Abstract
Organizations benefit when employees are motivated and aspiring. Within policing, this is especially important given contemporary philosophies asking officers to take ownership and be proactive. A desire to ascend through the police ranks may inspire greater engagement in the police role. Extant research has noted that promotional aspirations vary among police officers, but unknown at this point are the factors that shape this variation. The current study helps fill this void by analyzing multiple-agency data assessing the impact of demographic, work environment, and organizational factors on patrol officers’ aspirations. The focus is on the importance officers place on being promoted to a higher rank (i.e., valence), as well as their long-term aspirations in terms of projected rank at retirement. The findings reveal that the most consistent predictors are gender, race, education, and experience; job satisfaction; and organizational size. The implications of these findings for police research and practice are considered.
Keywords
Motivated employees are crucial to the success of any organization. Motivation affects achievement in important ways (Atkinson, 1978). Those who aspire to certain career goals are more likely, in the long term, to achieve job-related success relative to those who did not start with high expectations for themselves (for a review, see Hakim, 2002). Within policing, instead of merely “laying low” out of a fear of doing something wrong (Brown, 1988), achievement-oriented officers may expend maximum effort. Motivation is, therefore, integral to the success of modern policing philosophies such as community policing, COMPSTAT, and problem solving (Dabney, 2010; Mastrofski, Worden, & Snipes, 1995). Unlike the studied indifference that characterized the professional model, officers are now encouraged to be proactive, to take ownership over their activities and assigned areas, and to do more than simply meet minimal levels of traditional indicators of production (e.g., citations and arrests).
One aspect of motivation and commitment is the desire to seek ascendency within the organization and, for those who aspire to higher ranks, the belief that promotions are realistically available. Promotional aspirations may motivate patrol officers to distinguish themselves in their daily activities by going above and beyond minimum standards. Aspirations are particularly important among previously excluded occupational members (e.g., females and non-Whites). Although these groups have made inroads, they still represent a distinct minority in police agencies nationwide (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011) and are still notably underrepresented in managerial and executive ranks (National Center for Women and Policing, 2002; Sklansky, 2006; Wertsch, 1998).
The limited research to date has demonstrated that the perceived importance of promotion and ability of promotion to satisfy career and life needs varies substantially across officers (Gaines, Tubergen, & Paiva, 1984; Paoline, 2001; Scarborough, Tubergen, Gaines, & Whitlow, 1999). A handful of studies have suggested that demographic factors may help explain some of this variation (e.g., Archbold & Schulz, 2008); however, these characteristics’ explanatory power over officer attitudes has been modest overall (e.g., Forsyth & Copes, 1994). Most existing studies consider only a limited array of possible contributors to promotional aspirations, and none simultaneously examine the impact of multiple predictor domains. The current study extends prior research by positing promotional aspirations as a combination of officers’ demographic characteristics, their perceptions of the work environment, and organizational characteristics. The end result will be an improved understanding of officers’ desires and expectations for promotions, and potential suggestions for ways in which police executives can encourage positive behaviors through structural incentives.
The Antecedents of Police Officers’ Aspirations for Promotion
Despite the importance of police officers’ aspirations for promotion, very little is actually known about this topic. Most research examining attitudes toward promotions rests on small sample sizes from single agencies, and many study sites are in locales such as Canada (Hogan, Bennell, & Taylor, 2011; Perrott, 1999), Delhi (Sahgal, 2007), Nigeria (Aremu & Lawal, 2009), and the United Kingdom (Coffey, Brown, & Savage, 1992; Holdaway & Parker, 1998). These studies’ findings are of questionable generalizability to police in the United States because of the substantial differences in cultures, police organization and administration, and the role that police play in the overarching structure of social control. Most prior studies also do not analyze promotional aspirations directly, but instead include officers’ perceptions of the importance of and opportunities for advancement as part of larger examinations of officers’ job satisfaction. In spite of these overall limitations in the extant body of literature, some good preliminary groundwork has been laid.
Background Characteristics
Demographic factors have received a fair amount of attention in research into the sources of officers’ attitudes toward their job. Gender is one such factor. Archbold and Schulz (2008) found that some female officers held a perception that in their department, promotions of women are nothing more than public relations maneuvers designed to project the image that the department is progressive and modern. This belief discouraged female respondents from seeking advancement. The women in this study also feared that if they were promoted to a supervisory capacity, they would not receive support from their peers or be respected by male subordinates. Findings regarding gender’s influence on promotion attempts, though, are not uniform. Archbold, Hassell, and Stichman (2010) found that female patrol officers were less likely than their male counterparts to have either sought promotion in the past or to express a desire for promotion. In contrast, Foley, Guarneri, and Kelly (2008) reported that female officers were more likely than male officers to cite opportunities for advancement as a main factor in the decision to pursue a policing career.
Some of the variance in female officers’ beliefs about their futures in the profession may be the product of marital and parenthood status. Studies have found that some female officers feel torn between work and family. Marital status can affect officers’ attitudes toward their department work environments (Stichman, Hassell, & Archbold, 2010; but see Ivie & Garland, 2011) and the challenges that female officers, in particular, face with regard to work–life balance (Archbold & Hassell, 2009; Sahgal, 2007). Their conflicting obligations may lead them to remain in patrol and wait for seniority in scheduling, to seek positions that are considered to be of low status within the organization (e.g., desk assignments) but that promise workable shift schedules, or to resign altogether to accommodate family responsibilities (Archbold & Hassell, 2009; Holdaway & Parker, 1998; Wertsch, 1998; Whetstone & Wilson, 1999). Gender alone, then, may be less important than gender combined with other life circumstances.
