Organizational Change in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency

The creation of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in 2003 was a monumental, yet incomplete organizational step towards integrating border protection operations. Customs and Border Protection is constantly improving integration and unity of effort among its operational components: the Office of Field Operations (OFO), Office of Border Patrol (OBP), and the Office of Air and Marine (OAM). In October 2010, Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano approved CBP Commissioner Bersin's request to initiate a Joint Field Command (JFC) configuration modeled on Department of Defense regional unified commands. A JFC groups all elements of OFO, OBP, and OAM in a defined geographical area under one regional commander and headquarters. Although CBP has not conducted a formal assessment of the first JFC in Arizona, confusion surrounds the appropriateness of joint configurations in CBP and any decision to continue implementation across the organization. The question is, is the CBP effort likely to succeed? Joint Field Command - Arizona is only a year old so there are no meaningful empirical measures of effectiveness available. Therefore, this study drew from organization theory to determine why CBP needed to change, to assess the change itself (the JFC), and to examine CBP's implementation of the change. Henry Mintzberg's typology regarding basic organizational configurations provides a means to classify CBP's structure and establish the requirement for change. Insight from organizational design theorists, homeland security experts, and military strategist Everett Dolman provide a valid framework for assessing how well the JFC meets CBP's requirements. Models of organizational change, like the Burke-Litwin model, facilitate an assessment of CBP's transformation because they identify factors influencing the durability and acceptance of reforms. As a functionally diversified organization, CBP represents only a superficial integration of border security agencies because the configu