The Distinct Role of Peers and Supervisors in Shaping Officers’ Just and Unjust Interactions with Citizens

Abstract

This study steps outside the dominant supervisor-centric approach to organizational justice to examine the impact of peer officers on both procedural justice and injustice in officer–citizen interactions. Recent scandals over the failure of officers to not intercede or object to a colleague’s misconduct has led to a growing policy and research interest in peer influence, training, and intervention programs. A structural equation modeling analysis on a cross-national survey of officers decomposed the direct and indirect effects of peer procedural justice (PPJ) on anticipated officer just and unjust interactions with the public. The study’s finding that PPJ has a greater impact than supervisory procedural justice on officer anticipated just and unjust behavior suggests that policing studies should expand the modeling of organizational justice to include the role of interactions with peer officers. The outcome also adds to the nascent research seeking to better understand how peer-level interventions can promote procedurally just policing.

Keywords

peer influence procedural justice organizational justice

Introduction

On July 24, 2019, as Cleveland officer John Petkac used a taser without any warning on a taunting bystander, three other officers looked on choosing neither to intervene nor report this misconduct. The “blue wall of silence” on peer officer misconduct is not rare across criminal justice institutions or countries (Dewey et al., 2021; Kutnjak Ivković, 2005). Nevertheless, ever-present cameras and irrepressible social media across the globe have widened the lens on how we perceive police misconduct as not just the actions of the accused officers but also their peer officers at the scene. This has fueled a search among practitioners and researchers on how colleagues can influence procedurally just police–citizen interactions (Aronie & Lopez, 2017; Butler, 2020; IACP, 2021). As part of this greater focus on peer officers, this study proposes a construct of peer procedural justice (PPJ) to determine if an officer’s perception of how they are treated by colleagues impacts their attitudes and behavior on the job.

Recent police scholarship suggests that officer perceptions of their peers may impact officer behavior on the street (Getty et al., 2016; Quispe-Torreblanca & Stewart, 2019; Trinkner et al., 2016), but an independent PPJ measure has not been tested as an antecedent to police–citizen interactions. This study sheds light on this research gap by examining the effect of officer perceptions of their colleagues as part of a larger test of organizational justice on policing outcomes. Specifically, we test whether PPJ, in parallel with supervisory procedural justice (SPJ), influences officers’ perceptions of fairness (external procedural justice) and misconduct (external procedural injustice) on the street.

Our study argues that PPJ—officers’ judgments on their colleagues’ willingness to listen to and respect their views—matters. In line with the SPJ role demonstrated across organizational justice studies on four continents, we hypothesize that when colleagues demonstrate PPJ (e.g., enabling voice and showing respect), officers may model such behaviors in the communities they work and treat citizens in a similar manner. Our analysis decomposes the direct and indirect impacts that PPJ has on officer perceptions of just and unjust police–citizen interactions. The study makes a novel and important contribution to police organizational justice research by adding the hypothesized role of PPJ on self-perceived officer behavior directly and indirectly through psychological states hypothesized from past peer officer research as mediators in the model (Haas et al., 2015; Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2020; Sun et al., 2019; Van Craen & Skogan, 2017).

Literature Review

In seeking to classify the expanding organizational behavior research on the impact of equity and fairness on institutional outcomes, Greenberg (1987) is widely credited with coining the expression organizational justice studies. The term was intended to encompass all the disparate research examining the impact that employees’ perceptions of their organization’s procedures, decisions, and actions has on those employees’ attitudes and behavior on the job. Nevertheless, scholars now largely treat organizational justice as another term for supervisory justice as most researchers limit their analysis to perceptions of the fairness of management (Li et al., 2015).