Race is another demographic factor that has been studied in the context of officers’ attitudes toward their occupation. Racial minorities may hold different sets of assumptions and beliefs about the promotional process or desirability of advancement relative to their White counterparts. Foley et al. (2008) found that minority recruits were more likely than Whites to report advancement opportunities as a primary reason for opting for a career in policing. A study of Black officers in Canada, however, revealed that these officers believed that discrimination was present in hiring practices and that Blacks are less likely than Whites to choose policing as a career (Perrott, 1999).
Military status and educational attainment may also affect officers’ promotional aspirations. Police agencies may prefer applicants who have attended college, served in the military, or completed a combination of the two, even if not part of formal requirements (Baro & Burlingame, 1999). Prior military service may be a protective factor. Those officers who have served in the military may assimilate more easily into the paramilitary structure of policing relative to those without such a background (see Foley et al., 2008) and could be more resilient to the impact of the negative aspects of the job (Ivie & Garland, 2011). Officers with skills cultivated in the military may also consider themselves good candidates for promotion. Education may have mixed effects on aspirations. On one hand, higher education may enhance aspirations because a college degree is often a prerequisite or preference for promotion. Education may also give officers greater confidence in their ability to do the job well (Kakar, 2003). On the other hand, education can reduce aspirations as more educated, enthusiastic officers may become disillusioned after realizing that their goals and ambitions do not equate with the realities of police work.
Perceptions of the Work Environment
Another arena in predicting officers’ aspirations for promotion that has received empirical attention is the perception of the occupational climate; specifically, officers’ job stress, job satisfaction, and views toward upper management can influence the extent to which they want and expect to be promoted. Bureaucracy, politics, and conflicts with coworkers cause stress (Ortega, Brenner, & Leather, 2007), and stress dampens job satisfaction (Julseth, Ruiz, & Hummer, 2011). Job satisfaction, in turn, can affect organizational commitment (Jaramillo, Nixon, & Sams, 2005). Supervisors’ attitudes and effectiveness can directly affect their subordinates’ behavior (Johnson, 2011) and organizational commitment (Dick & Metcalfe, 2001). To date, no large-scale empirical studies have examined the potential negative consequences of these work environment perceptions on promotional aspirations.
Role ambiguity is another occupational feature that may lessen officers’ aspirations. Employees experience role ambiguity when they are unable to anticipate the outcome of their behavior, or do not know precisely what they have to do to attain a certain goal (Rizzo, House, & Lirtzman, 1970). The effects of role ambiguity may be similar to those of role conflict, the latter of which occurs when a person’s job entails multiple, competing facets. Rizzo et al. (1970) found that both ambiguity and conflict were associated with lower degrees of job satisfaction, and that ambiguity was associated with job-related anxiety. Lambert, Reynolds, Paoline, and Watkins (2004) discovered that role ambiguity significantly reduced respondents’ job satisfaction. In the policing context, role conflict may contribute to burnout (Vuorensyrjä & Mälkiä, 2011) but perhaps not job stress or organizational commitment (Jaramillo et al., 2005). Given the potentially important negative consequences, and mixed empirical findings, an examination of role ambiguity on promotional aspirations is warranted.
Role orientation is also of potential relevance to aspirations. Officers’ role orientations are the normative perspectives that they hold about the proper function of police in society. Role orientations affect officers with regard to the number and types of incidents they get involved in. Role orientation has been the crux of police typologies developed by researchers such as Muir (1977) and Brown (1988). In support of the link between orientation and aspirations, Buckley and Petrunik (1995) identified five groups of officers based on their role orientations and found significant differences in promotional aspirations and expectations.
Of particular interest from an aspirations standpoint is the extent to which officers perceive promotions to be available to personnel who subscribe to order maintenance and community policing roles, as opposed to those who endorse a more legalistic law enforcement model. Historically, officer promotions, as well as training and performance evaluation, has revolved around the law enforcement functions that police perform (Paoline, 2001). Although police administrators have been increasingly advocating community and order maintenance policing, many departments still lack the structural incentives that would make either of these orientations pay off for individual officers in the form of career advancement (Klockars, 1985). Paoline (2001), in a cluster analysis of survey data from patrol officers in two agencies, found that in only two of seven officer groups (i.e., Old-Pros and Law Enforcers) did the majority of members believe it was important to be promoted to a higher rank. Both of these groups held the strongest positive orientations toward the crime-fighting role, whereas the Old-Pros also endorsed order maintenance and community policing functions at the highest intensity of all groups.
Organizational Characteristics
Individual officers’ promotional aspirations may also vary as a function of real or perceived agency characteristics. Prior research and theory suggest three organizational variables that may be pertinent to officers’ promotional aspirations: agency size, the percentage of sworn personnel that is female, and the percentage of sworn personnel that is non-White. With respect to agency size, Dantzker (1997) found that officers in agencies with 100 or fewer sworn personnel expressed the greatest amount of job satisfaction, whereas those in midsized agencies (101 to 500 sworn employees) expressed the least. Those employed by agencies with more than 500 sworn personnel were not significantly different from either of the other groups. The difference between the small and midsized departments may be explained by Idson’s (1990) proposition that employees of smaller agencies evince greater job satisfaction as a result of the enhanced flexibility afforded them by a management structure relatively unencumbered by bureaucracy. Employees of larger, more rigidly operated organizations may, by contrast, feel less freedom, and hence less satisfaction.
A primary reason to believe that the gender and racial compositions of a police organization matter to officers’ promotional aspirations comes from Kanter’s (1977) theory of tokenism. When members of previously-excluded groups finally enter an occupational field, they may experience heightened stress and self-consciousness. Studies of women and racial minorities in policing have suggested that these token officers perceive that they are scrutinized heavily and that they suffer anxiety about the possibility that they will err (Archbold & Schulz, 2008; Gustafson, 2008; Kanter, 1977; Wertsch, 1998).
