Abstract
In a previous article in Information Polity [1] we looked into the question of whether integration of its information domains is leading to centralization in the Dutch police system. In this article we attempt to find out how such integration came about in the first place. Trying to establish an overall information management in or between organizations can be viewed as an attempt to create a common pool resource (CPR). Is hierarchy really the only way to establish such a CPR as, for instance, Davenport appears to assume? The experience of the Dutch police seems to point in a different direction. As it happens the 25 regional police forces, and the national police services have formed a 'Board of Direction' (Regieraad) in which the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office also partake. These parties are to decide on the shaping and operating of the police's information systems on the basis of equality. All evidence seems to point to the fact that this has been accomplished without making use of hierarchy. If we want to account for the Dutch police's success in establishing an overall information management without making use of hierarchy, there are three explanations that stand out in the available literature. These are Kollock's application of Ostrom's design principles of communities successful in creating CPRs to electronic environments, Monge, Fulk and Flanagin's stress on the advantages that fall to those who found a CPR, and Scharpf's concept of `negotiation in the shadow of hierarchy'. In this article we try to establish which one of the three holds good in the case of the Dutch police.