r Academy of Management Journal

2018, Vol. 61, No. 1, 220–244.

https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.0315

COLLABORATIVE STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT: AN

INTEGRATION BETWEEN THEORIES OF ORGANIZATIONAL
LEGITIMACY AND LEARNING
VINIT M. DESAI
University of Colorado Denver

Organizations often collaborate with stakeholders such as customers, communities, and

other groups to pursue shared goals, and these partnerships are known to affect an
organization’s legitimacy with those groups as well as its access to information from
them. While these concerns could be examined within each of their own independent
literatures, existing theories are ill equipped to handle this process in tandem. Thus,
studying these collaborations provides an opportunity to more broadly explore how
organizations balance knowledge search or exploration efforts with their needs to
manage organizational legitimacy. Accordingly, I suggest that collaboration facilitates
access to external information, and that organizations pursue it when the information is
needed to solve related problems. However, I also argue that collaborations reciprocally
allow stakeholders to more directly scrutinize organizational practices. Thus, I predict
that organizations suppress their use of collaborations to solve problems when their
legitimacy is potentially or already at risk, such as when powerful stakeholders can
hold an organization accountable for inappropriate acts or when some organizational
actions have already been deemed as controversial. I test related predictions on the
community policing efforts of a law enforcement agency panel, finding general support
for several of the study’s predictions.