The stress and pressure that tokens face, however, is theorized to wane as minority racial and gender groups gain numbers and cease to be demographic anomalies (Kanter, 1977). Nationwide, policing statistics indicate that racial minorities constitute 14.2% of sworn police officers, putting them just shy of Kanter’s (1977) 15% tipping point that erases a minority group’s token status; women lag far behind at just 8.3% (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011). In any given police agency, then, it is likely that one or both of these groups has not reached critical mass. With respect to promotional aspirations, increases in the number of women and non-Whites within organizations may lend these nontraditional officers a sense of empowerment and thereby increase their desires and expectations for promotion.
Current Study
Perhaps the most noteworthy takeaway point from the research summarized above is that very little is currently known about police officers’ promotional aspirations. The research that has been done is limited. Many studies are qualitative (Archbold & Schulz, 2008; Hogan et al., 2011; Sahgal, 2007) and, although insightful, do not permit generalization to officers or departments outside the study setting. Those that use quantitative methods tend to employ small sample sizes derived from just one or two departments (Archbold et al., 2010; Foley et al., 2008; Gaines et al., 1984; Scarborough et al., 1999) and are often confined to univariate or bivariate analyses. No existing study has considered a wide array of factors simultaneously. Furthermore, a large proportion of the existing research is based in locales outside the United States (Aremu & Lawal, 2009; Buckley & Petrunik, 1995; Coffey et al., 1992; Dick & Metcalfe, 2007; Hogan et al., 2011; Holdaway & Parker, 1998; Perrott, 1999; Sahgal, 2007; Singer, 1989).
The current study expands on prior research in three ways. First, it includes three predictor domains: officers’ background characteristics, perceptions of the work environment, and organizational characteristics. This provides for a more comprehensive analysis than anything currently available. The simultaneous consideration of multiple domains represents an important step forward in understanding officers’ promotional aspirations. Prior studies have suggested that demographic factors are generally weak, and at times mixed, predictors of officer attitudes (Forsyth & Copes, 1994; Paoline, Myers, & Worden, 2000; Zhao, Thurman, & He, 1999), so correctly-specified models of promotional aspirations would include variables tapping into the occupational and organizational environment. The present study does this.
Second, this study uses a large sample of more than 2,100 police officers from seven departments in different states. The large sample size provides the statistical power to justify several sets of regression models that delve into two different aspects of promotional aspirations: the importance of getting promoted and the expected rank at retirement. This analytic approach is more detailed and comprehensive than those in prior studies. Finally, the multiagency, multistate sample is more representative of medium-to-large police departments nationwide than are samples consisting of just one or two agencies. Combined with the large sample size, the multiple agencies represented in these data mean that the results have an element of generalizability that is not present in past research.
Method
Data
The data for the current study were drawn from three sources. Most of the measures are based on a comprehensive survey of patrol officers collected as part of the Assessing Police Use of Force Policy and Outcomes project, a large-scale, multimethod study across eight police agencies. 1 The 116-item patrol officer survey was aimed at querying respondents regarding their perceptions of use of force, their cultural attitudes and role orientations, the organizational climate in which they work, and their background characteristics. In assessing police promotional aspirations, we concentrate on the latter three elements.
The survey was administered, with the exception of one site, to patrol officers during their roll call sessions before their assigned shift. 2 Trained project staff administered and collected the surveys. The goal was to meet every patrol shift across each of the geographic locales at least twice. 3 Official departmental patrol rosters suggested that, across the seven police departments, 3,147 officers should (i.e., on paper) be at designated roll calls. After accounting for officers’ scheduled and unscheduled days off; court, training, and military obligations; injuries and suspensions; and other absences, there were 2,172 patrol officers physically present to be surveyed, of whom 2,109 participated. This resulted in a response rate of 97.1% of those physically present at the survey’s administration and 67.0% of the official count of patrol personnel.
Our second data source was based on official departmental records. These data were used to construct our gender, race, and experience variables. Across the seven agencies, these data were provided by human resource representatives and were part of our official departmental rosters. Finally, organizational characteristic variables were based on data extracted from the 2007 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The LEMAS survey is designed to systematically gather organizational, administrative, and personnel-related data on state and local general-purpose law enforcement agencies nationwide. The 2007 LEMAS survey was administered to all agencies with 100 or more sworn personnel and a random sample of smaller agencies, with a response rate of 91.8% (U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011).
Variables
Table 1 provides an overview of how independent variables were defined, along with hypothesized relationships to promotional aspirations. Table 2 provides descriptive statistics for the dependent and each of the independent variables. A correlation matrix is located in the appendix.
Description of Variables Predicting Police Aspirations
Descriptive Statistics of All Model Variables
Dependent variables
Two dependent variables are employed in the analyses. Each one taps into a different aspect of promotional aspirations. The first measures promotion valence, or how much meaning officers attach to upward mobility within their department (see Singer, 1989). This measure is drawn from the question “Would you say that, for you personally, getting promoted to a higher rank is. . . .” Respondents were offered a 4-point response scale (i.e., 1 = very important, 2 = somewhat important, 3 = somewhat unimportant, and 4 = very unimportant). The scale was reverse coded so that higher values symbolize greater importance. This is the same measure utilized by Paoline (2001). It captures a personal or affective aspect of aspirations and symbolizes officers’ levels of motivation.
The second dependent variable, expected rank at retirement, comes from the question “What rank do you expect to have when you retire?” Respondents selected from options that included patrol officer, first line supervisor (e.g., sergeant), middle management (e.g., lieutenant, captain, major), and upper management (e.g., assistant chief, chief). This dependent variable is important for two reasons. First, patrol officers’ personal goals may not always match the reality of their situation, as not all departments have promotional opportunities sufficient to accommodate the demand for them. It is useful to measure not only the importance that officers attach to promotion, then, but also their assessments of the practicality of their ambition. Second, this measure allows for a finer distinction of aspirations across the management hierarchy, as some officers may wish to get only to the first stage (i.e., sergeant) whereas others may aspire to more upper-tier executive positions (i.e., deputy chief or chief). This variable captures the intensity of officers’ ambition.