The study of coworker relations has been a significant part of social psychology studies at work for years with Schneider (1987) pioneering the argument that people make the workplace. In a meta-study of the role of coworker relations on organizational outcomes, Chiaburu and Harrison (2008) found across 161 studies that coworker actions (positive or negative) do impact the attitudes and performance of their colleagues. Though coworker relations continue to appear a part of studies on job satisfaction, absenteeism, and workplace performance, Chiaburu and Harrison (2008) concluded that peers “have been given comparatively less systematic attention” (p. 1097) than supervisors and other parties in the social environment of the workplace.

The role of peers in organizational justice research has been largely confined to studies examining the relationship between officer perceptions of their supervisors (SPJ) and the just or unjust treatment of their peers. The first of these studies examined the influence of the dismissal of peers on employee attitudes toward work (Konovsky, 2000). More recently, the growing sub-field of organizational behavior literature focused on teamwork process models has examined the impact of just supervisors not only on individual employees but also on whole workgroups (Li et al., 2015). In a test of a teamwork model, Cropanzano et al. (2011) first used the term “peer procedural justice” for group-level judgments on how the members of a specific group treated each other in terms of coordination and communication on their joint work that predicted project completion outcomes. Nelson et al. (2019) recently failed to support the hypothesized role of Cropanzano’s peer justice concept as a mediator between just supervisors and employee trust in colleagues.

Tyler et al. (2007) were early advocates for adopting a PPJ indicator in policing research. As in the wider organizational behavior canon, policing researchers have found peer employees can influence misconduct (Folger & Krass, 2000; Umphress et al., 2003). Trinkner et al. (2016) partially addressed Tyler et al.’s (2007) appeal for a peer measure in organizational justice studies by combining test items on PPJ with supervisory justice test items in forming the measure “organizational climate” as an antecedent to policing outcomes. Nevertheless, Trinkner et al. (2016) did not test the independent effects of a PPJ measure in their model and a gap in our knowledge on whether PPJ independently impacts policing outcomes remains.

Peer Procedural Justice

The impact of peers on officer attitudes toward the public was the primary focus of some of the most influential descriptive studies in police research (Bittner, 1971; Van Maanen, 1975; Westley, 1970). Nevertheless, contemporary researchers mostly ignore the role of peer officers in modeling antecedents of police–citizen interactions. This study conceptualizes PPJ as the perception of fair treatment by coworkers. PPJ is hypothesized as expressing the officers’ perceptions of their peers’ willingness to listen to the officer’s voice and not treating the officer any differently from their colleagues in their daily interactions. Procedurally, fair treatment by peers is hypothesized to impact police officers’ job-related attitudes and emotions, as well as the procedural justice found in their interactions with the public.

Integrating PPJ Into the Work Relations Framework

Over the last decade, researchers have demonstrated the role of fair supervisors as a predictor of different police outcome variables, including increased job satisfaction, greater trust in the public, lowered job turnover, enhanced officer self-legitimacy, improved public service attitudes, and greater compliance with agency rules (e.g., Donner & Olson, 2020; Haas et al., 2015; Myhill & Bradford, 2013; Tankebe, 2010; Wolfe & Nix, 2016; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). Among these scholars, Van Craen (2016a; 2016b) developed a (work relations) framework to examine the diverse direct and indirect effects of fair supervisors on police outcomes.

Exogenous Variables

In Van Craen’s original framework, SPJ, representing the officer’s evaluations of fairness in their interactions with their supervisors, serves as the sole exogenous variable. SPJ expresses the officers’ perceptions of their supervisors’ accountability, willingness to listen to the officer’s voice, neutrality, and respect in their daily interactions. The early tests of the work relations framework on police departments in Buenos Aires and Chicago supported the direct impact of SPJ, as well as the indirect impact through mediating variables (e.g., trust in citizens, anger, job satisfaction) on fair policing (Haas et al., 2015; Van Craen & Skogan, 2017).

