| Many organizational researchers have argued that the structural characteristics of an organization significantly influence its innovation adoption behavior. One of the characteristics of an organization that influences adoption is the organization's level of functional differentiation. King's dissertation research in 1998 proposed that highly specialized law enforcement agencies are more likely to adopt innovations. King's reference to specialization refers to the number of functional units within an agency. Despite several studies mentioning functional differentiation as an influential factor with regard to organizational innovation adoption, a gap exists in the research literature with regard to the relationship between the level of functional differentiation and adoption of technology, specifically computerized crime mapping, within law enforcement agencies. The following study is a quantitative examination of functionally diverse agencies and the relationship between the level of differentiation and likelihood of technological innovation adoption. This study used secondary analysis of data from the LEMAS survey conducted in 2003 and 2007 and focused on large municipal police agencies with 100 or more full-time paid positions. Law enforcement agencies in the sample were determined to be either highly specialized or have little or no specialized units, which served as the independent variable, and to have either adopted the dependent variable, computerized crime mapping, or not. The study used maximum likelihood estimators to estimate the coefficient values for the independent variables that have the highest probability of generating the yes or no values of the dependent variable. Results show that several variables were associated with the likelihood that law enforcement agencies will adopt computerized crime mapping. Consequently, the hypothesis, which states technology adoption is more likely in highly specialized law enforcement agencies than those with few or no specialized units, is accepted. |
