For Tomorrow LAW PAPER 7PM East Coast Time

Captain Strong is the commander of a Field Operations Division in the City of Rogerville that has a population of 101,603, and the community covers 65.4 square miles. Captain Strong has worked her way up through the ranks achieving the position of captain after 18 years of service. She is the first woman to hold this high of a position in the department. Prior to this she served as Lieutenant of Administrative Services. The preponderance of her service has been in patrol, where she served as a sergeant and then a watch commander.

Within the department, 65 percent of the officers are white, and the next largest ethnic group is Hispanic, at 27 percent. Seven percent of the force is women. Based on tradition and operational policy, the department has a definitive chain of command and is keyed to job specialization. Patrol officers are assigned to a specific beat and respond to calls, conduct preliminary investigations (when minor crimes are involved), and engage in preventive patrol when time allows. The Bureau of Criminal Investigations conducts all other investigations. Job descriptions are definitive, and everyone follows them religiously. Deviation from a job description results in immediate supervisory action that usually calls for being written-up. The Division handles 62 percent of the police department’s measurable workload and has 58 percent of the manpower.

Within the Division, there is a lieutenant who serves as an adjutant, three lieutenants who serve as watch commanders, a traffic sergeant who supervises six officers, a sergeant who supervises the Neighborhood Police unit that has a complement of 10 officers, three school resource officers, and 71 patrol officers. Officers in the specialized assignment have higher morale and seem well satisfied with their assignments. They have an opportunity to interact with each other and create meaningful and satisfying relationships. Almost all patrol officers feel that their workload is excessive and complain that all they do is go from one incident to the next and spend an inordinate amount of time creating police reports. In fact, they feel that they are unable to complete their preliminary investigations and in many instances have to cut corners in order to complete a shift. Except for backup in certain cases, they never get to interact with fellow officers apart from coming and going to roll-call sessions. Every patrol officer in the department works solo, and departmental police prohibits more than two officer eating meals or taking coffee breaks at the same time in the same restaurant.

The dehumanizing aspect of an excessive workload has taken its toll on the personnel assigned to the patrol division. A survey conducted by a member of the chief’s staff indicates that patrol officers feel in the following ways:

1. The job is viewed as dissatisfying.

2. Morale is low.

3. Response time is long.

4. The number of citizen-initiated complaints is up.

5. More officers are filing disability claims.

6. Employee turnover is exceeding projections.

The situation has become critical and imperils the division’s ability to function efficiently, effectively, and productively and has to be dealt with as soon as possible.

The solution is to design a program that meets the needs of both the department and the employees.

What philosophical approach do you believe Captain Strong should take in carrying out this project? What specific motivational strategies would you recommend that she consider? Would E.R.G. theory be applicable in this instance.? Why or why not? Give several concrete examples. Would job enlargement or job enrichment be applicable in this case? Explain.

Management can be defined as getting things done with and through the efforts of others. Thus, it is the police administrator’s job to create an environment within which professional employees motivate themselves. This can be done by establishing a concrete link between appropriate job behavior and meaningful rewards. Motivation is a psychosocial process. It produces an attitude that generates actions that lead to anticipated results. All other things being equal, well-motivated police officers are more efficient, effective, productive, and satisfied than unmotivated ones.

Most motivation theories are based on the assumption that psychosocial tensions caused by intrinsic and/or extrinsic factors are translated into human needs. Needs elicit instrumental behaviors that are designed to reduce the tension. Of course, different needs generate different and unique adaptive responses. The intensity of a felt need (or needs) activates and energizes people as they interact with one another in the workplace.

Abraham Maslow’s “progression” theory of employee needs is one of the best-known content theories. As a positive humanistic theory of motivation, it stresses the importance of both biological drives and psychosocial needs. According to Maslow, five basic human needs activate, fuel, and shape the internal drive to overcome inertia affiliated with the status quo. He classes them as physiological (survival) needs, safety (security) needs, belonging (social) needs, self-esteem (ego) needs, and self-actualization (fulfillment) needs.

While Maslow’s theory has a great deal of humanistic appeal, there is simply no consistent evidence to prove his contention that satisfying a human need at one level actually decreases the motivational importance of that need so that the satisfaction of a person’s needs is a process that becomes less and less concrete as time goes on. Consequently, some motivation theorists have attempted to modify the hierarchy of needs concept to make it more realistic in terms of its application to goal-oriented behavior. Clayton Alderfer’s “E.R.G.” (existence/relatedness/growth) theory has become one of the better-known content theories. Alderfer developed his E.R.G. theory in an effort to simplify Maslow’s hierarchical model. E.R.G. collapses Maslow’s five human need categories into just three and contends they are active in all human beings.