We incorporate PPJ into this work relations framework by positioning PPJ as the second exogenous variable, parallel to SPJ. This integration is centered on the same foundational assumption of organizational justice that internal organizational factors shape officers’ attitudes in their work on the street. As Van Craen and Skogan (2017, p. 8) argued, “officers’ perceptions of supervisory procedural justice not only have a particularized effect on their trust in the people that treated them (un-)fairly, but also have a more generalized effect on trust in other people.” The work relations framework offers an opportunity to examine whether the particularized trust in peer officers has a generalized effect on officers’ attitudes toward the just and unjust treatment of the public.

Intermediary Variables

The work relations framework also hypothesizes that psychological and emotional factors mediate Van Craen and Skogan’s (2017) particularized trust of organizational justice with the more generalized trust demonstrated in positive interactions with the public. Given the lack of previous tests of PPJ in the model, the two mediating variables were chosen based on past organizational justice research suggesting that peers can influence employee perceptions of two psychological states of job satisfaction and occupational stress (Boateng & Hsieh, 2018; Imtiaz & Ahmad, 2009; Lambert et al., 2006).

Past police research further supported the hypothesized role of the two measures as intermediary variables in predicting policing outcomes. Wu et al. (2019) found that police job satisfaction is a significant connector between SPJ and external procedural justice. Similarly, positive peer relations have been associated with reductions in occupational stress (Grossi & Berg, 1991; Stephens & Long, 2000), and stress has been identified as a factor in police behavior (Abdollahi, 2002; Cullen et al., 1985).

Outcome Variables

In proposing his work relations framework, Van and Craen (2016) conceptualized external procedural justice as an endogenous variable predicted by SPJ. This differs from its role as an exogenous precursor of public attitudes in models of the classic Tylerian theory of police legitimacy (Tyler, 1990, 2004). Instead, officers would be asked to agree or disagree with officer behavior toward citizens. Nonetheless, external procedural justice in the work relations framework still reflects accountability, voice, neutrality, and respect in interactions with the public.

Recent studies have begun to demonstrate the impact of SPJ on officers’ judgments on police–citizen interactions. Police studies in Taiwan and the United States found a direct association between SPJ and external procedural justice (Van Craen & Skogan, 2017; Wu et al., 2017). Nevertheless, a direct relationship between SPJ and external procedural justice was not found in other tests of the work relations framework in China and Croatia (Kutnjak Ivković et al., 2020; Sun et al., 2018), where emotional states and other intermediary variables had a critical role in explaining the connection between SPJ and officer behavior.

To best model the full continuum of just policing outcomes, this study’s endogenous variables also include a separate measure of officers’ judgments on unjust police–citizen interactions (external procedural injustice). Policing scholars often refer to procedurally just behavior as the inverse of misconduct in police–citizen relations. This may be lost on the participants in police–citizen encounters who do not necessarily view misconduct as the opposite of positive officer behavior (e.g., listening or behaving with respect in interactions with the public). Though Kaplan (1972) first recommended splitting attitude variables to produce separate positive and negative dimensions, Gilliland (2008) made the case for operationalizing the bidimensional procedural justice construct based on the separate fair and unfair extremes of officer behavior.

Past criminal justice studies of public procedural justice judgments supported separate procedural justice and injustice measures rather than taking for granted that procedural justice also serves as a proxy for misconduct or poor behavior. Worden and McLean (2017) observation study found that behaviors viewed as unjust by the trained observers were overlooked by a plurality of citizens in giving positive evaluations. Reflecting a similar split in just and unjust perceptions, Skogan (2006) revealed that negative officer behavior, in comparison with positive behavior, had a much different impact (not just in direction, but also in significance and effect size) on citizen satisfaction with the police.

External procedural injustice in this study represents officer engagement in belligerent, disrespectful, and sometimes rule-violating approaches toward citizens they encounter on the street. Past research has examined disrespectful or deviant employee behavior as outcomes impacted by perceptions of organizational injustice. For example, in his early organizational behavior studies of private enterprise, Greenberg (1993, 1994); found that perceptions of fair supervisors reduced employee reported behavioral misconduct. Likewise, one of the first tests of the influence of fair supervisors on police behavior found that organizational justice predicted complaints or administrative code violations by Philadelphia police officers (Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). It is important to note that neither of these studies used a low evaluation of procedural justice as a proxy for injustice.