It is well known that organizations often collaborate
or work directly with external stakeholders to pursue
goals that would otherwise be difficult to achieve in-
ternally. These partnerships come in a wide variety of
forms, ranging from strategic alliances with peer or-
ganizations (Haleblian & Finkelstein, 1999; Sampson,
2005), or joint arrangements with trade associations
and other agencies (Hiatt & Park, 2013; Julian, Ofori-
Dankwa, & Justis, 2008), to collaborative engage-
ments with more distributed groups of stakeholders
such as customers, communities, and other third-
party groups (Estelles-Arolas & Gonzalez-Ladron-de-
Guevara, 2012; Lerner & Tirole, 2002). Of these, the
latter efforts—to engage with broad and dispersed
groups of outsiders—are uniquely interesting, given
their diversity and increasing prevalence in practice.
For instance, organizations may collaborate with
customers and other diverse groups to market and
I am extremely thankful for valuable feedback on this
project received from participants of the 2016 Carnegie
School of Organizational Learning conference. I am also
grateful for invaluable assistance from Shelley Hyland
(U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs,
Bureau of Justice Statistics) for fielding numerous ques-
tions related to the data used in this project.
220
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distribute new products, engage in social media
campaigns or viral marketing efforts, crowdsource for
new ideas or novel information, collectively create or
refine software, manage their reputation among dis-
tributed outsiders, or facilitate access to external re-
sources, as well as for a large variety of other reasons
(e.g., Estelles-Arolas & Gonzalez-Ladron-de-Guevara,
2012; Julian et al., 2008; Lerner & Tirole, 2002).
A commonly studied motive for these forms of col-
laborative engagement involves gaining, maintaining,
or repairing organizational legitimacy (Lamin &
Zaheer, 2012; Oliver, 1991; Suchman, 1995). Here,
“legitimacy” refers to generalized perceptions or as-
sumptions that “the actions of an entity are desirable,
proper, or appropriate within some socially con-
structed system of norms, values, beliefs, and defi-
nitions” (Suchman, 1995: 574). Much research
recognizes that organizations typically depend on
external stakeholder groups for access to vital re-
sources, and that outside observers are more likely
to supply these resources to organizations that ap-
pear legitimate (Crilly, Zollo, & Hansen, 2012;
DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Lamin & Zaheer, 2012).
While a myriad of strategies exist for managing or-
ganizational legitimacy (e.g., Julian et al., 2008; Oliver,
1991; Suchman, 1995), collaborative engagements with
2018
groups such as customers and community organiza-
tions provide greater transparency and allow these
outsiders to more effectively monitor and evaluate
organizational activities, perhaps conferring espe-
cially enduring legitimacy to organizations with so-
cially desirable practices (Hawdon, 2008; Sinha,
Daellenbach, & Bednarek, 2015). Conversely, many
examples exist of organizations with socially un-
desirable practices that attempt to preserve their
legitimacy by concealing those activities from out-
siders, again suggesting the relevance of open
collaboration—or its avoidance—to organizational
legitimacy (Crilly et al., 2012; Meyer & Rowan,
1977; Piazza & Perretti, 2015).
However, notwithstanding the importance of or-
ganizational legitimacy to this process, another mo-
tive may also prompt external collaboration (Roloff,
2008; Roome & Wijen, 2006). Specifically, organi-
zations may collaborate or engage with these exter-
nal groups in order to access previously unavailable
information that is presumably useful for the orga-
nization, such as through crowdsourcing (Estelles-
Arolas & Gonzalez-Ladron-de-Guevara, 2012), open
source development (Lerner & Tirole, 2002), or other
approaches (Morabito, 2010; Roine, Ohinmaa, &
Hailey, 2001). Indeed, a large body of research in
the organizational learning tradition suggests that
organizations pursue external information to refine
their internal routines or procedures, amend ap-
proaches, and expand their repository of knowledge
beyond more localized experiences (e.g., Baum &
Dahlin, 2007; Kim & Miner, 2007; Levitt & March,
1988; March, 1991), and this recognition has infused
work on topics such as organizational search (Cyert &
March, 1963), vicarious learning (Levitt & March,
1988), and exploration (March, 1991). And, although
some research examines collaboration with consol-
idated exchange partners, such as through strategic
alliances or board interlocks (e.g., Rosenkopf &
Almeida, 2003; Sampson, 2005), collaborative en-
gagements with more dispersed groups, such as
customers and communities, involve legitimacy
motives alongside their potential to enhance in-
formation access. Existing theories, which typically
focus independently on either learning (Cyert &
March, 1963; Levitt & March, 1988) or legitimacy
considerations (Oliver, 1991; Suchman, 1995), are ill
equipped to handle these concerns in tandem since
legitimacy considerations may affect or temper
learning efforts.
Thus, I adapt theories of organizational search and
exploration in order to examine these collaborations
and the conditions that prompt organizations to seek
Desai 221
external information through them (e.g., Baum &
Dahlin, 2007; Cyert & March, 1963; Gavetti, Greve,
Levinthal, & Ocasio, 2012). In contrast to existing
conceptualizations of organizational search (Cyert &
March, 1963; Levitt & March, 1988), organizations
that seek new information through these external
collaborations are likely to consider the implications
for organizational legitimacy when forging these
partnerships (Pache & Santos, 2013; Sinha et al.,
2015; Suchman, 1995). This is an important distinc-
tion, as little research on organizational search—and
on organizational learning more generally—examines
the potential risks posed by search or other learning
efforts (Barnett & Hansen, 1996; Yang, Phelps, &
Steensma, 2010), and even less work examines
whether organizations might temper their search ef-
forts based on these risks. Studying collaborative en-
gagement with external stakeholders provides the
opportunity to blend related but typically distinct ar-
guments from research on organizational search and
organizational legitimacy, and to examine whether and
how organizations balance their searches for novel
information with considerations regarding the related
risks that these external searches might pose.
Thus, I predict that external collaborations benefit
organizational search efforts by increasing the orga-
nization’s access to outside knowledge, and I adapt
search theories to suggest that organizations pursue
these collaborations when attempting to solve
problems involving this external information (Baum
& Dahlin, 2007; Cyert & March, 1963; Greve, 1998).
However, in contrast to extent theories, I argue that
this more transparent form of search places organi-
zations at risk of disclosing internal performance
problems, operational challenges, and proprietary
practices, which external stakeholders could then
use to inform their perceptions of the organization’s
legitimacy and appropriateness (Meyer & Rowan,
1977; Suchman, 1995). Therefore, I suggest that or-
ganizations suppress their use of external collabo-
rations to solve problems when their legitimacy is
potentially or already at risk, such as when more
powerful stakeholders can hold an organization di-
rectly accountable for inappropriate acts or when
some of the organization’s actions have already been
deemed as controversial by outside observers
(Hudson, 2008; Mitchell, Agle, & Wood, 1997; Piazza
& Perretti, 2015).
I test related hypotheses on a panel of local law
enforcement agencies across the United States, and I
examine their efforts to engage the citizens they serve
through community policing initiatives (Morabito,
2010; Zhao, Lovrich, & Thurman, 1999). In the law
222 Academy of Management Journal
enforcement context, a primary motivation behind
community policing involves the search for external
information about shared public safety issues and
their solutions (Morabito, 2010). However, these
initiatives can also help to shape external percep-
tions regarding law enforcement agencies, and the
study’s theoretical framework predicts that agencies
with currently or potentially contested legitimacy—
such as those with powerful stakeholders (in this case,
operating through civilian complaint review boards,
or CCRBs, that can hold agencies independently ac-
countable) or controversial practices (as reflected
through complaints about excessive force, among
other attributes)—would be less likely to rely on
community policing as a search tool. The study’s
empirical context is described in more detail below,
following a theoretical discussion of collaborative
engagement.
THEORY AND HYPOTHESES
Collaborative Engagement:
Search and Legitimacy Considerations
Here, “collaborative engagement” refers specifi-
cally to organizational partnerships with dispersed
stakeholder groups, such as customers, communi-
ties, advocacy groups, or other parties, to pursue or
accomplish shared goals. These are distinct from
collaborations or alliances with consolidated ex-
change partners such as peer organizations, suppliers,
distributors, or other similar entities, although orga-
nizations that collaborate with organized represen-
tatives of dispersed stakeholder groups, such as
community organizations and advocacy groups,
would fall under the present scope. These collabo-
rative engagements could be formal or informal; even
when informally governed, though, organizations
that engage collaboratively with stakeholders often
establish supportive internal structures such as cul-
tural norms or incentive schemes that reward em-
ployees for community engagement (Morabito, 2010;
Zhao et al., 1999).
Organizations might collaborate with external
stakeholder groups for a variety of reasons. For in-
stance, these external partnerships could help to re-
duce operational costs or enhance the organization’s
efficiency (Ang & Cummings, 1997; Martinez &
Dacin, 1999), prevent imitation or maintain other
competitive advantages (Montiel, Husted, &
Christmann, 2012), or directly preserve access
to outside resources (Hillman & Keim, 2001;
Julian et al., 2008; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978).
February
However, regardless of the purpose that un-
derlies many of these relationships, research
suggests that outsiders use the partnerships to ob-
serve and evaluate the legitimacy or appropriateness
of organizational actions, since doing so allows them
to hold organizations accountable for acts that have
violated expectations as well as gauge the likelihood
that an organization might act inappropriately in the
future (Mitchell et al., 1997; Suchman, 1995). Fur-
thermore, the relatively close and sustained contact
among participants suggests that collaborative
engagements—again, regardless of their explicit
purpose—are often also rich vehicles for knowledge
exchange, information search, and other organiza-
tional learning efforts (Crilly et al., 2012). These search
and legitimacy considerations are described below.
Collaborative engagement and organizational
search. While organizational learning research is
characterized by many distinct perspectives, a com-
mon theme in this literature is that organizations
learn through their members’ efforts to seek or access
internal and external information or experiences,
and interpret as well as codify lessons from these
experiences into routines or procedures that guide
subsequent action (Levitt & March, 1988). Learning
research recognizes the complexity and importance
of both the knowledge search and codification sub-
processes; for instance, organizations may learn in-
effectively by searching incorrectly (Cyert & March,
1963; Gavetti et al., 2012), or they may misapply
lessons from newly obtained knowledge (Argote &
Miron-Spektor, 2011). Knowledge search, in partic-
ular, often unfolds collaboratively across organiza-
tional boundaries (Lerner & Tirole, 2002; Roine et al.,
2001; Sampson, 2005). Collaborative engagement
holds significant promise as a form of search because
it features close and ongoing contact with outside
stakeholder groups (Crilly et al., 2012), potentially
providing the organization with access to richer in-
formation than that available publicly, through vi-
carious observation, or from other, more general
forms of environmental search (Cyert & March, 1963;
March, 1991).
Collaborative engagement and organizational
legitimacy. Collaborative engagements with external
stakeholders also typically increase the transparency
among parties (Estelles-Arolas & Gonzalez-Ladron-
de-Guevara, 2012; Lerner & Tirole, 2002). Even when
companies attempt to solicit external information
while disclosing as little as possible, at least some
enhanced information about an organization’s plans
or activities often becomes available to engaged
stakeholders. Similarly, these efforts also make it
2018
more difficult for an organization to conceal or dis-
tract attention away from controversial practices, es-
pecially when such collaborations are sustained over
long periods of time (Pache & Santos, 2013; Sinha
et al., 2015). Indeed, Crilly et al. (2012: 1431) suc-
cinctly suggested that close collaboration with exter-
nal stakeholders facilitates outsiders’ “participation
in, and direct observation of, internal operations” as
well as the exchange of private information and re-
duction in information asymmetries. Since this access
allows stakeholders to more directly scrutinize and
evaluate organizational practices, concerns regarding
organizational legitimacy are likely central to the use
of collaborative engagement as a tool for organiza-
tional search.
At organizations that act in accordance with ex-
ternal expectations, collaborative engagement may
succeed as a search tool because it reinforces and
solidifies an organization’s legitimacy with external
parties, who then become more inclined to share
information with the organization (Hawdon, 2008;
Montiel et al., 2012; Suchman, 1995). However, the
greater transparency afforded through these collab-
orations may make it more difficult for organizations
to recover when their legitimacy is potentially or
already at risk, as newly disclosed information might
be interpreted negatively, further threatening the
organization’s legitimacy and access to critical re-
sources (Hudson, 2008; Suchman, 1995). A number
of studies suggest that organizations with contro-
versial practices often attempt to avoid transparency
by concealing their actions, using distracting rheto-
ric, or disengaging from observers (Crilly et al., 2012;
Fiss & Zajac, 2006; Piazza & Perretti, 2015). There-
fore, organizations likely suppress their use of ex-
ternal collaborations for external search purposes
when their legitimacy is potentially or already at
risk, since greater transparency could backfire by
reducing stakeholders’ propensities to share in-
formation with the organization. Related arguments
are formalized further below, following a discussion
of the study’s empirical context.
Context: Community Policing among Law
Enforcement Agencies
This study’s empirical tests examine the commu-
nity policing efforts of a longitudinal panel of
U.S. local law enforcement agencies operating be-
tween 1997 and 2007. Community policing repre-
sents a dramatic shift in the routines and practices
of law enforcement organizations, since agencies
that adopt this model transition from traditional
Desai 223
police-centric enforcement efforts and instead partner
with external stakeholders within the community to
collectively identify and solve shared public safety
problems (Morabito, 2010). Furthermore, involved
stakeholders also gain rich insights into the policies,
practices, and approaches of participating law en-
forcement agencies through close and ongoing contact
with members of those organizations. Accordingly,
law enforcement organizations commonly use com-
munity policing to manage their external legitimacy;
indeed, doing so also facilitates their access to external
information from citizens within their jurisdictions
(Hawdon, 2008; Morabito, 2010; Zhao et al., 1999).
These dual purposes are directly engrained in
community policing through its evolution. In many
agencies, the traditional approach to law enforce-
ment historically emphasized a high degree of police
independence in operational decisions regarding
crime prevention, patrols and investigations, and
arrests and enforcement (Morabito, 2010; Zhao et al.,
1999). Yet, shifting public perceptions regarding
policing, partly stemming from controversial law
enforcement responses to civic unrest during the
1960s and 1970s (Zhao et al., 1999), strained com-
munity relationships and led to the evolution of
community policing during the 1980s and 1990s
(Morabito, 2010). Despite its earlier roots, the ap-
proach flourished during the 1990s and 2000s, fol-
lowing several supportive legal and environmental
changes (Zhao et al., 1999). However, regardless of
its general acceptance and overall proliferation,
community policing was, in practice, far from
widespread in terms of substantive implementa-
tions. Although many agencies enacted a few rela-
tively topical changes or otherwise claimed to follow
a community oriented approach, far fewer law en-
forcement organizations actually met routinely with
distinct stakeholder groups, rewarded officers for
engaging with the community in shared problem-
solving efforts, or made other substantive changes to
support these relationships (Morabito, 2010).
Why did such substantive variation arise across
agencies? Although some answers to this question
have been explored (Hawdon, 2008; Morabito, 2010;
Zhao et al., 1999), a potentially neglected possibility
involves the uncertainties that accompany this and
other forms of collaborative engagement. While law
enforcement agencies can use a community oriented
approach to facilitate their own knowledge search
efforts, close collaborations with external stakeholders
can simultaneously reveal much detail regarding po-