Independent variables
Three sets of independent variables are utilized, all of which have been part of prior empirical examinations of aspirations, or of policing in general (see Table 1 for descriptions of each predictor). The first set includes officer-level background characteristics, specifically: gender (0 = male, 1 = female), race (0 = White, 1 = non-White), education (1 = high school, 2 = some college, but no bachelor’s degree, 3 = bachelor’s degree or higher; treated as dummy variables in the multivariate models, with high school serving as the reference category), experience (number of years as sworn police officer), marital status (0 = not married, 1 = married), and prior military experience (0 = no, 1 = yes).
A second set of independent variables focus on a variety of officer assessments of their primary work environment (i.e., stress, job satisfaction, role ambiguity, top management, and role orientation). All of these perceptual variables were measured on 4-point Likert-type scales (1 = agree strongly, 2 = agree somewhat, 3 = disagree somewhat, and 4 = disagree strongly). On each index, higher values correspond to officers’ stronger endorsement of the characteristic being measured. Exploratory factor analyses showed uniformly high loadings (.70 or greater). Some of the scale alphas fell shy of the generally-accepted minimum of .70. Alpha is sensitive to the number of items within a scale (Cortina, 1993; Schmitt, 1996), so scales with two or three items can have low alphas even if the indices are reliable. To enhance confidence in the measurement validity of the scales, all items were put through confirmatory factor analysis using the Mplus program. The results affirmed the presence of convergent validity (all factor loadings were greater than .5), discriminant validity (all between-factor correlations were less than .70), and satisfactory model fit (comparative fit index = .920, root mean square error of approximation = .049, standardized root mean square residual = .042). The scales were thus confirmed to be statistically appropriate for use in the analyses.
Job stress is an additive index that combines responses to the following three survey items: “I’m usually calm and at ease when I’m working,” “When I’m at work I often feel tense or uptight” (reverse coded), and “A lot of time my job makes me very frustrated or angry” (reverse coded). These items were adopted from Crank, Regoli, Hewitt, and Culbertson (1995).
Officers’ job satisfaction is also an additive index that combines the following three survey items: “I would not consider taking another job” (reverse coded), “I like my job better than the average police officer does” (reverse coded), and “I find real enjoyment in my job” (reverse coded). There has not been uniformity in the measurement of job satisfaction among police officers (for discussions, see Dantzker, 1992; Zhao et al., 1999). The items used here were adopted from Brayfield and Rothe (1951; also see Forsyth & Copes, 1994). They are facet-free questions (e.g., Dantzker & Kubin, 1998) that assess officers’ global levels of job satisfaction rather than delving into specific details (e.g., pay, benefits). They are consonant with the theme of facet-free satisfaction comprising job enjoyment and commitment (e.g., Carlan, 2007; Dantzker, 1997; Johnson, 2012; Lambert et al., 2004).
Officers’ perception of role ambiguity is based on an additive index comprising the survey questions: “There are clear, planned goals and objectives for my job,” “I know what is exactly expected of me,” and “I know what my responsibilities are.” These survey questions were adopted from Rizzo et al. (1970) and are similar to those used in prior studies (e.g., Lambert et al., 2004). They reflect the concept of role ambiguity as arising from officers’ uncertainties about what is expected of them.
An additive index measuring attitudes toward top management is based on three survey items: “When an officer does a particularly good job, top management will publicly recognize his or her performance” (reverse coded), “When an officer gets written up for minor violations of the rules, he or she will be treated fairly by top management” (reverse coded), and “When an officer contributes to a team effort rather than look good individually top management here will recognize it” (reverse coded). These items have been used in past research (Paoline, 2001, 2004; Paoline & Terrill, 2005; Terrill, Paoline, & Manning, 2003). The two items pertaining to rewards for exemplary performance tap into whether officers believe that hard work will pay off (Gaines et al., 1984), whereas the discipline item captures officers’ sense of procedural (in)justice at the organizational level (see Wolfe & Piquero, 2011).
Three measures focus on officers’ perceived role orientations: law enforcement, order maintenance, and community policing. All three role orientation indices were adopted from prior research on the topic (Paoline, 2001; Paoline et al., 2000; Paoline & Terrill, 2005; Terrill et al., 2003). Officers’ law enforcement orientation is based on two survey items: “Police should not have to handle calls that involve social or personal problems where no crime is involved” (reverse coded) and “Most law enforcement officers have to spend too much of their time handling unimportant, non-crime calls for service” (reverse coded). These items reflect the hostility that many officers harbor toward tasks that do not relate directly to the high-adrenaline, crime-fighting stereotype about police work (for a review, see Rabe-Hemp & Beichner, 2011). The order maintenance role orientation index is constructed from the following three survey items: “Law enforcement officers should be required to do something about—public nuisances (e.g., loud parties, barking dogs, etc.)” (reverse coded), “Law enforcement officers should be required to do something about—neighbor disputes” (reverse coded), and “Law enforcement officers should be required to do something about—family disputes” (reverse coded). Officers’ community policing role orientation is measured with three survey questions: “Law enforcement officers should be required to do something about—litter and trash” (reverse coded), “Law enforcement officers should be required to do something about—parents that don’t control their kids” (reverse coded), and “Law enforcement officers should be required to do something about—nuisance businesses that cause lots of problems for neighbors” (reverse coded). The order maintenance and community policing orientations reflect a turn away from the traditional crime-fighting role, arguing instead that police should focus on nuisance offending and noncriminal conflicts that reduce the quality of life in neighborhoods and communities.
