Antecedents and consequences of role perceptions of police officers in Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

Police work involves dealing with several types of social and emotional problems of individuals and groups. Policemen earmarked for a particular division have to be constantly interchanged to perform different roles, from being a crime fighter and guardian of law to social service provider to the needy. In many cases it is the first and only government agency available to citizens and what processes/style police adopt in providing service is also becoming important. An element of ambiguity in goals and objectives of police organisations complicates the things further for policeman on the ground. In India, police is the most critical subsystem of the criminal justice system. Sixty five years of independence and democracy have resulted in changing expectations of citizens from police. Despite attempts to codify some of these changing role expectations, there is still confusion and dichotomy about policeman s role in India. Within the organisation, policemen still largely perceive their role to be prevention and detection of crime and maintenance of order. Police in Madhya Pradesh also shares the colonial past with police organisations in other states. The Western democracies, especially U.S.A., had to confront role perception related issues since 1960sdue to legal and demographic changes .Among these countries there is somewhat clearer perception of policeman s role, especially the service aspect, over the last 50 years. The functional pluralistic model of justice posits that people are (a) Economists, (b) Politicians, (c) Scientists, (d) Prosecutors, and (e) Theologians; and how they reason about fairness at any given time depends on their frame of reference as well as goal states at that given time. This may be applicable to policemen while performing their job also. Mindfulness, Organisational Politics, Personal Political Activity (P.P.A.) are important antecedents to Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (O.C.B.) and Affective Organisational Commitment (A.O.C.). How they influence the abovementioned role perceptions and how all of them together affect the O.C.B. and A.O.C. of policemen, has been studied to understand the strength of relationship between them. Survey was conducted among the police officers of Madhya Pradesh, mainly among middle level officers posted at Indore, Bhopal and Sagar districts. 257 responses were analysed. Results indicate that Novelty Producing aspect of Mindfulness has strong correlation with and is the most important independent variable for Role Perceptions, O.C.B. and A.O.C. Among Role Perceptions, Economist Actual, Scientist Actual and Prosecutor Actual have strongest correlations. Scientist Role Perception, both Expected and Actual, has strongest significance for O.C.B. and A.O.C. Scientist Actual emerges as the most important Role Perception for policemen indicating their desire for certainty in real situations. I.P.P.A.is the independent variable that gets most moderated/influenced by Role Perceptions when all independent variables are considered together for O.C.B. and A.O.C. Among dependent variables Personal Industry and Individual Initiative (both are aspects of O.C.B.) are most dependent on the independent variables. Noticeable differences were observed in terms of Role Perceptions, Mindfulness and P.P.A. between directly recruited and departmental officers, officers with less work experience and more experience and officers with Post Graduate and Bachelor educational qualification.