lice practices, technologies, and approaches. Though
these disclosures could enhance public trust and civic
224 Academy of Management Journal
participation in the public safety process (Hawdon,
2008), some uncertainty certainly exists regarding how
external stakeholders may perceive or react to specific
law enforcement approaches, especially when a law
enforcement agency’s external legitimacy is poten-
tially or already at risk. Thus, considerations regarding
the external evaluations of policing practices, and the
resulting effects on organizational legitimacy, may in-
fluence community policing decisions in practice
(Hawdon, 2008). Below, I forward each of the study’s
specific hypotheses.
Hypotheses
As discussed above, collaborative engagement (in
this case, through community policing practices and
initiatives) facilitates the organization’s access to
external information from direct participants, such
as involved individuals and community groups, as
well as from third-party observers who may in-
directly witness increased organizational trans-
parency. This is predicted to occur for two closely
related reasons. First, close collaborations provide
the organization with direct opportunities to request
or obtain information from participants that is rele-
vant to solving particular problems or addressing
specific organizational issues. Second, these rela-
tively transparent arrangements allow participants
as well as third parties to more directly observe the
organization and evaluate the legitimacy or appro-
priateness of its practices—thus increasing their
willingness to share relevant information with the
organization. While organizations whose legitimacy
is potentially or already at risk may eschew these
relationships (as hypothesized further below), orga-
nizations that act in accordance with external expec-
tations likely enter and build further goodwill through
these engagements, facilitating their success.
With specific regard to the law enforcement con-
text, police agencies fundamentally depend on the
public’s trust and cooperation in providing in-
formation about recent or ongoing crimes and
other public safety concerns (Hawdon, 2008; Zhao
et al., 1999), and a number of studies have identi-
fied or alluded to citizens’ reluctance in supplying
this information to agencies with poor legitimacy
or low civic engagement (Kraska & Kappeler, 1997;
McGregor, 2016; Meeks, 2006; Morabito, 2010;
Taylor, Alpert, Kubu, Woods, & Dunham, 2011).
Thus, community policing initiatives likely facilitate
an agency’s access to external information about
public safety concerns within the community,
both from direct participants such as involved
February
individuals and community groups, as well as in-
directly by increasing transparency and legitimacy
with other third-party observers within the agency’s
jurisdiction. Accordingly, I posit the following hy-
pothesis regarding the outcome of collaborative
engagement:
Hypothesis 1. Collaborative engagement will
increase the volume of relevant information re-
ceived from participants and observers.
While many reasons exist for collaborative en-
gagement, the study’s theoretical framework empha-
sizes its relationship with organizational learning,
and specifically its role in providing the organization
with access to new information from external stake-
holders. Learning theory maintains that organizations
search most intensively for new information in re-
sponse to performance problems or other similar is-
sues, since these challenges prompt decision makers
to mobilize resources and actively scan their envi-
ronments for corrective solutions (Baum & Dahlin,
2007; Cyert & March, 1963; Greve, 1998). Collabora-
tive engagement can be thought of as a particularly
interactive form of organizational search, since orga-
nizations engaged in these efforts aim to generate
rich, novel insights from external stakeholder groups
(Crilly et al., 2012).
Learning theory also maintains that organizations
search most actively in the neighborhood or domain
of their performance problems (Cyert & March, 1963;
Greve, 2003), meaning that organizations would be
most prone to collaborate with external stakeholder
groups when problems either involve those groups
or when information held by those groups is seem-
ingly relevant to their resolution. Although organi-
zations may respond to minor problems or small
performance declines by making local procedural
changes or other internal refinements, greater per-
formance downturns or persistent problems typi-
cally lead organizations to consider a broader or
more novel range of solutions (Baum & Dahlin, 2007;
Greve, 1998). Thus, externally focused changes,
such as collaborative engagement with outsiders,
may become more likely when organizations face
increasing problems or continued performance de-
clines in categories of performance that involve
those outside groups.
While various organizational problems exist in the
law enforcement setting, one of the most salient
metrics in this context is the crime rate within a law
enforcement agency’s jurisdiction. While agencies
do not have direct control over these rates, they are
certainly evaluated by communities based on their
2018
abilities to identify and respond to crimes within
their jurisdictions and to generally maintain a safe
environment for citizens. Increases in the crime rate
within an agency’s jurisdiction reflect a clear and
salient organizational problem, with pressure for
resolution often coming from the public, elected of-
ficials, and other external stakeholders. One poten-
tial solution under these circumstances, among
others, involves improving community relation-
ships in order to enhance the agency’s response ef-
forts. Therefore, the crime rate within an agency’s
jurisdiction is an ideal reflection of organizational
problems involving community members and other
external stakeholders within this setting, and
agencies with increasing crime rates are more likely
to explore stakeholder-based options such as com-
munity policing. These arguments lead to the fol-
lowing hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2. Organizational problems in-
volving community members will increase the
use of collaborative engagement.
Although learning theory robustly posits that orga-
nizations respond to performance problems and other
operational challenges by intensifying their search
and knowledge collection efforts (Gavetti et al., 2012;
Greve, 2003), collaborative relationships place stake-
holders in a better position to observe these problems
and gauge the appropriateness of organizations’ re-
sponses (Crilly et al., 2012). Thus, some organizations
may be less likely than others to engage collabora-
tively with outsiders when problems arise.
On the one hand, this transparency likely has little
impact on organizations whose practices already
conform to external expectations, since outsiders’
perceptions of organizational legitimacy might not
be affected through closer collaboration in these
cases. In addition, organizations may also collabo-
rate openly when outsiders have limited power to
impose sanctions on the organization, since stake-
holders would face greater difficulty in holding the
organization accountable for declining legitimacy or
questionable practices in these situations (Chiu &
Sharfman, 2011; Mitchell et al., 1997).
However, conversely, organizations with contro-
versial practices—or those with more powerful
stakeholders—may be more reluctant to use collab-
orative engagement as a form of organizational
search when problems arise or intensify. In these
situations, organizations that collaborate openly
with stakeholders must often share the details of
those problems and expose their planned solutions
to greater external scrutiny (Sutton & Galunic, 1996).
Desai 225
Organizations with controversial practices risk the
possibility that stakeholders may object to their tac-
tics, approach, or plans to resolve the crisis, perhaps
further threatening the organization’s legitimacy and
access to critical resources (Hudson, 2008; Suchman,
1995). Thus, organizational decision makers might
presume that the risks of open collaboration to
their organization’s legitimacy might outweigh any
search-related benefits that could arise through these
partnerships. As a result, controversial practices
likely suppress the direct relationship between
problems and collaborative engagement.
Similarly, organizations with relatively powerful
stakeholders risk the possibility that those outsiders
could impose stronger sanctions on the organization
if inappropriate or unacceptable actions come to
light through close collaborative engagements. Even
when organizations do not engage in inappropriate
practices, greater stakeholder power allows out-
siders to hold the organization accountable if dis-
agreements arise about the organization’s planned
approach to solving particular problems. Thus, or-
ganizational decision makers may again presume
that the risks of collaboration might outweigh its
benefits. Accordingly, stakeholder power also likely
suppresses the direct relationship between problems
and collaborative engagement.
In the law enforcement context, some research
supports the notion that agencies require public trust
to realize benefits from community policing initia-
tives; by extension, agencies whose legitimacy is al-
ready impaired may be more reluctant to seek
solutions through these efforts when problems arise
(Hawdon, 2008; Morabito, 2010; Zhao et al., 1999).
Similarly, agencies may also avoid these initiatives
when powerful stakeholders exist. Although pow-
erful stakeholders could pressure organizations to
engage under some circumstances, such collabora-
tions might be relatively limited or symbolic. In-
stead, organizations with powerful stakeholders may
be less inclined to substantively engage, given that
stakeholders could hold them more accountable for
lapses or more strongly dissent to specific organiza-
tional tactics and approaches (McGregor, 2016;
Morabito, 2010). Collectively, these arguments lead
to the following two hypotheses:
Hypothesis 3. Stakeholder power will reduce the
positive influence of organizational problems
on collaborative engagement.
Hypothesis 4. Controversial practices will re-
duce the positive influence of organizational
problems on collaborative engagement.
226 Academy of Management Journal
METHODS
Setting and Data
The data set used for this study includes in-
formation from a periodic census conducted by the
U.S. Department of Justice, referred to as the Law
Enforcement Management and Administrative Sta-
tistics (LEMAS) survey, that collects information
about the structure and operations of police de-
partments, sheriffs’ departments, and other local law
enforcement organizations with 100 or more sworn
officers. The data are made available through the
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social
Research (e.g., U.S. Department of Justice, 2007). The
LEMAS survey is conducted roughly every three to
four years, and the panel assembled for this study
includes the 1993, 1997, 2000, 2003, and 2007
reporting periods, with observations from the 1993
reporting period absorbed to construct the initial set
of lagged variables. Supplemental data on area crime
rates were also obtained through the Federal Bureau
of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting program
and are available more frequently; thus, the study
incorporates crime data from the year just prior to
each observation.
The unit of analysis is the agency-year, and the full
estimation sample includes a total of 2,380 agency-
year observations (an average of 595 agencies per
year). However, the number of agencies included in
the estimations tends to vary across years. First, a few
agencies entered or exited the data set when they
crossed the reporting threshold of 100 sworn officers
at some point during the study period. Second, a few
other agencies were either created or disbanded
during the study window. Third, although most
variables were available (i.e., collected through the
LEMAS survey) for all of the reporting periods noted
above, two important variables were reported on
a more limited basis. First, the calls for service
measure (described further below) was not collected
at all during the 2007 survey, and was also frequently
missing (reported by some but not all agencies)
during the 2000 period. In the latter case, the missing
values were spread across agencies during the pe-
riod, with no discernable differences in organiza-
tional demographic characteristics among reporters
and non-reporters. In addition, the community po-
licing practices variable (also described further be-
low) was not collected during the 1993 survey. A few
other measures employed in the analyses also have
occasional missing values for some observations.
Collectively, this data structure results in a larger
estimation sample within the study’s later analyses
February
(Tables 3 and 4) as compared with its first analysis
(Table 2). In the first analysis, the community polic-
ing practices variable is used as a lagged predictor
(absorbing the 1997 reporting period, where it was
first collected) and the calls for service measure is
used as an unlagged outcome variable (thus exclud-
ing the 2007 reporting period). This treatment is re-
versed in Tables 3 and 4, where calls for service is
used as a lagged control and community policing
practices as an unlagged outcome variable. As a re-
sult, the analysis in Table 2 is conducted for out-
comes measured in 2000 and 2003, while the
analyses in Tables 3 and 4 use a larger estimation
panel with outcomes measured in 1997, 2000, 2003,
and 2007. For these reasons, the sample size for each
model is reported individually along with results in
the study’s tables.
Measures
Calls for service. This study uses two different
dependent variables to test its respective hypotheses.
The first of these dependent variables is used to test
Hypothesis 1, regarding the volume of information
received from external stakeholders (the second de-
pendent variable is discussed in the next section). In
this context, members of the general public provide
information about crime events, emergencies, and
other service issues directly to law enforcement
agencies through 9-1-1 call systems. The volume of
calls received by an agency through its 9-1-1 system
may reflect a number of factors, with the most obvious
influences being the crime rate and population of
citizens within the agency’s jurisdiction.
However, these and other relevant influences are
directly controlled, as described below. Aside from
these factors, the public’s willingness to use 9-1-1
call systems partly reflects their general trust and
perceptions of law enforcement (e.g., Hawdon, 2008;
Morabito, 2010; Zhao et al., 1999). Indeed, several
studies consistently indicate that a primary reason
behind public reluctance to call 911 is the distrust of
law enforcement within some communities (Kessell,
Alvidrez, McConnell, & Shumway, 2009; Sasson
et al., 2015; Tobin, Davey, & Latkin, 2005). Agencies
that improve community relations through commu-
nity policing practices should experience an increase
in the community’s willingness to use the 9-1-1 call
system. Thus, the calls for service variable measures
the volume of calls received by the agency through its
9-1-1 system.
Community policing practices. The study’s sec-
ond dependent variable tracks each agency’s
2018
collaborative engagement, which translates into
their use of community policing within this par-
ticular setting. While various definitions of com-
munity policing exist, the central elements of this
approach tend to involve agency collaborations
with key stakeholders to identify and solve law
enforcement problems, as reflected through re-
lated changes to organizational procedures such as
assigning patrol officers to specific geographic
areas, training or encouraging officers to collabo-
rate with community members to solve problems,
and including such collaborations in officers’
performance evaluation criteria (Hawdon, 2008;
Morabito, 2010). Accordingly, I track organiza-
tional efforts to collaborate through a variable,
community policing practices, that measures the
number of these procedures (geographic patrols,
formal encouragement of collaboration, and sup-
portive incentive structures) in place at the focal
agency. The variable could take a value from
0 (reflecting no supportive procedures) to 3
(reflecting the full mix of supportive procedures).
This measure is used as a dependent variable when
examining the antecedents of collaborative en-
gagement, and as a predictor variable when ex-
amining its outcome.
Crime rate. As discussed above, the crime rate
within an agency’s jurisdiction reflects organiza-
tional problems involving external stakeholders
within this setting. Accordingly, the crime rate var-
iable tracks the rate of reportable crime events per
person within the reporting agency’s jurisdiction.
Here, reportable crime events refer to the specific
criminal offenses tracked by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting program.
These offenses include violent crimes such as ho-
micide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual as-
sault, as well as property crimes such as burglary,
motor vehicle theft, and larceny. These offenses, in
particular, were selected by the Uniform Crime
Reporting program due to their severity, because
they occur with regularity in all areas of the country,
and since they are most likely to be reported to po-
lice. The variable is missing for a small number of
observations in respect of which the presiding
agency could not be uniquely identified. As noted
above, crime data were available more frequently
than measures from the LEMAS survey; thus, these
data are collected for the year just prior to each focal
observation.
Civilian oversight board. One of the study’s hy-
potheses predicts a moderating effect of stakeholder
power on the direct relationship between organizational
Desai 227
problems and collaborative engagement. Law en-
forcement agencies are subject to varying degrees of
formal and informal external oversight and gover-
nance from policymakers and legislators, judicial
systems, advocacy organizations, and citizens, with