The final set of independent variables utilized to explain officers’ promotion aspirations concentrates on characteristics of the police organization. The first captures agency size via the number of sworn personnel. Based on prior research (Dantzker, 1997) exploring differences between mid- and large-sized agencies with respect to officer job satisfaction, we split our agencies into a dichotomous variable (0 = midsize, 1 = large-size). 4 The second and third variables are related to the theory of tokenism (Kanter, 1977), by which the impact of being a racial or gender minority decreases as that group becomes a larger portion of the entire workforce. To this end, the variables percentage non-White sworn personnel within the agency and percentage female sworn personnel within the agency were entered into the models to account for the impact that smaller or larger presences of these minority groups may have on officers’ attitudes toward promotion.
Results
We begin by assessing the impact of the various independent variables on our first dependent variable measuring promotion valence. McKelvey and Zavoina (1975) have demonstrated the inherent weakness of using linear regression techniques with ordinally-ranked (i.e., nonlinear) dependent measures; namely, such models underestimate the effects of independent variables on the dependent measure. As a result, given the ordinal nature of the valence measure, we employ an ordered logit regression model using SPSS Version 19.0, with results presented in Table 3, Model 1. 5 As shown, the overall model is statistically significant, as evidenced by the chi-square statistic with roughly 17% of the variance explained (although caution is required as ordered logit generates only a pseudo-R2 statistic).
Ordinal Regression of Police Aspirations: Promotion Valence and Expected Rank at Retirement
p < .05. **p < .01.
Of the six officer characteristic variables, four are significantly related to promotion valence. In line with past research, female officers are less likely to view job promotion as important when compared to male officers. Non-White officers are significantly more likely to perceive job promotion as important compared to White officers, a finding that supports some prior studies and is inconsistent with others. Education is significant. Compared to officers with a high school education (the reference category), officers with some college education are significantly more likely to covet promotion. Officers who have obtained a 4-year degree or higher have even stronger promotional aspirations, as evidenced by the regression coefficient and significance level. The final significant predictor in this block is officer experience. Officers with more years on the job are less likely to view promotion to a higher rank as important.
Turning to officer perceptions of their work environment, three of the seven measures are significantly related to promotion valence. All three of the variables are positively related to promotional aspirations, as was predicted. Officers with higher levels of job satisfaction, those who are positively oriented toward community policing, and those who hold more favorable views toward top management place a greater importance on getting promoted compared to officers who are less satisfied with their job, those who place less importance on community policing, and those who hold less favorable views toward top management.
In terms of organizational characteristics, both agency size and percentage non-White are statistically significant. Consistent with prior research, officers in the larger agencies view job promotion as less important when compared to those situated in more midsized organizations. In addition, officers working in departments with a higher percentage of non-White officers are more likely to view job promotion as important when compared to officers working in agencies with a lower percentage.
For our second dependent measure, expected rank at retirement, we begin by also estimating an ordinal regression logit model. 6 As illustrated in Table 3, Model 2, in addition to the overall model being significant with nearly 20% explained variance, many of the individual variable effects are similar to the promotion valence model. The same officer characteristic predictors are statistically significant, and in the same direction. The only slight difference is that the some college variable moves from being significant at the p < .05 level to being significant at the p < .01 level. For the work environment perception measures, however, only job satisfaction remains a significant factor, as the community policing and top management variables fail to reach statistical significance. Finally, of the organizational variables, once again organizational size matters. Officers in the larger agencies are less likely to aspire to higher ranks at retirement when compared to those in midsized agencies. However, the percentage non-White measure did not show an effect in this model despite reaching significance in the promotion valence model.
In addition to estimating an ordinal regression logit model, we also employed a multinomial logistic regression model (Aldrich & Nelson, 1984; Long, 1997) since it is plausible that the aspiration predictors may not operate uniformly across the full range of possible retirement ranks. For example, some officers may be more likely to aspire to first or middle levels of management, but not all the way to the top (i.e., chief of police). As such, the ordinal measure (in Table 3) offers a general idea about aspiration intensity but does not allow for separate modeling across the individual ascending ranks. A multinomial model allows us to explore this potential, in assessing the intensity of one’s aspirations to a higher rank (i.e., first line supervisor, middle management, and upper management, as compared to the reference category of patrol).
As illustrated in Table 4, the overall model is significant with nearly 23% of the variance explained. Several interesting findings emerge when examining the independent variable effects. Not surprisingly, based on the previous ordinal regression model, officer gender, race, education, and experience all influence officer rank aspirations. However, the effects vary. For instance, using patrol officer rank as the reference category, we see that female officers are less likely to aspire to any of the supervisory ranks. A similar finding is uncovered with respect to officer experience level (as officers gain more years on the job their interest in promotion to all higher ranks declines). However, both race and education have differential effects. Non-White officers have higher-order aspirations to the middle and upper levels of management. Conversely, officers with college education aspire to first-line and middle management, but not necessarily to upper management.
Multinomial Regression—Expected Rank at Retirement
p < .05. **p < .01.
When examining work environment perceptions, job satisfaction is clearly the most consistent predictor. Officers who are more satisfied with the job aspire to move up all ranks of the organization. The only other two variables reaching statistical significance in this block are role ambiguity and attitudes toward top management. In both cases, there are negative relationships and the effects are at the first line, supervisory level. More specifically, officers perceiving greater role ambiguity and more positive views toward top management are less likely to aspire to promotion at the first line level, but are no different from the other groups in terms of middle or upper management aspirations.
Finally, all three of the organizational variables have some degree of influence on officers’ aspirations to higher ranks, but in varying ways. Agency size shows a consistent relationship across all ranks (i.e., officers in larger agencies are less likely to aspire to any management level compared to officers in midsized agencies). However, officers working in departments with higher percentages of female officers are more likely to aspire to upper-level management than those working in departments with a lower percentage of female officers. Conversely, officers working in departments with a higher percentage of non-White officers are more likely to aspire to first line and middle management, but not all the way to top management.
