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Effect of Organizational Support on Police Effectiveness and Behavior: a Cross-cultural Comparison

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Abstract

Organizational support has received considerable attention in the academic literature. However, in policing, this area of research has received limited attention. The present study surveyed police officers from two countries to investigate how officers’ perception of organizational support influence their sense of effectiveness and behavior. Findings revealed significant cultural differences in the perception of organizational support and its impact on perceived effectiveness and behavior in the two countries. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.

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Notes

  1. China has two national police universities that produce and train police officers, administrators, and managers (Sun et al. 2010): the China Criminal Police University (CCPU), located in the historic city of Shenyang, and the Chinese People’s Public Security University (CPPSU), situated in Beijing.

  2. Though most officers agreed to participate in the study, some returned the questionnaires unanswered.

  3. A letter was issued by the police headquarters, which was shown to each of the five district commanders in charge of the districts in which the survey was administered. This process was necessary to be granted access to the districts.

  4. To ensure that officers were randomly selected, district secretaries provided a list of all officers from the ranks of constable to superintendent. Officers were picked randomly from the list to take part in the survey administration.

  5. The Chinese sample was drawn from a pool of officers attending in-service academy training at one of the National Police Universities in China, and this may explain why almost all the participants had attained education past high school. It is therefore not surprising that that sample was more educated than the Ghanaian sample.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Legal Studies, The University of Mississippi, Odom Hall, P. O. Box 1848, University Park, MS, 38677, USA

    Francis D. Boateng

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Guangzhen Wu

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  1. Francis D. Boateng
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Correspondence to Francis D. Boateng.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Table 6 Mean analysis of scaled items
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Boateng, F.D., Wu, G. Effect of Organizational Support on Police Effectiveness and Behavior: a Cross-cultural Comparison. Asian J Criminol 13, 311–328 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-018-9272-2

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