ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one understudied aspect to police work – namely that many police officers carry out managerial work. It discusses a case study of change in a police force that had an effect on several managers. Using virtue ethics, the chapter explains how they experienced and coped with this change drawing on the concept of character – which is partly expressed through individual virtues. It discusses the role of training and habits in forming character, and looks at how change can create conflict with character in middle managers in policing. The chapter identifies in more detail additional factors that could explain how change relates to character. The consequences of change caused by cuts were multilevel and multilayered. They were multilevel because national priorities occurred alongside a planned programme of organizational change, and at the same time budgetary pressures were driving changes at departmental levels.