Discussion
The aim of the current study was to empirically examine the factors that shape variation in patrol officers’ aspirations for promotion. In doing so, we tested the influence of three primary explanatory domains (i.e., officer-level demographic characteristics, perceptions of the work environment, and organizational factors) on the importance officers placed on aspiring to a higher rank as well as their projected rank at retirement. Our multivariate analyses relied on survey data collected across seven midsized-to-large police agencies (N = 2,109) as part of a large-scale, multimethod study of the use of force and relevant outcomes.
Background Characteristics and Promotional Aspirations
The most prominent finding uncovered was the strong impact that demographic factors had on officers’ promotional aspirations. Gender, race, and education all had consistent influences on promotional valence and on the officers’ expected rank at retirement. Such a result stands in noteworthy contrast to the generally null or weak effects that officers’ personal characteristics have on other aspects of their attitudes and behaviors. Past research has found that officers’ gender, race, and age have minimal or no impact on their job satisfaction (Carlan, 2007; Dantzker & Kubin, 1998; Forsyth & Copes, 1994; Hassell, Archbold, & Stichman, 2011), organizational commitment (Dick & Metcalfe, 2007), perceived occupational stress (Davey, Obst, & Sheehan, 2001; Hassell et al., 2011), or role orientation (Paoline et al., 2000). Education, by contrast, has been found to be a fairly consistent predictor of job satisfaction (Dantzker, 1992; Griffin, Dunbar, & McGill, 1978) and the use of force (Paoline & Terrill, 2007; Rydberg & Terrill, 2010; Terrill & Mastrofski, 2002). The present results thus depart from the general trend with respect to officers’ gender and race, and they confirm that education matters. They also suggest that marital status and military service are unrelated to promotional aspirations. This runs somewhat counter to the research indicating that, at least among women, the ability to maintain a healthy relationship with their spouses is a factor to be considered when thinking about whether or not to apply for promotion (Archbold & Hassell, 2009). Prior research on military experience has been equivocal as to whether and how much this background characteristic might affect officers’ attitudes toward their jobs (Ivie & Garland, 2011), so it is not surprising to find it unconnected to promotional aspirations in the present study.
With regard to officer gender, the fact that women, as compared to men, thought promotion was less important and were more likely to believe that they would retire at their current patrol rank is not surprising given the research that has revealed the challenges women still face in the police work environment. Research has suggested that tokenism continues to deter women from wanting and seeking promotions. Women may fear being promoted based solely on their gender (Archbold & Schulz, 2008), suffer a diminished sense of self-efficacy in the job (Aremu & Lawal, 2009), or worry that promotion will mean a new shift schedule that may conflict with family responsibilities (Sahgal, 2007). Of course, it might also be that many women are content with their current position (Holdaway & Parker, 1998).
The primary policy implication of this finding for police executives revolves around identifying the aspects of the organization that may be causing women to shy away from seeking higher ranks. Despite the marked improvements in racial and gender diversity in policing that have occurred over the past few decades, the occupation is still dominated by White males who may present integration obstacles for nontraditional members situated within gendered organizations (Martin & Jurik, 1996). Police executives and midlevel supervisors should be cognizant of the continued pressures that their female subordinates face. They should also be aware of the potential for female officers to be burdened with additional responsibilities (e.g., having to drive across town to search a female suspect and then being responsible for the resulting arrest paperwork; Wertsch, 1998) that can frustrate female officers, make them feel like outsiders, and divert them from other activities that might carry more weight in bids for promotion.
The second demographic factor that was strongly related to both promotional valence and expected rank at retirement was race. Racial minorities valued promotion more than their White coworkers did, and minority status was a significant predictor of the desire to eventually enter middle and upper management ranks. The current data do not offer specific insight into the reasons why minorities in this sample are more promotion oriented, but prior literature suggests that some minorities may go into policing with an eye toward reform. In a study of Black Canadian police officers, Perrott (1999) found that serving the community was the most commonly cited motive for choosing a career in policing. Irlbeck (2008), likewise, reported that most of the Latino/Hispanic officers in her sample were enthusiastic about spending time in Hispanic neighborhoods and talking with the residents there. These officers felt they could serve as role models to and advocates for people who shared their ethnic heritage. Community accountability and the improvement of police−minority relations have been the guiding rationales advanced by police executives in favor of the active recruiting of minorities into policing (Decker & Smith, 1980; Reiss, 1971) and could be many minorities’ motivation for choosing a police career.
The problem for racial minorities who enter policing with a reform mindset, though, is that they may find out quickly that it is difficult or impossible to make an impact at the street level. Examinations of Black officers have revealed the tumultuous relationships that Blacks, as a group, have had with the patrol job (Alex, 1969; Bannon & Wilt, 1973; Black & Reiss, 1967; Fyfe, 1981). Many of them experience the isolation and discrimination that typifies racial tokenism (Gustafson, 2008; Stroshine & Brandl, 2011). Embedded within the framework offered by past research, the present findings may indicate that minority officers see promotion as their best chance to effect real change. This proposed explanation is corroborated by the multinomial results showing that minorities were not significantly more likely than Whites to think they would retire as first-line supervisors such as sergeants; this rank may not be sufficiently administrative to give them an inroad into organizational decision making and policy setting.
If there is something negative happening in patrol that is driving minority officers away (see Alex, 1969; Stroshine & Brandl, 2011), police leaders could identify the problems and craft solutions. If minorities tend to try to leave patrol out of a belief in the futility of the job, executives could seek organizational strategies that would allow dedicated, talented officers of all races who enjoy patrol work to find fulfillment at that level so that they do not feel that the only way they can make a difference is by leaving the street. This could also be beneficial from a community-relations perspective by fostering diversity in patrol, which has been found to be received positively by the public (Weitzer, 2000).
