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Gau, J. M., Terrill, W., & Paoline, E. A. (2013). Looking up: Explaining police promotional aspirations. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 40(3), 247–269.

Abstract: Organizations benefit when employees are motivated and aspiring. Within policing, this is especially important given contemporary philosophies asking officers to take ownership and be proactive. A desire to ascend through the police ranks may inspire greater engagement in the police role. Extant research has noted that promotional aspirations vary among police officers, but unknown at this point are the factors that shape this variation. The current study helps fill this void by analyzing multiple-agency data assessing the impact of demographic, work environment, and organizational factors on patrol officers’ aspirations. The focus is on the importance officers place on being promoted to a higher rank (i.e., valence), as well as their long-term aspirations in terms of projected rank at retirement. The findings reveal that the most consistent predictors are gender, race, education, and experience; job satisfaction; and organizational size. The implications of these findings for police research and practice are considered.

Questions to Consider:

1. We tend to take the promotional process for granted, assuming that qualified applicants will naturally seek elevated ranks. As the research shows, however, this is not the case. If you were a chief or other upper-level administrator in a police organization, how might you change the organization and/or its culture to encourage a greater number of female officers to pursue promotion?
    

Johnson, R. R. (2006). Management influences on officer traffic enforcement productivity. International Journal of Police Science & Management, 8(3), 205–217.

Abstract: There is significant evidence that aggressive traffic enforcement strategies can have an impact on traffic safety, public disorder and street crime. However, individual patrol officers often devote different levels of effort to traffic patrol with some producing very high levels of citations and arrests, while others produce few or none at all. Therefore, it would be useful for police executives to know how they can effectively motivate officers to engage in high levels of traffic enforcement. This study evaluates a theoretical approach to motivating patrol officer productivity in the areas of traffic citations and drunk driver arrests, and applies this approach across a number of police agencies in one metropolitan area. The findings support this approach and suggest that patrol officer productivity in these two performance tasks is significantly predicted by management expectations, officer capability, officer opportunity, the perception of rewards, and the modelling of the behaviour by the officer’s shift supervisor.

Questions to Consider:

1. Johnson’s research points to the importance of opportunity and capability in understanding an officer’s motivation to engage in traffic enforcement activity. Would an officer with neither the training nor the chance to perform feel a sense of injustice for having a diminished chance to receive departmental rewards relative to others? Explain.
    

Wolfe, S. E., & Piquero, A. R. (2011). Organizational justice and police misconduct. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 38(4), 332–353.

Abstract: Although police misconduct has interested policing scholars for many years, extant research has been largely atheoretical and has ignored the role of organizational justice in understanding the behavior. This study uses survey data from a random sample of 483 police officers employed in the Philadelphia Police Department to explore the role of organizational justice in police misconduct. Results indicate that officers who view their agency as fair and just in managerial practices are less likely to adhere to the code of silence or believe that police corruption in pursuit of a noble cause is justified. Furthermore, perceptions of organizational justice are associated with lower levels of engagement in several forms of police misconduct. The results suggest that organizational justice is a promising framework to understand police misconduct and may help guide police administrators in the implementation of effective management strategies to reduce the incidence of the behavior.

Questions to Consider:

1. The study’s authors found that perceptions of organizational justice reduced police misconduct and negative attitudes. Although the authors considered organizational justice as a singular concept, do you think that one of the justice components—distributive, procedural, or interactional—has a greater effect on officer behavior and attitudes than the others? Why?