greater governance and oversight leading agencies to
operate less autonomously and therefore signifying
increased stakeholder power.
A particularly important form of external over-
sight within this context involves independent
monitoring by CCRBs, which are typically tasked
with reviewing complaints against the police re-
garding use of force, misconduct, or other procedural
lapses. This form of oversight is especially relevant
to the study’s framework, given that CCRBs are often
composed of local citizens from various stakeholder
groups such as civic organizations, businesses, ad-
vocacy organizations, schools, and other external
communities. Therefore, CCRBs provide a relevant
form of oversight and transparency with members of
the same stakeholder groups that are often involved
in community policing actions, although the specif-
ically involved individuals do not necessarily over-
lap among these distinct efforts.
CCRBs often play a more direct and immediate
oversight role than other entities, such as legal in-
stitutions, since they are able to review and in-
vestigate complaints against police officers that may
not have yet entered (or may never enter) the legal
system. Furthermore, their adoption has historically
been resisted by many law enforcement agencies
over fears regarding the loss of police autonomy
(Bartels & Silverman, 2005; de Guzman & Frank,
2004; McGregor, 2016). Accordingly, stakeholder
power is measured through a dichotomous indicator
(civilian oversight board) that is set to 1 if this form of
external oversight exists at the focal law enforcement
agency, and set to 0 if an external review board does
not exist. The relevant moderating hypothesis is
tested through an interaction between this variable
and the crime rate measure described above.
Controversial practices: Nonlethal patrol gear. I
employed two different variables to separately proxy
for distinct aspects of controversy in this setting.
First, I tracked the use of a specific set of practices
that met with controversy from some stakeholders
during the study period. While this approach bene-
fits by examining formally sanctioned procedures,
the actual controversy surrounding particular prac-
tices likely varies over time and across agencies.
Thus, the second measure, described later, more di-
rectly examines the level of controversy surrounding
particular practices.
228 Academy of Management Journal
A number of activities conducted by some
agencies, such as racial profiling, the use of military-
grade weapons, or other similar tactics, have
attracted controversy (Ajilore, 2015; Campbell &
Campbell, 2016; Meeks, 2006). However, reliable
data are unfortunately unavailable in many of these
cases. Instead, I focussed on another set of contested
practices, given their distinct importance, reliable
measurement, and widespread proliferation. Spe-
cifically, much current and historical research has
noted the controversy surrounding nonlethal and
less-than-lethal law enforcement technologies dur-
ing this study’s analysis period (Adams & Jennison,
2007; Azadani, Tseng, Ermakov, Marcus, & Lee,
2011; Bailey, 1996; Crow & Adrion, 2011; Jauchem,
2015; Lee et al., 2009; MacDonald, Kaminski, &
Smith, 2009; Pidgeon, Bragg, Ball, & Meltzer, 2008).
Perhaps surprisingly, the controversy has persisted,
despite some medical studies reflecting their po-
tential safety (Bozeman et al., 2009; Lee et al., 2009;
MacDonald et al., 2009), as well as anecdotal asser-
tions that the technologies have reduced civilian
fatalities by providing officers with reliable alterna-
tives to lethal force (Brandl & Stroshine, 2012; Sousa,
Ready, & Ault, 2010; Taylor et al., 2011; Taylor &
Woods, 2010).
Yet, the safety of this equipment was often called
into question over the study period (Adams &
Jennison, 2007; Bailey, 1996; Chowaniec, Kobek,
Jablonski, Kabiesz-Neniczka, & Karczewska, 2008;
Mendelson et al., 2010; Pidgeon et al., 2008; Taylor &
Woods, 2010). For instance, some studies refer to the
controversy regarding conductive energy devices
(e.g., Tasers and stun guns) stemming from several
fatalities following their use (Adams & Jennison,
2007; Jauchem, 2015; Lee et al., 2009; Pidgeon et al.,
2008). Similar concerns have also been raised re-
garding other technologies such as tear gas and
pepper sprays (Mendelson et al., 2010; Vilke & Chan,
2007), impact projectiles such as rubber bullets and
bean-bag rounds (MacDonald et al., 2009; Vilke &
Chan, 2007), and neck restraint techniques (Panzar,
2014).
This controversy likely persists for several rea-
sons. First, despite their potential to reduce fatalities,
these technologies may have caused or contributed
to deaths in certain cases (Chowaniec et al., 2008;
Mendelson et al., 2010; Pidgeon et al., 2008). Second,
these deaths may be particularly notable given that
the technologies are intended to avoid such an out-
come (Bailey, 1996; MacDonald et al., 2009; Pidgeon
et al., 2008; Taylor et al., 2011; Vilke & Chan, 2007).
Third, police abuses of the technologies, such as
February
their use on cooperative individuals, have occurred
in some situations (Adams & Jennison, 2007; Sousa
et al., 2010; Vilke & Chan, 2007; Vilke, Johnson,
Castillo, Sloane, & Chan, 2009). Fourth, human rights
groups have periodically issued reports challenging
these practices over the past several decades (Ferdik,
Kaminski, Cooney, & Sevigny, 2014; Sousa et al.,
2010). Collectively, the controversy has led some
departments to avoid using these technologies amid
concerns regarding police–community relations
(Adams & Jennison, 2007: 450).
Thus, the nonlethal patrol gear variable measures
the number of these technologies available for rou-
tine use at the focal agency. The variable specifically
tracks whether the agency formally allows patrol
officers to use conductive energy devices (stun guns
or Tasers), rubber bullets, neck restraints (carotid
holds or choke holds), tear gas, pepper spray, soft
projectiles (e.g., bean bag rounds), or requires that
they wear body armor or other tactical gear on rou-
tine patrols. The variable ranges from 0 (no nonlethal
equipment available for routine patrols) to 7 (all
equipment categories described above are available).
As with the other moderator variable, the respective
hypothesis was tested through an interaction be-
tween this variable and the crime rate variable de-
scribed above.
Controversial practices: Use of force complaints.
The study’s second measure of controversial practices
more directly tracks the number of complaints about
excessive force involving an agency’s officers that are
received by the agency during the year (Bartels &
Silverman, 2005; Crow & Adrion, 2011; de Guzman &
Frank, 2004; Hawdon, 2008; Taylor et al., 2011;
Taylor & Woods, 2010). These complaints can be
initiated by citizens or on their behalf, and they are
typically investigated by the law enforcement agency
or by the CCRB if one exists.
Crucially, the measure does not track legal actions
against departments for excessive force; further-
more, it likely underreports the true rate of excessive
force incidents, given that many citizens may be re-
luctant to file complaints with the presiding law
enforcement agency. However, while the variable is
certainly a poor measure of actual excessive force
incidents, it is likely an appropriate reflection of the
visible public concern surrounding a law enforce-
ment agency’s policing practices. Decision makers in
law enforcement agencies with a higher number of
excessive force complaints can directly infer that
more citizens within their jurisdiction believe offi-
cers have acted inappropriately, whether or not the
underlying complaints are ultimately substantiated
2018
(Crow & Adrion, 2011; Taylor et al., 2011). Thus,
this is an important indicator regarding the ex-
tent of controversy that decision makers believe
their agencies likely face among members of the
community.
Accordingly, I constructed a use of force com-
plaints variable that tracks the number of these ex-
cessive force complaints that were reported to the
focal agency during the year. Unfortunately, this in-
formation was only requested by the underlying law
enforcement agency survey for two of the survey
administration periods (2003 and 2007) rather than
for all surveys over this study’s entire window. In
each case, the survey requested use of force in-
formation for the prior year, although other survey
metrics were requested for the current survey ad-
ministration year. So, for instance, the 2007 survey
requested the number of excessive force complaints
from 2006, but tracked all other agency data in 2007
(and the 2003 survey uses the same collection
structure). While the reason for this unique approach
with the focal variable is unknown, the current study
benefitted through this structure by incorporating
use of force data for the year immediately preceding
each available observation. Thus, 2006 force com-
plaint data were used to predict 2007 outcomes, and
2002 force complaint data were used to predict 2003
outcomes. Finally, as in the other cases, the re-
spective moderating hypothesis was tested through
an interaction between this variable and the crime
rate variable described above.
Control variables. I controlled for the scope of an
agency’s services through an organizational units
variable that counts the number of distinct special-
ized units (such as units for domestic violence, drug
education, juvenile crimes, and other specific areas)
operated by the agency. To more directly address the
effects of agency size, I controlled for the agency’s
operating expenses (logged to reduce skewness).
Similarly, I also controlled for the agency’s volume of
calls for service (again, logged to reduce skewness) in
the analyses reported in Tables 3 and 4, although the
control is omitted in Table 2 in which calls for service
is used as an outcome measure.
I also separately controlled for the number (in
thousands) of full-time sworn officers employed by
the agency, as well as the number of hours of class-
room and field training, respectively, required by the
agency for its new officer candidates. I also included
a dichotomous indicator that was set to 1 if collective
bargaining was authorized for the agency’s officers.
To address the effects of diversity on community
policing and other law enforcement practices, I
Desai 229
separately controlled for the percent of female offi-
cers and percent of nonwhite officers employed by
the agency. Similarly, I controlled for the percent of
female residents and percent of nonwhite residents
within the focal agency’s county using demographic
data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s intercensal
county population estimates. I also controlled for the
population of citizens (in millions) within that geo-
graphic area. Finally, I included year (i.e., period)
effects in all models to address unobserved differ-
ences affecting all agencies over time. All control and
predictor variables were lagged, as described above,
to reduce the possibility of reverse causality.
Analysis
The study’s first dependent variable (calls for
service) is bounded on its lower end by 0; thus, I used
random-effects Tobit regression for the models re-
ported in Table 2. The second dependent variable,
community policing practices, is an ordinal variable
reflecting ordered categories (i.e., the number of
relevant practices). Given this structure, ordered lo-
gistic regression is ideal (Cameron & Trivedi, 1998;
Wooldridge, 2002), and all relevant models were
estimated using random-effects ordered logistic re-
gression with robust standard errors (through the
xtologit command in Stata/SE version 13).
Note, however, that ordered logistic estimation
places a restrictive assumption on the data by pre-
suming that any given shift in a predictor must have
the same impact across the dependent variable’s
entire range. To test this assumption, Brant tests were
performed following each of the regressions in-
volving this outcome variable (Williams, 2006). This
test determines whether the proportional odds as-
sumption, as it is referred to, has been violated
within a given ordered logistic regression model. A
review of test results following each regression
model indicated that regressions estimating use of
force (those displayed in Table 4) uniformly do not
violate the proportional odds assumption. However,
models estimating the other moderators (displayed
in Table 3) do tend to violate the assumption.
This condition suggests that ordered logistic esti-
mation, which assumes that predictors lead to simi-
lar shifts across various categories of the outcome
variable, might discard some potentially pertinent
information regarding differences among these cat-
egories. To determine whether this influences any of
the relevant hypothesis tests, affected models (those
displayed in Table 3) were replicated using gener-
alized ordered logistic regression, which relaxes the
230 Academy of Management Journal
proportional odds assumption (see Williams, 2006).
Results were similar across these approaches. Given
this similarity, and the fact that ordered logistic re-
gression estimates can be presented more parsimo-
niously, final study models use ordered logistic
estimation rather than its generalized counterpart.
Finally, as noted above, data on use of force com-
plaints were only available for two of the study’s
observation periods. Accordingly, including this
variable or its interaction within models estimating
the other hypothesized predictors resulted in the loss
of more than half of the study’s observations, risking
the possibility that a significant amount of relevant
information was being discarded by the study’s other
tests. Thus, I separately tested the moderating effect
of use of force complaints on community policing
outcomes in its own set of models (reported in
Table 4), while the other predictors of community
policing outcomes are instead nested in the distinct
models reported through Table 3.
RESULTS
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics and pair-
wise correlations among the study’s variables. High
positive correlations exist between the control for
full-time sworn officers and the variables tracking
calls for service (r 5 0.79) or use of force complaints
(r 5 0.86). To determine whether these correlations
influence estimation results, the control for full-time
officers was omitted from preliminary models, with
similar results obtained. Given its conceptual im-
portance, the control was retained in final analyses.
Table 2 displays models estimating the calls for
service outcome variable. Model 1 includes only
controls. Model 2 adds the community policing
practices variable (categorically, with 0 practices as
the omitted level). The variable’s coefficient estimate
is positive and significant for agencies that employ
two out of the three community policing practices,
while the coefficient estimate is not significant (at
the p , .05 level) for agencies that either employ only
one, or all three, community policing practices.
However, 911 calls are likely influenced by the type of
crime rather than (or in addition to) its overall rate. For
instance, citizens may be more likely to initiate calls
involving serious or violent incidents rather than
for property crimes. Thus, Model 3 in Table 2 de-
composes the overall crime rate control into two
separate controls. The first measure controls for the
rate of reportable violent crimes within the focal
agency’s jurisdiction (these include homicides, rob-
beries, aggravated assaults, and sexual assaults), while
February
the second measure controls for the rate of reportable
property crimes (which include burglaries, motor ve-
hicle thefts, and larceny). In this model, the coefficient
estimates for the community policing practices vari-
able are positive and significant for agencies that em-
ploy any one or two practices, although the coefficient
estimate is only significant at the p , .10 level for
agencies that employ all three practices.
Recall that Hypothesis 1 predicted that collabora-
tive engagement would increase the volume of in-
formation received from external stakeholders.
Given that the models displayed in Table 2 rely on
a nonlinear estimator, marginal effects must be ex-
amined in order to infer support for this hypothesis
(Greene, 2010; Hoetker, 2007; Karaca-Mandic,
Norton, & Dowd, 2012). For these models, marginal
effects plots corresponded directly to the results
displayed in these tables, with the sign and signifi-
cance of effects remaining consistent over the range
of plotted values. For brevity, these plots are not
presented here, although marginal effects plots from
the models in Tables 3 and 4 are displayed and
interpreted, given that the latter plots do affect the
interpretation of results from the corresponding
models. Collectively, the results from Table 2 and
associated marginal effects provide support for Hy-
pothesis 1 for agencies that employ either one or two
community policing practices, although the hy-
pothesis is not supported for agencies that employ all
three practices in combination.
Tables 3 and 4 present models estimating the
number of community policing practices employed
by a focal agency. Models in Table 3 respectively
estimate the moderating effects of civilian oversight
board and nonlethal patrol gear, while the moder-
ating effect of use of force complaints is separately
estimated in Table 4 due to its more restricted
availability, as described above. Turning to Table 3,
Model 1 includes only controls. Model 2 adds the
main effect of crime rate. The coefficient estimate of
this variable is positive and significant in this and
later models (as well as in the models within Table 4).
This is consistent with Hypothesis 2, which pre-
dicted that problems would increase an organiza-
tion’s use of collaborative engagement. However,
again, examinations of marginal effects are required
to infer support for the hypotheses tested through
these models (Greene, 2010; Hoetker, 2007; Karaca-
Mandic et al., 2012). I follow this approach further
below, after discussing the study’s remaining esti-
mation results.
Model 3 in Table 3 introduces the main effect of
civilian oversight board, and Model 4 adds its
2018 Desai 231

TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
Variable Obs. Mean SD Min. Max. 1 2 3 4

1. Calls for service (000s) 1,088 306.32 716.06 0.00 11500

2. Community policing practices 2,380 1.65 1.03 0.00 3.00 0.12*
3. Crime rate (per capita) 2,030 0.05 0.03 0.00 0.26 0.17* 0.10*
4. Civilian oversight board (indicator) 2,195 0.14 0.35 0.00 1.00 0.21* 0.09* 0.20*
5. Nonlethal patrol gear 2,194 2.62 1.46 0.00 7.00 0.15* 0.13* 20.10* 0.05*
6. Use of force complaints 973 36.53 271.20 0.00 7663.00 0.60* 0.00 0.01 0.14*
7. Organizational units 2,380 7.49 3.44 0.00 11.00 0.14* 0.17* 0.02 0.09*
8. Operating expenses (logged) 2,380 3.13 0.99 0.99 8.20 0.59* 0.11* 20.02 0.25*
10. Full-time sworn officers (000s) 2,380 0.50 1.52 0.10 38.33 0.79* 0.05* 0.02 0.21*
11. Classroom training hours 2,380 0.64 0.28 0.00 3.60 0.21* 0.06* 0.03 0.13*
12. Field training hours 2,380 0.47 0.33 0.00 3.52 0.02 0.15* 0.09* 0.04*
13. Collective bargaining (indicator) 2,380 0.61 0.49 0.00 1.00 0.06* 0.05* 0.00 0.08*
14. % Nonwhite 2,380 0.18 0.16 0.00 1.00 0.14* 0.00 0.21* 0.19*
15. % Female 2,380 0.11 0.06 0.00 0.43 0.09* 20.04 20.07* 0.11*
16. Area % nonwhite 2,380 0.20 0.14 0.01 0.79 0.13* 20.07* 0.20* 0.09*
17. Area % female 2,380 0.51 0.01 0.45 0.55 0.01 20.14* 0.20* 0.00
18. Area population (millions) 2,380 0.91 1.56 0.01 9.77 0.13* 0.10* 20.06* 0.09*
19. Year (categorical) 2,380 2001.67 4.06 1997.00 2007.00 0.03 0.01 20.17* 0.02

interaction with crime rate. The coefficient estimate
of this interaction term is negative and significant.
This is consistent with Hypothesis 3, which pre-
dicted that stakeholder power would reduce the
positive influence of organizational problems on
collaborative engagement. Support for this hypoth-
esis is evaluated further below using marginal effect
plots from this model. Model 5 removes the prior
terms and adds the main effect of nonlethal patrol
gear, and the interaction with this term is introduced
in Model 6. The coefficient estimate of that in-
teraction term is not significant in this model. Hy-
pothesis 4 predicted that controversial practices
would reduce the direct effect of organizational
problems on collaborative engagement, with non-
lethal patrol gear being one of the study’s two mea-
sures of controversy. Although the coefficient
estimate on this interaction term is not significant,
this hypothesis is also evaluated using marginal ef-
fects further below. Finally, Model 7 includes all
prior variables and their respective interactions, and
the results are similar to those in prior models.
Table 4 presents models estimating the moderat-
ing effect of use of force complaints. Again, Model 1
includes only controls, and Model 2 adds the crime
rate variable. As before, the coefficient estimate of
this variable is positive and significant in this and
later models. Model 3 introduces the use of force
complaints measure, and Model 4 incorporates
its interaction term. In contrast with results using
the other measure of controversial practices, the
coefficient estimate of this interaction term is nega-
tive and significant. Although this is consistent with
Hypothesis 4, marginal effects must be evaluated in
this and the other cases described above.
Marginal Effects
Marginal effects for ordered choice models must
be plotted and evaluated separately for each outcome
category aside from the base outcome (in this case,
a value of 0 for the dependent variable). Thus, each
relevant model typically yields three corresponding
figures. The first figure in each case plots the mar-
ginal effect of a one-unit change in the relevant co-
variate on a value of one for the community policing
outcome variable, the second figure plots the mar-
ginal effect on a value of two, and the third figure
plots the marginal effect on the highest value of three
community policing practices. The plots display
whether the confidence interval around a predicted
effect line crosses 0 along some or all of its length. For
values in respect of which the confidence interval is
above 0, an increase in the covariate appears to raise
the outcome’s likelihood. Conversely, when the
confidence interval is below 0, an increase in the
covariate appears to reduce the likelihood of that
particular outcome.
In each of the relevant figures, I plotted a range of
values from one standard deviation below to one
standard deviation above each predictor’s (or mod-
erator’s) mean, unless the relevant variable was
232 Academy of Management Journal February

