoming leaders would have grasped the organizational culture to fit in well. The Bureau should use online tools to boost diversity and implement programs to support workers’ entry into leadership positions. It should also integrate its management functions and stress their importance to address the challenge of fragmentation of management functions (Raffaelli et al., 2019). Some functions, such as management and administration could remain under separate executives reporting to senior leaders and have a single executive to oversee the Bureau’s strategic areas.
Conclusion
The FBI has been facing some organizational structure and systems challenges. These include; leadership continuity issues, failure to recruit diverse workers with specialized training, lack of quality role specification, and fragmentation of the FBI’s management functions. Such challenges could be addressed using the apply transformational leadership philosophy.
References
Berman, E. M., Bowman, J. S., West, J. P., & Van Wart, M. R. (2021). Human resource management in public service: Paradoxes, processes, and problems. CQ Press.
Glasser, E. (2016). Voices of the first women leaders in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 635. https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/635
Raffaelli, R., Zuzul, T., Gulati, R., & Rivkin, J. (2019). Transforming the Federal Bureau of Investigation: Outcome and process framing in the context of a strategic change initiative. Working Paper 16-084.
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