Institutional and Organizational Antecedents of Role Stress, Work Alienation, and Anomie among Police Executives

Abstract

This study assessed the idea that pervasive features of the occupational environment adversely affect the working psychology of police executives. These features of the chiefs' occupational environment, it is suggested, overwhelm individual characteristics that in themselves are perceived to have positive effects. Data were provided from nationally based random-sampling surveys of police chiefs and sheriffs. Individual characteristics of interest to police reformers were selected. It was found that measures of these characteristics were consistently associated with positive psychological outcomes. However, when measures of institutional and organizational effects were included, the beneficial outcomes often disappeared.