Affiliations: [a] Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/Free University of
Amsterdam, Department of Public Administration and Organization Sciences, De
Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Tel.: +31 20 5986918;
E-mail: fp.wagenaar@fsw.vu.n | [b] Tias Business School and Tilburg School of Politics
and Public Administration, Tilburg, The Netherlands
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author
Abstract: In a previous article in Information Polity [1] we looked
into the question of whether integration of its information domains is leading
to centralization in the Dutch police system. In this article we attempt to
find out how such integration came about in the first place. Trying to
establish an overall information management in or between organizations can be
viewed as an attempt to create a common pool resource (CPR). Is hierarchy
really the only way to establish such a CPR as, for instance, Davenport appears
to assume? The experience of the Dutch police seems to point in a different
direction. As it happens the 25 regional police forces, and the national police
services have formed a 'Board of Direction' (Regieraad) in which the
Ministry of Justice and the Home Office also partake. These parties are to
decide on the shaping and operating of the police's information systems on the
basis of equality. All evidence seems to point to the fact that this has been
accomplished without making use of hierarchy. If we want to account for the
Dutch police's success in establishing an overall information management
without making use of hierarchy, there are three explanations that stand out in
the available literature. These are Kollock's application of Ostrom's design
principles of communities successful in creating CPRs to electronic
environments, Monge, Fulk and Flanagin's stress on the advantages that fall to
those who found a CPR, and Scharpf's concept of `negotiation in the shadow of
hierarchy'. In this article we try to establish which one of the three holds
good in the case of the Dutch police.
Keywords: information management, police informatization, collective action problem, common pool resource dilemma, public good
