The main purpose of this thesis is to find out the guidelines of the organizational reform of the Korean National Police in the 21st century environment and electronic government policy, and to suggest new directions for the police reform.
The environ...
The main purpose of this thesis is to find out the guidelines of the organizational reform of the Korean National Police in the 21st century environment and electronic government policy, and to suggest new directions for the police reform.
The environmental changes of the 21st century characterized as "the megatrends" or "the anarchy of uncertainty", caused mainly by the information technology(IT), are unbelievably rapid and their range reaches farther than anyone can imagine. Meanwhile, the whole world observes its time and space getting faster and closer like a little village. In this "electronic global village", there are no borders in the increasingly closer globalization. In the midst of all these changes, the democratic police agencies find that the public have increasingly enhancing status, participating in the police policy-making as the main body, receiving "satisfactory service" that fits each individual's taste as the top priority customer, and actively demanding that their living grounds should be based on freedom, human rights, peace, and safety.
As the environment is changing as dynamically as it can be, the police organization within it cannot help getting involved in dynamic
changes itself in order to actively respond to the changes. Thus, in the 21st century, for the police to develop continuously, the organizational changes of the police has to maintain "the dynamic equilibrium" with environmental changes.
The Korean Police Organization was born as a modern police organization in 1894. Since then, it has written a history of 110 years, during which it has rather accumulated many innate negative problems than taking the way to desirable development being well matched to the organizational environment in the 21st century and the heightened status of the public. The Korean National Police have focused more on guarding the regime than improving safety and delivering service to the public. Thus they failed to acquire the trust and goodwill from the public. They have the rigid military culture, deepenned into the organization management. They are short of internal humanization and democratizaton ; consequently the officers in lower levels have little autonomy and creativity. And they had formed the systematic corruption in the influence of the political environment.
There were many times of attempting from in or out of the police agencies to reorganize the Korean National Police for the political impartiality and to innovate old and bad practices, but they failed to correct those deep-seated innate problems found within the organization.
Therefore, having already started with the new millenium of the 21st century, the Korean National Police Organization should set its top priority to be reborn free from its old problems through organizational reinventing at all points.
This study was based on this sense of purpose. In Chapter 2, a comparison and analysis were made of the organizational environment in the 21st century, the theories of the future organizational models and the electronic government. In Chapter 3, the current realities and problems of the Korean National Police are searched. In Chapter 4 and 5, the detailed guidelines were suggested for the Korean National Police to perform organizational reform from the viewpoint of electronic government policy.
First, the Korean Police should innovate the historical and innate heritage, which are still latent in their organization, such as authoritarianism, bureaucratism, undemocratic, political behavior and military culture and set their first and fundamental goal on it in their organizational reform.
Second, the Korean Police should perform the electronicization and automatization programs across all the police sectors to keep up with the electronic government policy. Thus all the police operations should have mobility and speed to meet enough the public needs and wants.
Third, the Korean Police should restore its original and basic functions to maintain the better place to live of the public and focus on them, reinventing the organization and the personnel centered around the operation units in the front. Especially, the heavy top and high pyramid of organizational structure have to be slimed-down and flattened rightsizing
Fourth, the Korean Police Organization should be restructured as a municipal police system which can fulfil the global integration and local differentiation at the same time in the glocalization(globalization and localization) era and can deliver democratic services of high quality to the public.
Fifth, the Korean Police should be learning organizations and reengineer all the police academies and training schools centering around WBT(web-based training) or e-learning of the 21st century, so as to develop and retain the high-advanced brightest police personnel. They also should be humanized and democratized internally in the organization to enhance the morale of the police officers and to empower them to take autonomy to creativity.
Sixth, the Korean Police should establish and carry out a long-and-mid-teen "image-making program" to turn the public's negative impression on them to an epoch-making change. Thus they should be lovable and trustworthy to the public.
In short, the Korean National Police Agency should make a positive review on the policy alternatives suggested above and take steps to realize them if they wish to be reborn as the world-class electronic police with de-bureaucratization, democracy, serviceability, impartiality, fairness, productivity, efficiency, localization and globalization in the 21st century.