Finally, the contradictory role for peers across past organizational behavior research also was part of the decision to separate the two policing outcome measures. Notably, studies of organizational deviance have focused on the negative impact that colleagues have on misconduct. In the case of policing, the greater support from peers leads officers to be more confident that they themselves will respect “the code of silence” in not reporting or intervening in their corrupt or unjust behavior on the street (e.g., Barker, 1978; Kutnjak Ivković, 2005; Stinson & Liederbach, 2012). On the other hand, some researchers on police institutional reform theorize that supportive peers are critical to influencing their colleagues in adopting fair and respectful policing on the street (e.g., Ingram et al., 2013; Skogan & Hartnett, 1997). Given the limited comparisons of the two divergent endogenous variables, it was imperative to include separate indicators for just and unjust policing to assess if more than one mechanism explains the two outcomes.

The Current Study

Despite the prominent role that peer relations play in criminology and criminal justice theories, scholars have not empirically tested a PPJ measure in shaping officer behaviors. This study proposes to add PPJ to the work relations framework to test the separate roles of PPJ and SPJ on officers’ fairness (external procedural justice) and misconduct (external procedural injustice) both directly and indirectly through the underlying mechanisms of officer psychological states (occupational stress and job satisfaction). See Appendix A for a depiction of the conceptual model of this study.

Using a cross-national organizational justice survey conducted with police officers in two countries—Croatia and Taiwan—we test the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: PPJ has a direct positive effect on external procedural justice and a direct negative effect on external procedural injustice.

Hypothesis 2: PPJ has a positive indirect effect on external procedural justice and a negative indirect effect on external procedural injustice through the mediating factors of job-related satisfaction and stress.

Hypothesis 3: The factors and underlying mechanisms impacting external procedural justice and external procedural injustice may differ.

Method

Study Sites and Data

The role of PPJ in a work relations framework is tested in this study using a police survey collected in the largest regional department in the national police of Croatia and in the national police of Taiwan. The authors chose to test the role of PPJ on a combined Croatian-Taiwan sample to demonstrate the effects of PPJ across diverse democracies. As provided in Table 1, the authors also ran the structural equation modeling (SEM) and effects analysis on the separate country samples and found considerable similarity in the strong role for PPJ and the limited role for SPJ to pursue the larger study.

Table 1:

Separate SEM Results of Total and Indirect Effects by Country

Effects of supervisory procedural justice
Country		External procedural justice			External procedural injustice
Country		β	SE	p	β	SE	p
Croatia	Total	−0.10	0.06	.068	−0.02	0.06	.660
Croatia	Indirect	−0.03	0.03	.277	−0.04	0.03	.152
Taiwan	Total	−0.06	0.06	.313	0.09	0.06	.164
Taiwan	Indirect	−0.01	0.03	.782	−0.07*	0.03	.017
Effects of peer procedural justice
Country		External procedural justice			External procedural injustice
Country		β	SE	p	β	SE	p
Croatia	Total	0.06	0.06	.084	−0.16**	0.06	.009
Croatia	Indirect	−0.01	0.01	.478	−0.01	0.01	.190
Taiwan	Total	0.14*	0.06	.034	−0.24***	0.06	<.001
Taiwan	Indirect	−0.02	0.02	.445	−0.05**	0.01	.009

Note. SEM = structural equation modeling.

p < .05.

