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Deakin working with Victoria Police to create
a safer community
Professor Julie Wolfram Cox leads unique research
project into collaborative governance
Deakin University is playing a vital, collaborative
role in improving policing in Victoria.
Professor Julie Wolfram Cox is heading up a team of researchers
looking at collaborative governance within the Victoria Police.
“What we are looking at is the way that leadership works
in Victoria Police,” says Professor Wolfram Cox, who
is Professor of Management in Deakin’s School of Management
and Marketing.
“We are trying to work out to what extent decision-making
is a top down process, or whether it’s a genuine team
approach where ideas can come collaboratively from all areas,
including from the community.
“Over the past few years Victoria Police has been trying
to change the nature of the organisation and its culture so
as to benefit from a broader range of ideas.
“Proactive collaboration at all levels will help Victoria
Police to protect communities from terrorism and crime and
will assist in the safeguarding of Australia.
“The results of the project will also help with the
accumulation of research-based evidence to inform policy making
based on the claimed benefits of decentralisation in police
forces around the world.”
Professor Wolfram Cox says that while there has been a lot
of research into leadership in police forces overseas, particularly
the United Kingdom, what is happening in Victoria is unique.
“To begin with Victoria Police force is very much to
the forefront, not just here in Australia, but globally, as
a co-funder of public research. The organisation is also willing
to take innovative approaches to that research.
“Where our project is different to anything that has
ever been done before is that we are not just collecting the
information, but we will be working with the police to interpret
it and to see what can be done to encourage more collaboration
right across the organisation.
“So we will try to identify both the facilitoators and
hurdles to collaborative governance and with the police work
out ways to get over any hurdles.
“In the United Kingdom there has been some frustration
that while the information has been collated and reported
upon, it has been left to sit there in those report and not
acted on.
“We will be acting on the information as we collect
it.”
The project is collaborative in more than just name.
Professor Wolfram Cox is working in partnership with Monash
University’s Professor Owen Hughes.
“We have one PhD student at Deakin who is being funded
by the ARC, and a student at Monash who is funded by that
university,” Professor Wolfram Cox said.
“So it is a collaboration in every sense and it is also
the sort of research that will make a difference, not just
to Victoria Police, but to the broader community.
Professor Wolfram Cox is a relative newcomer to Deakin, attracted
by the opportunity to take up a Chair in Management.
“I had also heard good things about Deakin and research,”
she said.
“There is definitely a very encouraging environment
for research here at Deakin.
“I particularly like the way that the work of Early
Career Researcher is highlighted and valued at Deakin.”
Professor Wolfram Cox’s own career has been a highly
productive one. She gained a Masters Degree by Research at
Melbourne before obtaining her PhD at the Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland in the United States.
For more information about Professor Wolfram Cox and her work:
http://www.deakin.edu.au/buslaw/management-marketing/staff/wolfram-cox.php
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