The concept of ‘dirty work’ has much potential to offer insights into processes related to the construction of organizational identities and work-group cultures. In this article, I use a social constructionist framework, to argue that ‘dirty workers’ perform their identities in two conceptually distinct contexts: ‘front regions’ and ‘back regions’ (Goffman, 1959), each producing its own subjective challenges. I use a critical discourse analysis to explore how, within the research interview setting, police officers deal with the moral dilemma of their use of coercive authority. I argue that what is designated as ‘dirty’ within any specific role differs according to the perspective of the observer, revealing the boundaries and landscape of different moral and social orders and how these overlap and compete. It is further argued that, within specific interactional contexts, occupational identity comprises a site of contestation for these different moral and social orders. The utility of the dirty work concept is explored in relation to its ability to illuminate the dynamics of ideological reproduction and transformation.

The literature on diversity management has tended to obfuscate some of the theoretical and methodological shortcomings associated with research in this area. Specifically, the literature tends to make a number of rather naïve assumptions about the experiences and aspirations of disadvantaged groups. This paper seeks to problematize the universalist and partisan tendencies that typify much of the diversity literature by focusing on the issue of ‘resistance’. Using a form of discourse analysis informed by Foucauldian principles, the paper explores how ‘resistance’ to diversity initiatives is expressed by both ‘dominant’ and ‘subordinated’ groups in a UK police force. It is argued that ‘resistance’ is better thought of as a discursive resource that can be drawn upon to justify or account for one’s own organizational experiences and, in turn, the need to both justify and account for one’s experiences is located in broader discursive fields that reproduce dominant ideologies of liberal democracies. The theoretical implications of this position are discussed and a case is presented for more critical and theoretical approaches in the diversity management literature.

The police profession is one in which acute stressors are encountered more frequently than in other occupations. Using the personal accounts of 35 police o‰ cers attending an in-house stress counselling clinic, the aim of the present study was to provide a qualitative examination of how the institutional context of policing in‚ uenced the ways in which acute stressors signi ed to individual police o‰ cers experiencing felt distress. Using the framework of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy as an analytical tool, it is argued that beliefs contributing to the experience of felt distress are related to the way in which policing as both an identity and an activity is constructed through the police organizational culture. Not only do these constructions in‚ uence the ways in which o‰ cers perceive themselves and their environments, but they also operate at the collective level to ' normalize' some emotional responses and to 'pathologize' others which, it is argued, could impact upon the outcomes of interventions such as stress counselling.

The police organisation receives much media attention regarding its record on Equal Opportunities. Research suggests that the organisational culture in police organisations plays a major role in impeding the progress of women. Using repertory grid technique, the culture of a police force, conceptualised at the level of performance value judgements or recipe knowledge was investigated. It is argued that rank, rather than gender has the greatest influence on the content of performance value judgements and that this is attributable to the way that hierarchy influences the way in which the grass-roots role is constructed. We argue that women's progression is impeded not because of dominant constructions of the role per se, but by the way such constructions intersect with broader socio-cultural constructions of women's domestic roles.

Organizations operating in pluralistic institutional environments are facing ever greater pressures to adopt and implement policies and practices that have few if any benefits for their core functions. This situation is characterized by Bromley and Powell as reflective of means–ends decoupling. Current theory suggests that this form of decoupling can be difficult to sustain unless the logic of confidence in the policy/practice is maintained, i.e. actors believe that it is useful, relevant and important. In this study, I argue that part-time working in the UK police service illustrates a sustained case of means–ends decoupling in that its official purpose (to retain the skills and experience of (mainly female) police officers) not only appears to have few benefits for the subunits in which it is implemented, but the practice itself is seen to interfere with the achievement of operational goals, generating efficiency gaps. Despite this situation, the logic of confidence in this practice is maintained. Using Merton’s distinction between the manifest and latent functions of a policy, I argue that this situation can be understood by examining how the policy on part-time working functions latently to increase managers’ accountability regarding the accommodation of part-time working. This means that managers are unwilling to refuse requests for part-time working but its manifest function (the retention of skills and experiences) operates to ameliorate efficiency gaps through a process I term ‘institutional satisficing’. Furthermore, the manifest function of part-time working can be used as a rhetorical tool by managers to justify potentially controversial methods of accommodating part-time officers in frontline roles which can result in the serendipitous recoupling of part-time working to its intended purposes.