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

The completed questionnaires for the Croatian sample were collected in the police stations of metropolitan Zagreb over 2016 and 2018, while the surveys of Taiwan police were collected in New Taipei City in 2015. The study drew upon responses to identical survey items because the authors collected the two sets of data using a shared questionnaire intending to promote a common organizational justice framework (Haas et al., 2015). First, the English survey instrument was translated into Croatian and Chinese, respectively, then translated back into English by local researchers to confirm a common understanding of their meaning. The questionnaire was pretested in the two countries and distributed with minor linguistic adjustments. In collecting the surveys, local researchers in the two countries explained the purpose of the study and emphasized the voluntary and anonymous nature of officer participation.

In Zagreb, the research team distributed questionnaires to police officers from the Zagreb Police Administration at the beginning of their shifts. Out of the 700 questionnaires distributed to police officers in Zagreb, a total of 638 were filled out, leading to a response rate of 91%. In Taiwan, the questionnaires were distributed as part of regularly scheduled police training sessions. A total of 608 surveys were handed out to officers and 590 were returned to researchers for a response rate of 97%. The high response rates are in line with previous organizational justice studies of large police departments in Croatia, Taiwan, and the United States (e.g., Kutnjak Ivković, 2015; Sun & Chu, 2006; Trinkner et al., 2016).

As the distribution of sworn police officers across the two metropolitan regions is not publicly available, we have no means of comparing the characteristics of our sample with the characteristics of the police population in these two locations. In terms of their demographic characteristics, 87.5% of the combined sample’s respondents are male and the majority are patrol officers (56.1%) between the ages of 21 and 40 years of age (62.7%). Those with sergeant or higher ranks composed roughly one-tenth (11.3%) of the combined sample. The study controlled for country, gender, rank, and age because of differences between the two countries. Though the officers in Croatia and Taiwan gave surprisingly similar responses across the survey, the study sought to control for differences in the demographics. Most notably, the Croatian police had 29% more respondents that were 41 years or older and 168% more female officers than the Taiwan sample.

Measures

The PPJ construct operationalized in this study is grounded in the procedural justice literature that has grown from Tyler and Folger’s (1980) transition of the procedural justice construct to police settings. Specifically, we asked officers about the degree to which voice and neutrality described their treatment by colleagues. Voice represents officer expectations that their peers consider their views (P_Voice—I feel that my colleagues listen to me with interest when I have something to tell them). Neutrality denotes officer judgments of PPJ and includes the expectation that colleagues are not biased in their peer interactions (P_Neutrality—My colleagues are as helpful and comradely to me as they are to other colleagues).

To statistically distinguish the four procedural justice factors hypothesized for the model (SPJ, PPJ, external procedural justice, and external procedural injustice), an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was first used to detect the number of latent factors among all items and four factors were identified, corresponding to the four procedural justice constructs (see Table 2). Cronbach’s alpha scores across all six of the model’s latent variables demonstrated adequate reliability.

Table 2:

Descriptive Statistics, EFA Factor Loadings, and Reliability Tests (N = 1,189)

