The Vector of Managing the Organizational Culture of the Internal Affairs Bodies: Mental States and the “Picture of the World” of Employees in the Dynamics of Social Fears of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Objective. Studying the vector of managing the organizational culture of the Russian internal affairs bodies during the COVID-19 period.Background. The work is aimed at studying the vector of managing the organizational culture of the internal affairs bodies through the formation of new “pictures of the world” and mental states of police officers as a result of the socio-psychological impact of information flows about COVID-19. Our earlier results of a longitudinal study from 2011 to 2019 made it possible to assert that the vector of development of the organizational culture of the Internal Affairs Directorate depends on the media, capable of creating new “pictures of the world” and influencing the formation of mental states of police officers, which are different from those desired and proclaimed by the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs when reforming the Internal Affairs Directorate in 2011. We believe that the scale of this socio-psychological phenomenon clearly manifested itself during the COVID-19 pandemic and the totality of the corresponding informational influence of the media, which determines the vector of managing the organizational culture of the internal affairs bodies.Study design. Against the background of the identified dynamics of social fears, mental states and the locus of control among police officers for the period of 2020 and 2021, their “picture of the world” was studied using multivariate factorial and cluster analysis.Participants. 335 police officers tested in both 2020 and 2021. Of these, 231 are men and 104 are women, 25 to 49 years old.Measurements. Author’s questionnaire on the degree of involvement in the content of the news and information tape about COVID-19; questionnaires: “Social fears” L.N. Grosheva; “The level of subjective control” by E.F. Bazhin and others; method for determining the dominant state of DS-8 L.V. Kulikova; author’s modification of C. Osgood’s semantic differential.Results. From the beginning of COVID-19 to mid-2021, ATS officers showed tendencies of a decrease in the level of subjective control and interest in the content of news about COVID-19, with the dynamics of the growth of the experience of social fears and the growing instability of mental states. organizational culture of the Department of Internal Affairs formed two types of employees. The first type with a trustful “picture of the world”, and the second with a threatening “picture of the world”. This polarity of the “picture of the world” in different types indicates a crisis in the functioning of the organizational culture of the internal affairs bodies.Conclusions. The long-term and intensive unstructured influence of the media in the context of negatively colored information about COVID-19, manifested in the dynamics of the growth of social fears and the heterogeneity of the policemen’s “picture of the world”, shows that the police department’s leadership is not fully the subject of changing the management vector of the organizational culture.