TABLE 1
(Continued)
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

0.00
0.31* 0.04
0.23* 0.28* 0.23*
0.06* 0.86* 0.07* 0.54*
0.15* 0.10* 0.27* 0.41* 0.17*
0.21* 0.00 0.18* 0.12* 20.03 0.15*
0.05* 0.04 0.06* 0.14* 0.07* 0.20* 0.05*
0.05* 0.12* 0.04 0.23* 0.16* 0.10* 20.01 20.01
0.07* 0.08* 0.03 0.15* 0.11* 20.17* 20.08* 20.20* 0.27*
20.03 0.08* 0.01 0.17* 0.13* 0.07* 20.04* 20.16* 0.47* 0.18*
20.26* 0.06* 20.09* 20.09* 0.06* 20.08* 20.14* 20.02 0.06* 0.01 0.28*
0.19* 0.06 0.08* 0.20* 0.16* 0.13* 0.11* 0.19* 0.17* 20.06* 0.11* 20.15*
0.38* 0.01 0.56* 0.19* 0.00 0.30* 0.15* 0.00 0.04 0.05* 0.08* 20.10* 0.00

Notes: Pairwise correlations.

*Significant at the p , .05 level

dichotomous or truncated within that range. Figures
1a, 1b, and 1c use information from Model 2 in
Table 3 to plot the main effect of crime rate on the use
of one community policing practice, two practices,
or three practices, respectively. Recall that Hypoth-
esis 2 predicted that organizational problems (in this
case, the crime rate) would increase the use of col-
laborative engagement. Figure 1a plots the marginal
effect of crime rate, from one standard deviation be-
low its mean to one standard deviation above it, on
the likelihood of using one community policing
practice. The confidence interval around the pre-
dicted marginal effect (represented by the gray band)
is consistently below 0, indicating that a one-unit
increase for any crime rate values within this range
will uniformly reduce—rather than increase—the
likelihood that an agency employs one community
policing practice in isolation.
Figure 1b plots the effect on using two practices,
showing that the marginal effect of crime rate turns
positive and significant as the variable increases in
value around and above 0.04. Finally, Figure 1c
shows that the marginal effect of crime rate on the
use of all three practices is consistently positive over
the entire plotted range. Collectively, the results
from these figures display an interesting and com-
plex pattern of partial support for Hypothesis 2,
whereby increases in the crime rate tend to raise an
agency’s likelihood of employing all three practices
in tandem, and increases over most of the variable’s
range also tend to raise the likelihood of using two
out of the three practices. However, the hypothesis
does not appear supported in the case of using only
one out of the three practices—to the contrary, in-
creases in the crime rate tend to make agencies less
likely to use only one practice in isolation.
Figures 2a, 2b, and 2c examine the moderating
effect of civilian oversight board from Model 4 in
Table 3. The first figure plots the moderating effect
on the use of one community policing practice in
isolation. Now, the solid gray band around the
dashed line displays the marginal effect (and confi-
dence interval) of crime rate when the moderator is at
its lower value (in this case, a value of 0 reflecting
that no civilian board exists). In addition, a new
dotted black pattern has been added; in each figure
where this pattern appears, the pattern displays the
marginal effect (and confidence interval) of crime
rate when the relevant moderator is at its higher
value (here, a value of 1 reflecting that a civilian
board exists). The dotted line through the middle of
this new transparent area shows the predicted mar-
ginal effect, while the top and bottom dotted lines
show the confidence interval around this prediction.
Hypothesis 3 predicted that stakeholder power
would reduce the positive influence of problems on
collaboration. In Figure 2a, the marginal effect of
crime rate when no civilian board exists (i.e., low
2018 Desai 233

TABLE 2
Tobit Regression Models of Calls for Service (in 000s)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Community policing practices 5 1a 55.821† 57.612*

(29.261) (29.262)
Community policing practices 5 2a 65.161* 66.549*
(30.041) (30.028)
Community policing practices 5 3a 53.243† 56.199†
(31.269) (31.289)
Crime rate 0.014*** 0.014***
(0.003) (0.003)
Crime rate: Violent 0.060*
(0.027)
Crime rate: Property 0.008†
(0.005)
Organizational units 20.402*** 18.539*** 18.352***
(3.816) (3.944) (3.943)
Operating expenses 140.601*** 139.811*** 137.986***
(11.732) (11.736) (11.762)
Full-time sworn officers 284.337*** 284.268*** 283.934***
(5.962) (5.954) (5.947)
Classroom training hours 62.863† 58.742† 57.769
(35.320) (35.517) (35.490)
Field training hours 74.641** 72.132** 74.277**
(25.204) (25.249) (25.255)
Collective bargaining 241.707* 243.108* 246.591**
(17.741) (17.733) (17.817)
% Nonwhite 258.067 259.308 276.367
(58.026) (58.081) (58.827)
% Female 2210.575 2195.307 2210.984
(144.181) (144.292) (144.398)
Area % nonwhite 241.028 233.244 234.623
(71.843) (71.927) (71.779)
Area % female 2153.743 292.484 2291.897
(872.938) (875.648) (881.630)
Area population 211.423* 210.402† 210.587†
(5.729) (5.757) (5.744)
Model N 946 946 946
F test of period effects 25.260*** 19.510*** 18.910***

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses.

a
Community policing practice 5 0 is used as baseline (omitted) category.
†
p , .10
* p , .05
** p , .01
*** p , .001 (two-tailed)

stakeholder power) is uniformly negative (the upper
bound of the confidence interval, reflected through
the filled-in gray area, is always negative), and the
marginal effect when a board exists (i.e., high power)
is not necessarily lower (the dotted black lines ap-
pear higher, although partially overlapping). This
pattern indicates that organizational problems (as
measured here through crime rates) generally do
not exert a positive influence on this outcome, and
that stakeholder power does not appear to reduce
this direct influence. Accordingly, no support for
Hypothesis 3 is obtained with respect to using one
practice in isolation.
Figure 2b plots the relevant marginal effects on
using two out of the three practices. Here, the mar-
ginal effect of crime rate when no board exists (the
solid gray area) is positive and significant across its
range. When a board does exist, the marginal effect of
crime rate (the unfilled area bounded by dotted black
lines) generally appears lower, although its upper
confidence interval overlaps with 0 as well as the
other predicted range. This pattern requires some
234 Academy of Management Journal February

TABLE 3
Random-Effects Ordered Logistic Regression Models of Community Policing Practices
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7

Crime rate 4.388* 4.623* 6.001** 4.779* 4.980* 6.309**

(1.995) (2.134) (2.178) (2.114) (2.377) (2.408)
Civilian oversight board 0.065 0.722† 0.722
(0.185) (0.374) (0.374)
Crime rate 3 Civilian board 211.579* 211.571*
(5.719) (5.731)
Nonlethal patrol gear 0.039 0.039 0.039
(0.044) (0.044) (0.044)
Crime rate 3 Nonleth. gear 0.254 0.325
(1.244) (1.228)
Organizational units 0.134*** 0.116*** 0.136*** 0.137*** 0.133*** 0.133*** 0.136***
(0.022) (0.026) (0.029) (0.029) (0.029) (0.029) (0.029)
Operating expenses 20.090 20.010 0.008 0.025 0.011 0.012 0.022
(0.081) (0.098) (0.102) (0.102) (0.101) (0.101) (0.102)
Calls for service 0.328*** 0.353*** 0.334*** 0.337*** 0.331*** 0.331*** 0.334***
(0.051) (0.061) (0.063) (0.063) (0.063) (0.063) (0.063)
Full-time sworn officers 0.008 20.001 20.005 20.014 20.004 20.004 20.014
(0.029) (0.026) (0.027) (0.027) (0.027) (0.027) (0.027)
Classroom training hours 20.221 0.058 0.063 0.081 0.083 0.083 0.089
(0.203) (0.231) (0.238) (0.237) (0.238) (0.238) (0.238)
Field training hours 0.553*** 0.611*** 0.674*** 0.674*** 0.655*** 0.654*** 0.653***
(0.147) (0.167) (0.180) (0.180) (0.181) (0.181) (0.181)
Collective bargaining 0.026 20.112 20.109 20.103 20.105 20.105 20.107
(0.118) (0.136) (0.146) (0.145) (0.145) (0.144) (0.145)
% Nonwhite 0.063 20.384 20.440 20.443 20.422 20.422 20.440
(0.358) (0.403) (0.452) (0.449) (0.448) (0.448) (0.446)
% Female 21.470 22.095* 21.867† 21.800† 21.875† 21.882† 21.841†
(0.911) (1.041) (1.095) (1.091) (1.091) (1.091) (1.090)
Area % nonwhite 20.864† 21.121* 21.097† 21.079† 21.078† 21.081† 21.070†
(0.466) (0.515) (0.561) (0.559) (0.554) (0.555) (0.555)
Area % female 221.623*** 224.008*** 224.541** 224.225** 223.694** 223.682** 223.318**
(5.862) (6.499) (7.106) (7.084) (7.136) (7.138) (7.138)
Area population 0.099† 0.085 0.082 0.077 0.075 0.075 0.071
(0.051) (0.057) (0.058) (0.058) (0.058) (0.058) (0.058)
Model N 2,380 2,030 1,872 1,872 1,872 1,872 1,871
F test of period effects 46.530*** 33.770*** 36.270*** 37.240*** 37.190*** 37.110*** 37.490***

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses.

