The progress of female police officers?

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to establish empirically whether there is any foundation in the premise that female officers' lesser tenure and/or lower levels of commitment than men explain their lack of career progress. Although the number of women in UK police forces has grown rapidly, it appears that they continue to be under-represented in senior ranks. Design/methodology/approach -Using whole population surveys of two county police forces in the UK the paper compares the promotion of men and women police officers controlling for tenure. The paper then compares the organisational commitment of male and female officers and analyses whether female officers experience managerial and organisational influences that undermine their organisational commitment compared to men. Findings -The findings refute some of the widespread beliefs about reasons for female officers' lack of progress in their policing careers since the analysis indicates that gender differences in length of tenure and organisational commitment can be discounted as possible explanations for lack of advancement in these two police forces. Overall, the results clearly show that female officers are just as committed as male officers and thus cannot be justified as a reason for lack of career progression. Research limitations/implications -It is accepted that survey methods such as ours do not capture the entirety of employee feelings and responses since they tend to homogenise male and female working experiences. However, survey methods do have the advantage that it is possible to generalise from the results and thus these two studies allow us to suggest that our findings can be viewed as providing insights to other UK police forces. Practical implications -The relatively low levels of organisational commitment found should be a cause for concern for senior managers in the Police. The key importance that management has in influencing organisational commitment has been shown by our findings and this indicates the importance of the current Police Leadership Development Board's agenda to improve workforce management skills to encourage transformational leadership styles. Originality/value -The paper make an original contribution by refuting widely held assumptions about the reasons for under-representation of female officers in senior ranks. It also contributes to the sparse literature that examines organisational commitment in the police and its antecedents.Keywords Gender, Women workers, Police, Career development, United Kingdom (Martin, 1996). Women were largely invisible in that much of crime and police management research focused on offenders and victims (Heidenshohn, 1986(Heidenshohn, , 1992. Alternatively, research in the USA on women and policing in the 1970s and 1980s addressed issues relating to women's physical performance to undertake policing work (Martin and Jurik, 1996). It is only recently that the role and experience of women in the UK police has become the subject of detailed academic scrutiny as the numbers of female ...

The impact of team dialogue sessions on employee engagement in an information and communication technology company

“…It therefore seems that the direct dialogues through which team members, together with their supervisors, could engage in open, non-judgmental dialoguing could have created the perception that their supervisors supported them. This result is in line with research conducted by Benkoff (Dick, 2007), indicating that where employees trusted their supervisors and liked their management style, the employees shared the company's values and were proud to be employed by the company. Similarly, May et al (2004) concluded that relationship with supervisor was a positive predictor of employee engagement.…”

“…The crucial role played by supervisors in employee engagement is emphasised by Dick (2007), referring to research findings indicating that where employees trusted their supervisors, liked their management styles and were of the view that they were competent, they shared the company's values and were proud to be employed by the company. May et al (2004) also found that coworker relations were positive predictors of employee engagement.…”

“…The importance of employee engagement is not disputed in the literature, especially in publications in journals referring to its benefits and overall contribution to organisational effectiveness (Markos & Sridevi, 2010). For instance, according to Dick (2007), engaged employees are more motivated, responsive to change and more willing to perform different demanding work activities. Furthermore, Robinson, Perryman and Hayday (2004) state that engaged employees are more productive, make more money for the company and create emotional engagement by loyal customers.…”

“…Dick (2007), for example, referred to the research findings indicating that where employees trusted their managers, liked their leadership styles and perceived them as competent, they aligned with the company's values and were honoured to be a member of the company.…”

Dedikasjon og deltidsønsker blant politiog sykepleierstudenter

“…Dedikasjon til yrket hos sykepleiere og politi Tidligere forskning har vist at politifolk har en relativt sterk tilknytning til organisasjonen de jobber i (organisational commitment) (Brunetto & Farr-Wharton 2003;Sholihin & Pike 2010;van Maanen 1975). Tilknytningen ser ut til å vaere like sterk blant kvinnelig og mannlig politi (G. Dick & Metcalfe 2007). Kvalitative studier har beskrevet en sterk tilknytning til yrket blant politifolk og en sterk motivasjon for å bli politi blant studentene (Chan, Devery & Doran 2003;Lauritz 2009).…”