The third demographic factor that significantly predicted promotional aspirations was education. Officers who had attended some college, and especially those who had earned 4-year degrees (or higher), were more committed to getting promoted and had higher expectations for their career trajectories. Education is somewhat bittersweet from a police managerial perspective, as it can have a nonlinear effect on job satisfaction. Better-educated officers may initially be more dedicated and enthusiastic, but if they are not promoted or otherwise given additional responsibility and challenge within a reasonable time, they can lose interest in the job and start seeking employment elsewhere (Dantzker, 1992; Seltzer, Alonè, & Howard, 1996). Past empirical work on education, then, suggests that it would behoove police executives to capitalize on educated officers’ desires for upward mobility and to offer them incentives, challenges, and rewards to encourage them to remain actively engaged in the department. It is worth noting that the effect of education—both of having taken some courses and of holding a 4-year degree—disappeared in the matter of promotion to top management positions. Perhaps educated officers desire to be promoted only insofar as it does not remove them entirely from street-level operations. This finding could be in line with past research showing that educated officers embrace the “people” aspects of policing, as evidenced by their lower levels of authoritarianism (Smith, Locke, & Fenster, 1970; Smith, Locke, & Walker, 1968), greater endorsement of ethical codes (Shernock, 1992), better attitudes toward minorities (for a review, see Roberg & Bonn, 2004), and a tendency to use force less frequently (Paoline & Terrill, 2007; Rydberg & Terrill, 2010; Terrill & Mastrofski, 2002).
The final significant officer characteristic was experience. Consistent with prior literature, experience had a negative impact. Those on the force longer were less likely to value promotion or to see themselves as retiring at ranks higher than patrol. There are three possible explanations for this finding. The first is that these officers were simply satisfied with their current positions. They may have achieved sufficient seniority such that they were guaranteed good shifts or had been officially designated a higher status (and pay grade) within the patrol rank without having to endure formalized supervisory responsibilities. The second explanation is burnout (e.g., Niederhoffer, 1967), which is commonly observed among officers who have been on the job for a few years. Burnout is characterized by cynicism toward the job, distrust of management, and emotional detachment. It makes sense that officers experiencing these negative feelings would not be interested in climbing the bureaucratic ladder. Finally, these officers may have made failed bids for promotion in the past and since relinquished hopes for upward mobility. Although it is good to allow officers who enjoy patrol to remain in that position, and although there is not much that can be done if particular officers are simply not suited for promotion, police executives should heed researchers’ calls for keeping line officers sharp, engaged, and motivated by constantly offering them new tasks and responsibilities (Famega, Frank, & Mazerolle, 2005).
Perceptions of the Work Environment and Promotional Aspirations
In terms of our work environment predictor domains, three variables emerged as significant, though only one (job satisfaction) exerted a consistent impact on all of the dependent variables. This finding adds a unique contribution to the existing literature on job satisfaction, as this is the first study showing that satisfied officers are more likely to value promotion and seek advancement. If police executives wish to instill achievement-oriented—as opposed to avoidance-oriented (e.g., Atkinson, 1957)—motivation in their line personnel, they must first convince these employees that the agency values its employees and is a legitimate employer worthy of their respect (see Wolfe & Piquero, 2011).
The other two work environment variables that emerged as significant (community policing role orientation and views toward top management) had sporadic effects. The community policing role orientation was associated with greater promotional valence, but not with officers’ expected retirement ranks relative to those holding law enforcement role orientations. Order maintenance role orientations, on the other hand, were not associated with either the valence or intensity of aspirations. This seeming contradiction may be explained by evidence from the police culture literature indicating that certain officers hold favorable views toward community policing and toward sergeants and district commanders, whereas officers who lean toward order maintenance are more distrustful of those in the upper ranks (Paoline, 2004). In addition, community policing advocates tend to see the rigidly-hierarchical and multilayered bureaucracy of the typical police administration as being contrary to the organizational structure that is necessary for genuine implementation of community-oriented police service delivery (Maguire, 1997; Maguire, Shin, Zhao, & Hassell, 2003). In the present study, community-oriented officers may have felt that moving into the upper ranks would help them accomplish their community-based mission by giving them the opportunity to restructure the administrative and operational style of the agency.
The finding that positive attitudes toward top management were associated with greater promotional valence seems intuitively logical since officers may desire to be part of a group they admire. That these attitudes were negatively associated with aspirations for first-line supervisory positions may be explained by the fact that given the survey item’s explicit mention to “top” management, perhaps these officers were not content to settle into positions that are only one step up from patrol. Of course, this does not explain the absence of a significant effect on management attitudes toward promotion to middle or upper management. Further research could help elaborate on this finding.
Organizational Characteristics and Promotional Aspirations
Of the three organizational characteristics, agency size and the percentage of sworn personnel that was non-White emerged as statistically significant, though percentage non-White had a weak effect on valence and affected only two of the three promotional rank areas. This latter finding might be support for the critiques lodged against Kanter’s (1977) tokenism theory as being overly concerned with the numerical aspect of minority status. Tokenism may be better viewed as a cultural variable embodying the tensions between White males and the “outsiders” (women and minorities) whom they see as threatening their status and prestige (Stichman et al., 2010; Yoder, 1991). The results for agency size were consistent with prior literature showing that officers in larger agencies experience less job satisfaction relative to those working in smaller departments (Dantzker, 1997). The bureaucracy and extensive “red tape” that characterize many larger departments can contribute to boredom and frustration among line officers (Idson, 1990).
Officers in larger departments may place a lower premium on promotions for a few reasons. First, line staff in large agencies may not want to be promoted because they see the higher ranks as being laden with paperwork and administrative minutia (see Archbold et al., 2010). Second, these officers may feel a discouraging sense of anonymity because of the size of the force and the difficulty in garnering recognition when one is part of such a large group. Third, drawing from prior literature on job satisfaction (Dantzker, 1997), large bureaucracies may erode officers’ autonomy, restrict the range of activities they can do, and impose rules that can seem arbitrary. This finding does not lend itself to any easy policy implications for police executives; however, it offers support for scholars who have contended that the paramilitary, rigidly-hierarchical organizational structure of police departments must be decentralized and delayerized for community and problem-oriented policing to be fully implemented (Maguire, 1997). The present findings suggest that police departments that are organized in this way could also potentially enhance officers’ promotional aspirations.