†
p , .10
* p , .05
** p , .01
*** p , .001 (two-tailed)

explanation and supplemental analysis, as it can be
difficult to interpret. A common assumption might
be that the two effects (crime rate with no board, and
crime rate with board) are not statistically distin-
guishable because their confidence intervals over-
lap. However, the confidence intervals plotted here
reflect tests of the predicted marginal effects with
respect to 0 (i.e., no effect) rather than tests of
whether each prediction differs from the other. As
a result, no useful information is provided by ex-
amining whether confidence intervals overlap with
each other in this figure.
What can be inferred from Figure 2b, first, is that
the effect of crime rate on the relevant outcome is
uniformly positive when no civilian board exists,
and, second, that the effect becomes indistinguish-
able from 0 when a board does exist. There are two
different explanations for this pattern. First, the
crime rate slope (i.e., the marginal effect of crime rate
on the outcome) is positive when no board exists, but
this slope is reduced when a board exists—in fact, be-
coming indistinguishable from 0. This is consistent
with the moderating effect predicted in Hypothesis 3.
However, alternatively, the pattern could arise because
2018 Desai 235

TABLE 4
Random-Effects Ordered Logistic Regression Models of Community Policing Practicesa
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Crime rate 10.650** 10.595** 11.898**

(3.872) (3.879) (3.981)
Use of force complaints 0.000 0.001
(0.001) (0.001)
Crime rate 3 Force complaints 20.050*
(0.024)
Civilian oversight board 0.556† 0.401 0.402 0.445
(0.286) (0.292) (0.292) (0.297)
Nonlethal patrol gear 0.051 0.063 0.064 0.063
(0.070) (0.070) (0.070) (0.070)
Organizational units 0.309*** 0.293*** 0.294*** 0.292***
(0.065) (0.065) (0.065) (0.066)
Operating expenses 0.151 0.250 0.230 0.291†
(0.151) (0.154) (0.164) (0.171)
Calls for service 0.148 0.064 0.061 0.074
(0.099) (0.102) (0.102) (0.103)
Full-time sworn officers 20.068* 20.063* 0.007 20.105
(0.033) (0.031) (0.188) (0.200)
Classroom training hours 0.320 0.332 0.334 0.334
(0.447) (0.450) (0.451) (0.449)
Field training hours 0.938** 0.809** 0.830** 0.806*
(0.299) (0.305) (0.314) (0.315)
Collective bargaining 20.388† 20.430† 20.429† 20.421†
(0.227) (0.227) (0.227) (0.227)
% Nonwhite 20.285 20.613 20.603 20.550
(0.662) (0.679) (0.682) (0.688)
% Female 22.571 22.409 22.479 22.375
(2.083) (2.073) (2.088) (2.098)
Area % nonwhite 20.571 20.895 20.893 20.780
(0.897) (0.896) (0.898) (0.915)
Area % female 218.690 221.194† 221.357† 220.805†
(11.790) (11.689) (11.726) (11.752)
Area population 0.096 0.113 0.108 0.110
(0.079) (0.080) (0.081) (0.082)
Model N 877 877 877 877
F test of period effects 12.360*** 10.750** 10.650** 10.800**

a
Standard errors in parentheses.
†
p , .10
* p , .05
** p , .01
*** p , .001 (two-tailed)

of insufficient statistical power; the prediction
when a board exists might appear closer to 0 be-
cause its confidence interval has expanded to in-
clude 0, not necessarily because it is statistically
distinct from the originally predicted effect without
a board. Thus, a more careful test would involve
determining whether the moderation itself is sta-
tistically significant.
This can be accomplished through testing the con-
trasts of these predicted marginal effects (using the
“contrast” option of the margins command in Stata/SE
13). Stated briefly, the tests evaluate whether there is
a significant difference (p , .05, x2, 1 df) between the
marginal effect of crime rate (at each of the values
plotted in this figure) when the moderator is at its low
plotted value (i.e., no board) versus when it is at the
high plotted value (i.e., board exists). Results of the
tests can be graphed to facilitate their interpretation.
In the resulting figure, a confidence interval that does
not overlap with 0 indicates that the moderating effect
is statistically significant at the relevant values of the
crime rate variable. Figure 2b(i) (notice the “i” suffix)
plots the contrasts of marginal effects for Figure 2b. As
shown in the figure, these contrasts are statistically
236 Academy of Management Journal February

FIGURE 1
Main Effect of Crime Rate (Table 3, Model 2)

A B
Avg. marginal effect on community policing

Avg. marginal effect on community policing

0

.6
–.5

.4
–1

.2
–1.5

0
.02 .04 .06 .08 .02 .04 .06 .08
Crime rate Crime rate
Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 1. Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 2.

C
Avg. marginal effect on community policing
1.5
1
.5
0

.02 .04 .06 .08

Crime rate
Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 3.

significant for most values of crime rate (below significant over roughly half of the plotted range (for
roughly 0.06). Combined with the information crime rate values above 0.05). Again, this pattern of
from Figure 2b, this series of findings suggests results is consistent with Hypothesis 3, for those
that the positive effect of crime rate (on employ- values of crime rate that achieve significance as
ing two out of three practices) is moderated shown in the figure. To summarize, then, Hypothesis
by board existence over much of its range. 3 is not supported in the domain of using one practice
This pattern of results is directly consistent with in isolation, but it does receive support in many cases
Hypothesis 3. with respect to using two or all three practices in
Moving on, Figure 2c plots the relevant effects on combination.
using all three practices. Here, the marginal effect of Figures 3a, 3b, and 3c examine the moderating
crime rate is positive when no board exists, and ap- effect of nonlethal patrol gear from Model 6 in
pears reduced when a board does exist. A test of Table 3. Here, this measure of controversy does not
contrasts, displayed in the supplemental Figure 2c appear to moderate the direct influence of crime
(i), reveals that this moderating effect is statistically rate—the predicted marginal effects of crime rate
2018 Desai 237

FIGURE 2
A, B and C, Moderating Effect of Civilian Board (Table 3, Model 4). Bi and Ci, Contrasts of Civilian Board
Moderation (Table 3, Model 4)

A B C

ffect on community policing

ffect on community policing

f ct on community policing
1

2
2

1
.5
1

–3 –2 –1 0
0
0

–.5

Avg. marginal effe

–1

Avg. marginal eff

Avg. marginal eff

–1
–2

.02 .04 .06 .08 .02 .04 .06 .08 .02 .04 .06 .08
Crime rate Crime rate Crime rate
civil. board = 0 civil. board = 1 civil. board = 0 civil. board = 1 civil. board = 0 civil. board = 1

Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 1. Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 2. Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 3.

Bi Ci
1.5
Contrast of marginal effects from

Contrast of marginal effects from

low to high moderator values

4
low to high moderator values
1

3
.5

1 2
0

0
–.5

.02 .04 .06 .08 .02 .04 .06 .08

Crime rate Crime rate
Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 2. Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 3.

(more specifically, their confidence intervals) Hypothesis 4, given that the effect of crime rate is
typically overlap with 0 at low as well as high negative (rather than positive) and does not appear to
values of the moderator in each of these figures. become less positive as the moderator increases.
Separate tests of contrasts (not displayed) did not re- Figure 4b plots the effects on using two out of three
veal significant differences among the relevant effects practices. Here, the predicted marginal effect of
in any of these cases. Thus, no support for Hypothesis crime rate at the low moderator value appears posi-
4 is obtained through any results using this measure of tive over much of its range (below roughly 0.06), and
controversy. the marginal effect at the high moderator value ap-
Figures 4a, 4b, and 4c use the alternative use of pears indistinguishable from 0. Again, this pattern
force complaints measure, plotting the results from requires supplemental analyses of contrasts, which
Model 4 in Table 4. As before, the first of these figures appear in Figure 4b(i). As seen in the supplemental
(Figure 4a) plots the predicted marginal effects on figure, the moderating effect achieves significance
using one out of the three community policing only at low levels of crime rate (below roughly 0.03).
practices. The marginal effect of crime rate when the Thus, while some support for Hypothesis 4 can be
moderator is at its lower bound (0 force complaints) inferred with respect to using two out of three prac-
is negative, and its confidence interval does not tices, this support is extremely limited in scope.
overlap with 0, indicating that increases in the crime Finally, Figure 4c plots the predicted marginal
rate will suppress (rather than raise) the likelihood of effects on using all three practices. Here, the pre-
using one practice in isolation when there are no dicted effect of crime rate at the low moderator value
complaints. The marginal effect of crime rate when the is uniformly positive at all plotted values, while the
moderator takes a value of one standard deviation effect becomes indistinguishable from 0 at the high
above its mean (307.73 force complaints) appears moderator value. Figure 4c(i) displays the results of
higher, with its confidence interval spanning 0. This supplemental contrast tests in this case, which show
pattern of results does not provide support for that the moderating effect achieves acceptable
238 Academy of Management Journal February

FIGURE 3
Moderating Effect of Nonlethal Gear (Table 3, Model 6)

A B
Avg. marginal effect on community policing

Avg. marginal effect on community policing

.8
0

.6
–.5

.4
.2
–1

0
–1.5

–.2
.02 .04 .06 .08 .02 .04 .06 .08
Crime rate Crime rate
nonleth. gear = 1.16 nonleth. gear = 4.08 nonleth. gear = 1.16 nonleth. gear = 4.08

Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 1. Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 2.

