LaFrance and Placide found that a substantial majority of county sheriffs (10/12, or 83 per cent) are likely to cooperate with the county legislative body during a budget crisis (LaFrance, T. C., & Placide, M. (2010). Sheriffs' and police chiefs' leadership and management decisions in the local law enforcement budgetary process: an exploration. International Journal of Police Science and Management, 12(2), 238–255). However, their study is plagued by a small sample size that does not allow for generalisability of their findings. Describing these limitations, the researchers ask for subsequent research with a larger number of cases. In this paper, this call is answered by proposing an identical scenario to a sample of 107 sheriffs in three states.
As part of an ongoing research agenda exploring police discretion and accountability, I devised a diagnostic tool, the target model of discretion, aimed at comparing the discretionary priorities of top managers with the priorities of frontline workers. To test the efficacy of the target model as an organisation development tool, I conducted an analysis of intraorganisational communication between frontline officers and command staff members in a medium-sized Southern municipal police organisation. Specifically, top managers and frontline officers were asked to rate the amount of influence each of eight variables had on their use of discretion. This study is premised on the notion that effective communication within an agency would lead to reasonable similarities between the responses of those at the top and bottom of the organisation's hierarchy. The opposite proposition is also assumed. That is, in organisations with poor communication between levels, one would expect to see statistically significant differences in the responses of frontline officers and command staff members. I present my findings and recommendations for the case at hand. I conclude by discussing the potential utility of the target model for organisation development in other public sector organisations.
While almost all local government administrators frequently interact with municipal police chiefs and county sheriffs, there is a dearth of scholarly literature concerning the decision-making behaviours of these law enforcement executives. This study, as part of a larger project, explores decision-making as it pertains to the annual budgeting process, an important basis for county- or city-wide interaction. The central question of this study is: what is the effect of selection method on a local law enforcement manager's willingness to cooperate with a legislative body during a budget crisis? This exploratory research suggests that the disparate methods by which sheriffs and police chiefs obtain office (election versus appointment) play a role in each executive's decision-making behaviours, albeit in a counterintuitive way: sheriffs are more apt to demonstrate local government leadership through cooperation with the county legislature while police chiefs are more likely to focus their efforts on intradepartmental management.
Despite a great deal of popular rhetoric and scholarly research, there is no universal agreement on which categories of behaviors constitute civic engagement or public participation in the policy process. This paper showcases various definitions, arguing for a more holistic understanding of the phenomena in popular and scientific literature and discussions. Afterward, the research explores impediments to public participation in one area of policy, public budgeting. The paper concludes by discussing some optimistic happenings that have begun to unfold in this arena.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.