Training Warrior-Cops or Guardian-Officers? Law Enforcement Agencies’ Leadership Styles Matter

Abstract

In effort to enhance our understanding of the historical and currently problematic relationship between law enforcement agencies and Black communities in the United States, we seek to extend the research on the warrior-cop vs guardian-officer conceptual framework by leveraging management and organizational psychology literatures. Specifically, we integrate leadership style and institutional resentment theories to develop and test a model to examine how law enforcement agencies’ authoritarian leadership style (LEA ALS) and law enforcement agencies’ ethical leadership style (LEA ELS) impact law enforcement agency (LEA) resentment via Black people’s perceptions of abusive police behavior. In a field study of African-Americans and people of African or Caribbean descent in America, we find that while LEA ALS is positively related to Black people’s perceptions of abusive police behavior, LEA ELS is negatively related to Black people’s perceptions of abusive police behavior. In turn, Black people’s perceptions of abusive police behavior is positively related LEA resentment. Consequently, Black people’s perceptions of abusive police behavior mediated the relationship between LEA leadership style and LEA resentment. Theoretical contributions, practical implications, and future research are discussed.