Introduction to Studying to Organizations

In order to analyse the Hillsborough police department from an organizational perspective, we must know what an organization is. An organization is a social system, which comprises the coordinated action of two or more people towards attaining an objective (Donaldson, 1985). We can also specifically classify the Hillsborough police department as a public sector, not-for profit, service organization, because they serve the community without charging a price for their services.

An important focus for the investigation of the Hillsborough disaster, is the bureaucratic tendencies of the police department. While there were many police enforcers involved in the disaster, it is necessary to look at the hierarchy of command to have a better understanding of where to direct the majority of the blame. In a bureaucratic organization, commands are passed downward from superiors to those working beneath them, and there is often a heavy correlation between promotion possibilities and your ability to successfully carry out the orders given to you. With this in mind, who is to blame is becomes a question of who is to blame? On a micro level, Captain Duckenfield and Lieutenant Murray delivered the commands to their subordinates that led to the disaster, but on a macro level, the subordinates within the department carried out the commands when they knew it was unsafe to do so.

A defining part of being an organization is being a goal-seeking entity that exists to achieve objectives. The primary aim for any police department is to protect the community it serves. With this in mind, the Hillsborough police department failed to achieve their primary goal when they decided to open Gate C and allow 2000 more fans to enter pens 3 and 4, which were already at maximum capacity. While opening the extra gate was an act made to help alleviate the crowd problem outside the stadium, if the Hillsborough police department had acted in accordance with their primary objective of keeping as many civilians safe as possible, they would not have made such a risky decision. They also should have had more officers on call as a precaution, and plans in place to handle the crowd if it got out of hand. Simple preventive measures such as these could have stopped the crisis from occurring.

The Hillsborough police department is an open system organization. Open systems are systems influenced by external pressures and inputs, making them more complex and difficult to control than closed systems (Bloisi et al, 2007). The Hillsborough police department is influenced completely by what goes on externally with the community they serve. Knowing that the Hillsborough football club is one of England’s most famous, and that the match in question was an FA cup semi-final, the department should have expected the massive crowds, and been prepared to properly handle them. The game was also a repeat of the previous year’s semi-final, so they had prior experience to help their planning and preparation. With all of this in mind, there is no logical reason for the Hillsborough police department to have been caught off-guard or been incapable of handling the crowds if they were running their open system organization correctly.