Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to explore the relationship between aging, organizational culture, leadership and police officers’ performance, and in particular to examine the difficulties in handling age-related physical limitations in police forces. We investigate this topic empirically on the basis of quantitative and qualitative data using the example of a German police organization. Our results indicate that organizational culture plays a fundamental role in understanding the effects of an aging workforce. Police officers tend to suppress, ignore or deny their age-related physical deficits, which they perceive as incompatible with their cultural self-conception as police officers. Therefore, measures to cope with the challenges of demographic change cannot be successfully implemented in police organizations unless they explicitly take account of the organizational culture of the police.