Study Limitations and Directions for Future Research
Although the current study allowed for a more comprehensive examination of police aspirations, it is not without its limitations. First, our outcome measures (i.e., promotional valence and expected rank at retirement) assessed police aspirations from an attitudinal perspective. That is, we asked patrol officers how important they thought it was to be promoted to a higher rank, as well as their future intentions with respect to their position within the police hierarchy. What we do not know, based on the research presented here, is whether or how this plays out behaviorally. For example, will non-White, college-educated, and more satisfied patrol officers actually apply for promotion to a higher rank(s) at a greater probability than their White, high-school-educated, and unsatisfied peers? Quite simply, we do not know. Police researchers, and social scientists in general, have failed to find consistent empirical connections between one’s attitudes and one’s behavior, based largely on improper measurement of attitudes, behaviors, or both (Frank & Brandl, 1991). Recent work has found that patrol officers’ level of endorsement of traditional police culture (an attitude) statistically predicts behavioral differences in the use of force (Terrill et al., 2003) and traffic stop searches (Paoline & Terrill, 2005). Future research, ideally longitudinal, could tease out the potential way(s) in which attitudinal aspirations for promotion translate into differences in behavioral attempts to move upward through the police hierarchy.
A second limitation of the current research is that we were able to tap only a limited number of work environment perceptions. In many respects, given the lack of well-established statistical models of police aspirations, the included measures were exploratory. Although our work environment measures were more successful in explaining promotion valence, we found that they exerted little statistical power in predicting future rank aspirations of patrol officers. Future research should continue efforts to tease out relevant components of the work environment beyond what was presented here. For example, perceptions of promotional success rate, based on one’s own experiences or vicariously through others’ attempts, might have collateral consequences such as producing a “police strain” analogous to Merton’s (1938) theory of crime causation. Moreover, although our measures were grounded in previous police research and met acceptable thresholds for convergent and discriminant validity, future work should continue toward better specification of these indices above and beyond the three (or two) items used in our measures.
Finally, although the current research fills an empirical void by utilizing multivariate statistical models to identify the predictors of patrol officer aspirations, it raises further questions about why certain correlates matter. That is, why are officers of some demographic groups less likely to value (or see themselves) moving to a higher rank in the police hierarchy? Is it a function of lacking motivation, or is it a product of (perceived) blocked opportunities? Future work, based on structured qualitative interviews, could supplement the quantitative work presented here, and could go beyond the patrol rank population to study first line supervisors, middle managers, and upper managers. In doing so, researchers could disentangle when aspirations are developed, when they might be the most powerful, and when they decline. This might help explain, among other things, why a college-educated officer at the patrol rank has aspirations to move up in rank, but not to the upper management level.
In sum, the present study offers an original analysis of municipal patrol officers’ promotional aspirations. The data were quantitative and the sample was large and comprised multiple departments, thus permitting a degree of generalizability not present in prior research on this topic. The results offer several avenues that police executives and managers can pursue to avoid the pitfalls of a personnel force governed by an avoidance or lay-low mentality and can instead motivate officers to set, and attain, personal and professional achievements. Promotional aspirations can be part of an overall program to ensure high-quality policing nationwide.
Footnotes
Appendix
Pearson’s r Correlation Matrix
| Variable | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Female | 1.00 | |||||||||||||||
| 2. Non-White | .03 | 1.00 | ||||||||||||||
| 3. Education | .05** | −.05** | 1.00 | |||||||||||||
| 4. Experience | −.03 | −.05* | −.10** | 1.00 | ||||||||||||
| 5. Military experience | −.15** | .07** | −.13** | .06** | 1.00 | |||||||||||
| 6. Marital status | −.22** | −.05* | −.02 | .14** | .06** | 1.00 | ||||||||||
| 7. Job stress | .07** | −.05* | .00 | .01 | .00 | −.04 | 1.00 | |||||||||
| 8. Job satisfaction | −.03 | .00 | −.05** | −.19** | −.02 | −.05* | −.32** | 1.00 | ||||||||
| 9. Role ambiguity | −.04 | −.07** | .12** | .07** | .00 | .03 | .29** | −.35** | 1.00 | |||||||
| 10. Top management | .02 | .07** | −.06** | −.15** | .01 | −.02 | −.14** | .23** | −.39** | 1.00 | ||||||
| 11. Law enforcement | −.03 | −.06** | −.02 | .00 | .02 | −.02 | .21** | −.13** | .12** | −.12** | 1.00 | |||||
| 12. Order maintenance | .09** | .01 | −.05** | .10** | .03 | .08** | −.11** | .13** | −.17** | .12** | −.31** | 1.00 | ||||
| 13. Community policing | −.04 | .05* | −.07** | .00 | −.01 | .02 | −.05** | .13** | −.18** | .14** | −.23** | .49** | 1.00 | |||
| 14. Organizational size | .04* | .06** | .01 | −.08** | −.03 | −.02 | −.02 | .00 | −.05* | .01 | .00 | .01 | .11** | 1.00 | ||
| 15. Percentage female | .03 | .06** | .23** | .04 | −.02 | .04** | −.02 | −.09** | .11** | .00 | −.03 | −.03 | −.03 | .30** | 1.00 | |
| 16. Percentage non-White | .01 | .25** | −.12** | −.12** | .04 | −.06** | −.03 | .09** | −.09** | .02 | .00 | .07** | .06** | .27** | .09** | 1.00 |
Note. See Table 1 for a brief description of the variables.
p ≤ .05. **p ≤ .01.
This article is based on data from the Assessing Police Use of Force Policy and Outcomes Project, supported by Grant No. 2005-IJ-CX-0055 from the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.