C
Avg. marginal effect on community policing
2
1.5
1
.5
0

.02 .04 .06 .08

Crime rate

nonleth. gear = 1.16 nonleth. gear = 4.08

Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 3.

significance at all plotted levels of the crime rate not supported with respect to using one collaborative
variable above 0.02. This pattern of results provides practice in isolation, but is typically supported with
strong support for Hypothesis 4, with controversial respect to using two or all three practices in combi-
practices measured through use of force complaints nation. Hypothesis 3, regarding the moderating effect
and with respect to using all three community po- of stakeholder power, is also not supported for one
licing practices in combination. practice, but does receive some support with respect
To collectively summarize results of all the study’s to using two or all three practices in combination.
hypothesis tests, Hypothesis 1 (predicting that col- Finally, Hypothesis 4, regarding the moderating effect
laborative engagement will increase the volume of of controversial practices, receives no support when
information received from external stakeholders) is controversy is measured through the existence of
supported from the analyses reported in Table 2 for particular practices (nonlethal patrol gear). However,
agencies using one or two practices, although it is not when measuring controversy more directly through
supported for agencies using all three practices in stakeholder complaints (use of force complaints), the
combination. Hypothesis 2 (predicting that problems hypothesis is unsupported with respect to using one
will increase the use of collaborative engagement) is collaborative practice in isolation, partially (within an
2018 Desai 239

FIGURE 4
A, B and C, Moderating Effect of Force (Table 4, Model 4). Bi and Ci, Contrasts of Force Moderation
(Table 4, Model 4)

A B C
Avg. marginal effect on community policing

Avg. marginal effect on community policing

Avg. marginal effect on community policing
4

4
2
2

2
1
0

0
–2

–1

–2
–4

–2

–4
.02 .04 .06 .08 .02 .04 .06 .08 .02 .04 .06 .08
Crime rate Crime rate Crime rate
force = 0 force = 307.73 force = 0 force = 307.73 force = 0 force = 307.73

Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 1. Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 2. Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 3.

Bi Ci

5
2

Contrast of marginal effects from

Contrast of marginal effects from

low to high moderator values

low to high moderator values

4
1

3
0

2
–1

1
–2

.02 .04 .06 .08 .02 .04 .06 .08

Crime rate Crime rate
Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 2. Notes: For community policing practices outcome = 3.

extremely limited range) supported for two practices, at least two, of the supporting practices, rather than
and strongly supported with respect to using all three only one in isolation). In hindsight, this pattern is
practices in combination. perhaps unsurprising, given that some law enforce-
ment agencies may adopt community policing on
a superficial rather than substantive level (Morabito,
DISCUSSION
2010; Zhao et al., 1999). It may be the case that fairly
Collectively, this study’s findings suggest that or- topical community engagement practices are rela-
ganizations using collaborative engagements, mea- tively common in this setting, but that more thorough
sured here through community policing practices engagements are driven by the study’s theorized pro-
within the law enforcement context, may benefit cesses. And, perhaps counterintuitively, Hypothesis 1
through increased access to outside information from is only supported for agencies that employ one or two
external stakeholders. Organizations generally appear (rather than all three) practices, suggesting that agencies
to use these engagements in response to problems re- with small to moderate implementations may receive
quiring outside information, as predicted by theories of the greatest benefits from their community policing
organizational search (Cyert & March, 1963; Gavetti efforts (in terms of service calls received). In hind-
et al., 2012). However, results also suggest that decision sight, it may be the case that extremely thorough
makers take risks to their organization’s legitimacy into implementations of community policing, which in-
account, becoming less likely to engage collaboratively clude changes to internal organizational attributes
when stakeholders are relatively powerful or when past such as officers’ performance evaluation criteria,
practices have directly been called into question. In- may not gain much external public visibility beyond
terestingly, Hypotheses 2 through 4 only appear more moderate adoptions of community policing.
supported for fairly thorough implementations of The study’s findings contribute directly to orga-
community policing (involving all three, or sometimes nizational search and learning theories, and also
240 Academy of Management Journal
raise implications for theories of organizational le-
gitimacy. First, learning theories increasingly at-
tempt to identify the precise mechanisms and
processes involved in the organizational search and
knowledge accumulation process (Argote & Miron-
Spektor, 2011; Gavetti et al., 2012). While much work
has examined organizational search and exploration
(Argote & Miron-Spektor, 2011; Gavetti et al., 2012;
Levitt & March, 1988), little research addresses
whether organizations may abstain from particular
search or learning processes due to the potential risks
associated with those activities (Chen & Miller, 2012;
Hawk, Pacheco-de-Almeida, & Yeung, 2013). The
present study provides a theoretical framework to
examine whether, and when, organizations may ab-
stain from certain search activities, given their re-
ciprocal potential to reveal proprietary information
to outsiders. The study’s findings regarding stake-
holder power and controversy, which generally
conform to predictions derived from theories of or-
ganizational legitimacy (Suchman, 1995), suggest
that organizational decision makers might weigh the
possible risks prior to collaboratively engaging with
external stakeholders. This is important evidence,
because it raises the possibility that organizations in
other settings, and with respect to other modes of
organizational learning, may pursue a sophisticated
approach regarding the possible consequences of
exploration and learning activities. This has broad
implications for theories of vicarious learning,
which routinely examine organizations’ external
searches of their environments (Baum & Dahlin,
2007; Yang et al., 2010). Future research, for in-
stance, should determine whether common pre-
dictions such as nonlocal search in response to poor
performance (Baum & Dahlin, 2007), observation
and learning through the actions of similar organi-
zations under uncertainty (Haunschild & Miner,
1997), and a variety of other relevant findings
from this stream of research may be tempered in
cases in which such learning might be reciprocal
in nature.
The present study also contributes indirectly to the
literature on organizational legitimacy, in two ways
(Oliver, 1991; Piazza & Perretti, 2015; Suchman,
1995). First, considerations regarding organizational
legitimacy seem to influence organizations’ pursuit
of collaborative engagements, since the engagements
could adversely affect external stakeholders’ judg-
ments regarding some organizations’ practices and
approaches. This finding suggests that organizations
not only manage their legitimacy directly through
various reputation-building tactics (e.g., Crilly et al.,
February
2012; Oliver, 1991; Suchman, 1995), but that con-
cerns about legitimacy may also indirectly affect
other organizational activities—such as organiza-
tional search and learning (Cyert & March, 1963;
Gavetti et al., 2012; Greve, 2003). Indeed, while
much work has examined the legitimacy motives
that often underlie stakeholder engagement (Oliver,
1991; Piazza & Perretti, 2015), and some work has
also acknowledged the benefits for organizational
learning (Roloff, 2008; Roome & Wijen, 2006), these
concerns are rarely examined simultaneously de-
spite their strong potential to interactively influence
organizational activity in practice.
Second, hypotheses about the antecedents of
community policing were supported for fairly com-
prehensive or substantive implementations, rather
than for topical commitments to one or a few prac-
tices in isolation. This pattern indirectly contributes
to broader research on the institutionalization of or-
ganizational practices, which generally suggests
that widespread or longstanding practices are in-
creasingly adopted for ceremonial reasons or in rel-
atively superficial ways (e.g., Crilly et al., 2012;
DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983).
By this study’s analysis period, community polic-
ing practices had existed for decades, were fairly
widespread, and were increasingly expected of po-
lice departments by some of their communities
(Morabito, 2010; Zhao et al., 1999). Yet, many of the
study’s results applied more strongly to substantive
adoptions, and not to more widespread but relatively
topical commitments. Based on the study’s findings,
it is possible that some organizations pursue collab-
orative engagements in substantive ways when they
need access to new information, even when other
organizations pursue the collaborations for more
symbolic or topical reasons. This suggests a complex
adoption process that differs from the widely held
belief that later adopters are primarily motivated for
ceremonial reasons, and future research on practice
institutionalization would be wise to explore these
nuances.
In addition to those contributions, this study also
suggests the need for additional research regarding
how communities or other third-party outsiders can
influence the nature of organization–stakeholder
collaboration, or even shape specific organizational
processes such as exploration and learning. While
some research already highlights the role that third
parties play in shaping the information, resources, and
legitimacy available to organizations (e.g., Deephouse
& Heugens, 2009; Hiatt & Park, 2013; Rhee & Valdez,
2009), this study’s findings suggest a complex and
2018
iterative process, whereby organizational decision
makers balance judgments regarding the benefits and
risks of collaborating—while external parties concur-
rently evaluate whether and how to engage with the
organization. The reciprocal character of these ex-
changes raises a number of interesting and important
questions that the present study unfortunately could
not address, such as whether outside parties modify
their interactions with an organization based on their
own learning about the organization, how resource or
power disparities between organizations and their
stakeholders affect the likelihood or nature of collabo-
rations, and ultimately how collaborations between
organizations and complex or fragmented stakeholder
communities iteratively unfold over time.
This study also contains several limitations. First,
law enforcement agencies are not exposed to the
same competitive pressures as organizations in other
market-oriented settings; thus, the processes that
drive collaborative engagement here may differ from
those in other contexts. To that end, care was taken to
develop generalizable theory regarding the motives
for and against collaboration, and to control for
a variety of idiosyncratic factors within the study’s
empirical analysis. Nonetheless, additional work
that extends this theoretical framework into other
settings would certainly provide value. In particular,
some research suggests that crowdsourcing (Estelles-
Arolas & Gonzalez-Ladron-de-Guevara, 2012), open
source software development (Lerner & Tirole,
2002), and telemedicine (Roine et al., 2001) may
provide appealing contexts for further research into
organizational collaborations with broad and diverse
stakeholder groups.
Second, the study’s data are admittedly coarse, with
many measures tracked only once every three to four
years on the corresponding law enforcement agency
(LEMAS) survey. For this reason, great care was taken
to inform the study with anecdotal evidence and in-
dustry research in order to adhere carefully with dy-
namics in this setting. Nonetheless, intervening issues
within unobservable years may affect the study’s tests,
and replication in settings with more frequent mea-
surement is certainly advisable.
In conclusion, the present study integrates theo-
ries of organizational search and learning with le-
gitimacy management to examine collaborative
stakeholder engagement. Given its reciprocal nature,
this form of engagement is distinct from other com-
monly researched search activities. To that end, the
study combines theories of organizational search
and learning with research on organizational le-
gitimacy in order to generate novel predictions
Desai 241
regarding these engagements. The study’s frame-
work and findings suggest the need for future work
examining collaborative engagement in other
contexts, as well as additional research that in-
tegrates theories of learning and legitimacy more
generally.
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Vinit Desai (vinit.desai@ucdenver.edu) is an associate
professor of management at the University of Colorado
Denver. His research examines issues related to organiza-
tional learning, failures, and organizational legitimacy.
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