Purpose -This paper aims to take stock and to increase understanding of the opportunities and threats for policing in ten European countries in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal (PESTL) environment. Design/methodology/approach -This study is part of the large EU-funded COMPOSITE project into organisational change. A PESTL analysis was executed to produce the environmental scan that will serve as a platform for further research into change management within the police. The findings are based on structured interviews with police officers of 17 different police forces and knowledgeable externals in ten European countries. The sampling strategy was optimized for representativeness under the binding capacity constraints defined by the COMPOSITE research budget. Findings -European police forces face a long list of environmental changes that can be grouped in the five PESTL clusters with a common denominator. There is also quite some overlap as to both the importance and nature of the key PESTL trends across the ten countries, suggesting convergence in Europe.Originality/value -A study of this magnitude has not been seen before in Europe, which brings new insights to the target population of police forces across Europe. Moreover, policing is an interesting field to study from the perspective of organisational change, featuring a high incidence of change in combination with a wide variety of change challenges, such as those related to identity and leadership.

The globalisation of crime means there is an increasingly vital need for effective sharing of knowledge by police organisations across international borders. However, identifying the complexities and challenges of this aspect of international collaboration has been relatively neglected in previous research. The research reported in this paper therefore set out to identify the major barriers and facilitators of international knowledge sharing. Research teams in ten European countries produced ten case studies of knowledge sharing across borders, either involving direct cooperation between police forces in different countries or through international agencies such as CEPOL or INTERPOL. The integrative findings showed that the major influences on knowledge sharing could be theoretically categorised in terms of organisational factors (e.g. technological and staff capabilities), inter-organisational factors (e.g. quality of relationships, shared visions and systems), inter-country factors (e.g. bilateral conventions, legislation) and knowledge characteristics (e.g. clarity, legal sensitivity). Practical implications include standardising technology systems across countries, improving interorganisational trust through exchanges and physical co-working, developing police members' knowledge and skills with regards to collaborative working and creating joint agreements and visions. Research implications highlighted the need to test the findings in non-European contexts and to comparatively focus on specific types of collaboration.

Purpose: Technology is an important driver of organizational change and often strategically used to facilitate adaptations in organizational processes and cultures. While the link between technological and organizational change is widely recognized, the role of macro-context for this link remains undervalued. Based on data from technology implementations in European police forces the paper aims to illustrate the importance of integrating analyses of the macro-context to understand the complexity of technology driven organizational change. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted 56 interviews and five focus groups with police officers from 13 countries on two of the major technology trends in European police forces: automatic number plate recognition systems (ANPR) systems and social media. They further conducted site visits to police forces in The Netherlands and the United Kingdom to observe technology usage first hand. Comparing accounts across countries th ey analyzed how macro-context impacted adoption decisions and implementation processes. In this analysis they concentrated on the five macro-contextual factors in the PESTL framework, i.e. political, economic, social, technological and legal factors. Findings: In analyses of ANPR systems and social media the paper details how the macro-context of police organizations impacted decisions to adopt a technology as well as the intra-organizational alignments of processes and structures. Practical implications: Organizational decision makers and implementers need to be aware not only of the strong agency of technology for organizations' structure and processes, but also of the relevance of the organizational macro-context for the process and impact of technology implementations on the organizational as well as individual level. Originality/value: The paper illustrates the impact of the macro-context of organizations in shaping the link between technological change and organizational change

A scientific framework for this study is the Humanistic Theory of Martial Arts, and the psychology of sport using the concepts of goal, task and success. The problem and aim of this study was an explanation of "perception of success" in groups of adults practising martial arts. Is perception of success influenced by the respondents' social background or the type of martial art practised? Would there be any differences in results depending on their country of origin and residence, and if so, what results? The research was done within the framework of the IMACSSS.1A/2011: "Social determinants of participation in martial arts schools and clubs". The tool was Perception of Success Questionnaire, which was used to survey a number of respondents from the United States, the Czech Republic and Poland, who were selected randomly and participated voluntarily. The statements and calculations have been ranked by more or less contact forms of martial arts. The results obtained in this study indicate a poor relationship between perception of success and the type of fighting style practised and a measurable relationship between the perception of success and social origin. There is a weak relationship in perception of success by respondents from American or European cultures.

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