There seems to be no such thing as one single police culture. Depending on organisation, structure and task, culture in the police varies. In this conceptual research, a research model is developed to study impacts of variation in police culture on the extent of intelligence strategy implementation. Strategy implementation is important because failure to carry out strategy can cause lost opportunities and leave police officers reluctant to do strategic planning. Lack of implementation creates problems in maintaining priorities and reaching organisational goals. The strategy execution task is commonly the most complicated and time-consuming part of strategic management. Yet, strategy implementation suffers from a general lack of academic attention. This research paper makes a contribution to police strategy implementation literature by developing a research model to study the extent of intelligence strategy implementation caused by occupational culture in policing.

Strategy implementation suffers from a general lack of academic attention. The need for improved implementation of strategies in law enforcement and policing has been emphasised by both scholars and practitioners. Implementation is important for four reasons. First, the failure to carry out a strategy can cause lost opportunities, duplicated efforts, incompatible organisational units and wasted resources. Second, the extent to which a strategy meets its objectives is determined by implementation. Third, the lack of implementation leaves police officers dissatisfied and reluctant to continue doing strategic planning work. Finally, the lack of implementation creates problems establishing and maintaining priorities in future strategic planning. In this empirical study, implementation of intelligence strategy is studied in a causal relationship with organisation structure and organisation culture. It is found that a knowledge organisation structure has a significant positive influence on the extent of strategy implementation.