Challenges for Police Leadership: Identity, Experience, Legitimacy and Direct Entry

James Hoggett,Paul White,Deirdre Toher,Paul Redford

doi:10.1007/s11896-018-9264-2

James Hoggett, Paul White + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-018-9264-2

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Abstract

The police service in England and Wales has developed a new approach to police leadership where individuals from outside of the police service can now enter directly to leadership ranks. Previous research identified that officers place great value on being led by someone who has experience of being a police officer. Adopting a social identity perspective, the current paper reports on quantitative and qualitative data about police officer views on direct entry and existing police leadership captured as part of a wider national survey (N = 12,549) of police officers in England and Wales. The paper identifies the importance that shared identity and credibility play in police follower/leadership relationships. It argues that direct-entry police leaders face credibility issues linked to their lack of shared police identity but also that serving officers perceive existing leaders to be poor because they believe they have forgotten what it is like to be a police officer. This paper develops a new theoretical and empirical approach to police leadership utilizing social and organizational psychology theory and research. The paper suggests that if police leaders understand police identity, then they can create propitious conditions within which police officers will follow their leaders.

Highlights

Recent developments to the police service in England and Wales have led commentators to suggest that it is facing some of the biggest and most controversial challenges in the last 60 years (Brain 2013)
Police leadership research appears to be dominated by a focus on individual idiosyncratic leader traits, characteristics, and behaviors (Schafer 2009, 2010), which can be traced to traditional leadership theories and are not reflective of the substantial developments on leadership research and theory that have occurred in the last decade (Dinh et al 2014)
A lower proportion of female officers than expected (n = 1337, 48.7%; 95% Chief Inspector (CI) 46.8 to 50.6%) strongly disagreed that direct entry was a good idea compared to male officers (n = 5283, 55.5%; 95% CI 54.5 to 56.5%)

Summary

Introduction

Recent developments to the police service in England and Wales have led commentators to suggest that it is facing some of the biggest and most controversial challenges in the last 60 years (Brain 2013). Government austerity measures required the police service to find total savings of £2.42bn by 2015 (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary 2013) while a recent comprehensive review of police officer and staff pay and conditions suggested substantial reform to policing was needed (Winsor 2011, 2012). In order to respond to such challenges, police leadership has emerged as a focal point for development. Police leadership research appears to be dominated by a focus on individual idiosyncratic leader traits, characteristics, and behaviors (Schafer 2009, 2010), which can be traced to traditional leadership theories and are not reflective of the substantial developments on leadership research and theory that have occurred in the last decade (Dinh et al 2014)

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