Impact of Individual and Organizational Factors on US Police Work Outcomes.

The paper examines the individual and organisational factors and the impact these have on police officers' perceptions of red tape, stress, discretionary power, affective commitment and turnover intentions. We argue that police with high levels of management support and psychological capital are likely to experience less stress and red tape and are more likely to have higher discretionary power and affective commitment, and lower turnover intentions. A survey was used to collect information from 588 police officers in the USA. AMOS was used to analyze the hypothesized path model. Results of the path analysis provide support for the proposed structural model. Both perceived organizational support (POS) and police officer's perception of their exchange relationship with their supervisors (LMX) were positively associated with psychological capital. POS, in particular, was found to reduce perceptions of red tape and police stressors. Red tape contributed positively to police stressors and police officers' intentions to turnover. Red tape contributed negatively towards discretionary power. Police officers' levels of psychological capital and perceived discretionary power contributed positively towards their affective commitment, which subsequently led to a reduction to their intentions to turnover. The contribution of the paper is that it identifies the alleviating impact of an individual factor (psychological capital) upon perceptions of negative factors (stress, and indirectly, red tape) and enhances positive drivers of high employee outcomes, such as perceptions of discretionary power and organizational commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]