Scales and items	M	Mdn	SD	Range	λ	α
Supervisory procedural justice (1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)						.81
S_Voice—My supervisors show interest in what their officers have to say	3.46	4	1.23	1–6	.69
S_Neutrality—No one from our unit is being favored or purposely treated unfairly by my supervisors	3.75	4	1.32	1–6	.58
S_Accountability—My supervisors are open to proposals and suggestions from their people	3.57	4	1.21	1–6	.77
S_Respect—When making policy choices, my supervisors sufficiently explain why these choices are being made	3.52	4	1.11	1–6	.65
Peer procedural justice(1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)						.69
P_Voice—I feel that my colleagues listen to me with interest when I have something to tell them	4.13	4	0.96	1–6	.72
P_Neutrality—My colleagues are as helpful and comradely to me as they are to other colleagues	4.26	4	1.01	1–6	.73
Job satisfaction(1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)						.85
JSA1—I am satisfied with my job for the time being	3.75	4	1.26	1–6	.80
JSA2—I go to work with enthusiasm	3.69	4	1.22	1–6	.78
JSA3—I find real enjoyment in my work	3.48	4	1.29	1–6	.85
Occupational stress(1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)						.87
OST1—Does it happen that you feel stress at work?	3.88	4	1.21	1–6	.85
OST2—Does it happen that events at work cause you to feel frustrated?	3.57	3	1.20	1–6	.89
OST3—Does it happen in your job that you are unable to attain your own goals?	3.34	3	1.18	1–6	.66
OST4—Does it happen that you are nervous at work?	3.25	3	1.15	1–6	.70
External procedural justice(1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)						.69
E_Voice EPJ1—I take time to listen to the suggestions of citizens with regard to problems that need to be dealt with	3.44	3	1.05	1–6	.73
E_Neutrality—I explain to citizens why the police are focused on some problems more than on others	3.12	3	1.03	1–6	.51
E_Accountability—I explain to citizens why certain actions and measures are necessary	3.28	3	1.08	1–6	.76
E_Accountability2—I explain to citizens why the police require him or her to abide by the law and rules	3.43	3	1.14	1–6	.76
External procedural injustice(1 = strongly disagree; 6 = strongly agree)
EPI1—I use hard language toward citizens	2.08	2	0.97	1–6	.68
EPI3—I assume an intimidating attitude toward citizens	1.94	2	0.92	1–6	.81
EPI4—I treat citizens roughly	1.77	2	0.88	1–6	.80
Control variables
Age category	4.55	4	1.99	1–10
Officer rank	1.58	1	0.76	1–4
Control dummy variables	M	0	1	Range
Female	0.12	.88	.12	0–1
Country/Croatia	0.51	.49	.51	0–1

Note. Loadings (λ) reported are from an exploratory factor analysis. JSA = job satisfaction; OST = occupational stress; EPJ = external procedural justice; EPI = external procedural injustice.

The test items forming SPJ, PPJ, and the intermediary variable job satisfaction were 6-point scales from “totally disagree” to “totally agree.” The intermediary measure for occupational stress, as well as the outcome variables external procedural justice and external procedural injustice, use a 6-point answer scale from never to very often. The study also made use of dummy variables for gender (1 = female) and country (1 = Croatia). The other two control variables of age (1-10) and officer rank (1-4) were categorical variables.

Analytical Plan

After the EFA, two steps of multivariate analysis were performed to test the work relations framework model of police procedural justice and injustice. First, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) estimated and validated the relationships across each latent variable’s key measures. Second, SEM evaluated the relationships between the model’s latent factors. SEM allowed us to decompose the direct and indirect effects involved in these complex relationships with reliable measures of the significance and magnitude of effects (Byrne, 2001). That is, we formally tested the direct and indirect effects of PPJ and SPJ on the outcomes. We estimated parameters using the maximum likelihood algorithm. Both the CFA and SEM were performed using Mplus 8.3 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017).

Results

Common Perceptions Across the Two Agencies

Before delving into the multivariate analysis, we sought to gain a better understanding of the antecedents of the police outcomes proposed in our model using univariate analysis. Officers across the two countries held quite positive views on the procedural justice in their relations with their peers. More than 82% of officers agreed that their peers were impartial and listened to their input. More than 60% of the officers from the two countries viewed their supervisors as procedurally just as well. Nevertheless, perception of SPJ is less positive than that of PPJ. The majority (74%) of respondents across all four SPJ questions either slightly agreed or slightly disagreed with their supervisors’ willingness to listen to officers or explain the reasons for their intervention. Among those with stronger views, there were more favorable SPJ evaluations than unfavorable. For example, 20% of the officers suggested that their supervisors were regularly interested in their views, compared with 8% of officers who responded that their supervisors were never interested in their views.