Taking his cue from Maslow and other content theorists, Douglas McGregor developed a different humanistic theory of management. It is based on two distinct sets of assumptions about human nature (he called them Theory X and Theory Y) and the idea that managers tend to fall into one of two groups depending on which of the two assumptions they make about their employees. Theory X (the traditional approach to direction, control, and management) is based on a negative view of people. Theory Y (a more modern humanistic view) sees people as innately motivated and improvable. According to McGregor, managers organize, control, and attempt to motivate employees based on one or the other of these assumptions.

Frederick Herzberg developed another view of human needs. His “motivation-hygiene,” or “two-factor,” theory was originally derived from an analysis of critical incidents reported by 200 engineers and accountants. They were asked to describe the times when they felt exceptionally good and exceptionally bad about their jobs. Based on the different things respondents identified as sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in their work, Herzberg identified two themes characteristic of all jobs: (1) “maintenance” or “hygiene” factors and (2) “motivational” factors.

The motivation theories discussed in this chapter fall into two very distinct categories: (1) content theories and (2) process theories. Content theories attempt to explain exactly what motivates people to act as they do in a given set of circumstances.Process theories, on the other hand, deal with how people are motivated. While none of these theories provides a complete explanation of motivation or the motivation process, they tend to supplement one another and provide the police administrator with a comprehensive perspective on this very complex psychosocial phenomenon.

Police administrators today must come to grips with one simple fact of life—they are dealing with a new breed of employee. Modern police personnel are more sophisticated than their predecessors. They are better educated, more participative, and much less resistant to change. They demand respect and expect to be treated as professionals. While money is still a magical word in the police subculture, it has a much different meaning than it did a generation ago. Salaries and fringe benefits have been improved to the point where more money, in and of itself, no longer serves as the primary motivator in many agencies while other agencies lag behind in salaries and benefits. Police officers demand more than just money. Most of them want to do meaningful work that meets their conscious and subconscious higher-order needs for growth, self-esteem, and a sense of fulfillment.

Andrew J. Elliot and Carol S. Dweck, eds., Handbook of Competence and Motivation (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007).

This handbook is a comprehensive resource for researchers and theoreticians on the broad topic of achievement motivation. Its primary focus is on the concept of competence. There are 35 chapters in the text, and they consider a wide range of features from contextual influences to the self-regulatory processes. They view competence as an innate, pancultural, and psychological need from a number of disciplines to include social-psychological psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, and developmental perspectives. With its focus on competence, a foundation is laid for a rapprochement between the cognitive, rational world of the individual and one’s self-protective, defensive tendencies. It is generally conceded that the handbook represents a signal contribution to the field of achievement motivation. The text takes the position that it is readily apparent that the role of competence is playing an influential role in achievement motivation.

Kenneth W. Thomas, Intrinsic Motivation at Work—Building Energy and Commitment (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2002).

The author presents a broad conceptual framework for understanding intrinsic motivation and discusses why it is an essential component in today’s working environment. Consideration is given to the need for intrinsic rewards as well as the need to move away from the rational–economic ways of the past. The writer lays a foundation for this new model of viewing rewards and introduces the concept of self-management in pursuit of purposes and clearly identifies the steps needed to become involved in self-management. The text reviews the four intrinsic rewards that come from and energize the self-management steps: a sense of meaningfulness, choice, competence, and progress. There is also a discussion of the leadership role needed to energize individuals on a work team as well as a presentation on how to enhance one’s intrinsic rewards.

Stewart Liff, Managing Government Employees (New York: AMACOM, 2007).

The author believes that the overwhelming majority of individuals want to do a good job. At the same time, an organization needed a solid system and control if the agency is to be successful. This approach uses control variables positively, not punitively. With this perspective of employees, a manager can maintain a consistent set of core values. The author believes that the more you treat employees as valued, the more they will do a good job. It is also suggested that employees want to be part of a winning organization, but they must be given freedom not controlled, included not excluded, and provided with a meaningful role so they can contribute to the organization. The author also believes that a manager should always treat employees with respect, and this can be done by sending positive messages to people to include treating people ethically.

Charles B. Handy, Understanding Organizations, 4th ed. (East Rutherford, NJ: Penguin Global, 2005).

In its 4th edition, this text has been tested and found to be an excellent addition to the literature on organizations. Charles Handy discusses numerous key concepts to include the following: culture, motivation, leadership, power, role playing, and groups. He believes that organizations are not simple charts, but in reality they can best be described as micro-societies. He reviews the tools needed to analyze and improves these micro-societies, which in turn would be useful to law enforcement administrators. The chapter on motivation is comprehensive and leaves the reader with a great deal of food for thought. Of additional usefulness are the chapters on power and leadership, and he does an excellent job of linking them to organizations in term of their impact. The cultural concepts he reviews are useful in organizational analysis, and he very adequately describes their relationship to the organization during times of change.