Abstract
Organizational change has been a topic for debate in the Norwegian police organization recent years. The following thesis investigated potential facilitators of change readiness in the Norwegian police. Specifically, whether internal and external communication and two climate types of the Competing Values Framework (internal process and human relations), predicted change readiness. The study is a part of a long-term collaborative project between the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Police University College. The data was collected prior to this thesis. The study was cross-sectional, collected through self-report surveys, targeting a variation of employees in three different districts in the Norwegian police and yielded a total response rate of 58.21 % (N=1007). After removal of blanks and missing values, the final sample size was 848 which represents the basis of this analysis. The hypotheses were investigated with structural equation modeling, demonstrating varying results. Internal and external communication facilitated both climate types, but human relations climate did not demonstrate a significant relationship to change readiness. Moreover, the indirect effect through human relations climate was non-significant, suggesting that communication through this climate type did not facilitate change readiness. Interestingly, internal and external communication proved to facilitate change readiness through internal process climate, which is contradictory to previous studies of salient climate types identified in the police organization. The overall findings suggest that internal process climate is the prominent climate type in the police organization, when a change context is introduced. The implications to be made is that the police suggestively are a result of several sub-climates, facilitated by the demands and needs of the organization in a specific context. Thus, proposing that a more tailored approach to change is advantageous to improve readiness.