Employee Motivations for Police Officers

Police Administration -- Theories of Motivation

Motivating Police Officers

At the beginning of Chapter 9 in the book Police Administration, Gary Cordner (2013) tackles motivational theories for police officers. These theories are the product of Huse and Bowditch, who formulated the four theories of Force and Coercion, Economic/Machine, Affective/Affiliation, and Growth-Open System in the 1970s from the work of others. What follows is a discussion of these theories in relation to policing organizations.

The motivation theories discussed by Cordner (2013) represent models for how managers should view an employee's rationale for showing up to work and working 40 or more hours per week. The most basic and brutal perspective is encapsulated by the force and coercion theory of motivation. This theory assumes that human motivation depends on a natural aversion to pain and punishment that all people experience. No doubt, pain and punishment can be powerful motivators, but as Cordner (2013) points out, using this motivational strategy in the workplace will only be effective in the short-term and the long-term effects are reduced employee morale, minimal productivity, and even organizational sabotage. Clearly, using force and coercion is not the best long-term management strategy a police chief can use; however, as Cordner (2013) points out, police managers may need to rely on force and coercion from time to meet departmental goals, especially when faced with strong police unions or excessive civil service protections.

An equally limited motivational theory is the economic/machine model, which views employees as productivity machines interested only in the economic benefits of employment (Cordner, 2013). According to this theory, police chiefs would simply increase compensation levels to increase officer productivity. Although there may some value to this theory, the obvious pitfall is that many employees show up for work for reasons other than their paycheck. This fact is captured by the affective/affiliation motivation theory, which proposes that the social needs of employees are filled in part by workforce participation. Co-worker camaraderie, a sense of contribution, and feeling appreciated by supervisors all contribute to an employee's motivation for doing a good job.

If the economic/machine and affective/affiliation models are combined then the result would resemble the growth-open system theory of motivation (Cordner, 2013). The term 'open' in this model is meant to imply employees are influenced by their environment, including the environmental factors existing outside the workplace. The term 'growth' indicates that individuals will transition through several levels of need fulfillment depending on whether more basic needs have been met. This 'needs' hierarchy is based on the work of the psychologist Maslow, who proposed the first needs that must be fulfilled are the most basic, such as food, clothing, and shelter. If these needs are being met then an individual will next seek to protect themselves from threats to their physical and psychological health. The subsequent levels, according to Maslow, would be social needs, feeling valued and personal fulfillment, in that order. Since most police officers earn enough to meet their basic needs, most are probably spending time in the upper four levels; however, as Cordner (2013) explains, earning enough to meet one's basic needs does not eliminate this concern from an employee's life. The threat of unemployment is ever present, especially in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008/2009. Compensation levels can also be an important indicator of an employee's worth to an organization, thereby helping to meet the upper need category of 'feeling valued.'