Nearly, half of the sampled officers (47.5%) reported stress on the job (OST1), while more than 37% indicated they lacked enthusiasm for their work or were not satisfied with the job (JSA1, JSA2). Finally, a quite concerning finding was that less than 40% of officers were supportive of behavior categorized as procedural justice in their interactions with the public. On the other hand, fewer than 10% of officers reported that they engaged in behavior categorized as external procedural injustice, notably, treating citizens roughly (EPI4) or assuming an intimidating attitude toward citizens (EPI3).

Just Peers’ and Supervisors’ Impact Across Variables in the Model

As a first step in the multivariate analysis, a CFA was used to confirm the factor structure suggested by the EFA. The goodness of fit measure for the CFA suggests an adequate fit of hypothesized model to the data (χ² = 380.61, df = 169, p < .001; root mean squared error of approximation [RMSEA] = .03; comparative fit index [CFI] = .98; standardized root mean squared residual [SRMR] = .03). The CFA also provided us with factor correlations between the latent factors (Table 3). There were no relationships that exceeded the moderate range of correlation that would raise discriminant validity issues. Specifically, the correlation between PPJ and the traditional organizational justice antecedent variable of SPJ was .41, justifying the separation of SPJ and PPJ into two constructs rather than combining them in a unidimensional organizational climate index. Similarly, the weaker correlation between external procedural justice and external procedural injustice (−.11) supported the need to account for the separate roles of just and unjust policing outcomes in the model.

Table 3:

Variable Factor Correlations From CFA (N = 1,189)

Variable	SPJ	PPJ	JSA	OST	EPI	EPJ
Supervisory procedural justice (SPJ)	–
Peer procedural justice (PPJ)	.41	–
Job satisfaction (JSA)	.46	.34	—
Occupational stress (OST)	−.40	−.35	−.50	–
External procedural injustice (EPI)	−.03	−.17	−.13	.23	–
External procedural justice (EPJ)	.05	.11	.08	.08	−.22	–

Note. Confirmatory factor fit: χ² = 380.61, df =169, p < .001; RMSEA = .03; CFI = .98; SRMR = .03. RMSEA = root mean squared error of approximation; CFI = comparative fit index; SRMR = standardized root mean squared residual.

As the second step in the multivariate analysis, we employed an SEM model to evaluate the relationships between the two organizational climate variables (SPJ and PPJ), the two job-related psychological variables (occupational stress and job satisfaction) and the two outcome variables (external procedural justice and external procedural injustice). Overall, the model fit the data well (χ² = 9,701.40, df = 270, p < .001; RMSEA = .041; CFI = .955; SRMR = .036).

Direct Effects

The SEM analysis found that compared with SPJ, PPJ was the dominant direct precursor to officers’ anticipated just and unjust policing outcomes (Figure 1). PPJ demonstrated the hypothesized direct, positive effect on external procedural justice (β = .15, p = .006), and direct, negative impact on external procedural injustice (β = −.16, p < .001). The analysis did not reveal a direct relationship between SPJ and the outcome variables of external procedural justice or external procedural injustice.

Figure 1:

SEM Analysis of Model

Regarding the other direct effects, PPJ was significantly linked to occupational stress (β = −.20, p < .001) and job satisfaction (β = .18, p < .001) in the hypothesized directions. Similarly, SPJ was positively associated with job satisfaction (β = .39, p < .001) and negatively associated with occupational stress (β = −.34, p < .001). Job satisfaction was significantly associated only with external procedural justice (β = 0.12, p < .001), while occupational stress impacted both external procedural justice (β = 0.19, p < .001) and external procedural injustice (β = 0.09, p = .03) in the hypothesized positive directions.

Regarding the control variables, age was associated with both external procedural injustice (β = −.19, p < .001) and job satisfaction (β = .10, p = .03), with older officers being less likely than younger officers to engage in procedural injustice in citizen interactions and more likely to report higher job satisfaction. Officer rank also affected the outcomes, with the lower ranked officers being less likely to engage in external procedural justice (β = −.14, p = .02) and reporting lower occupational stress (β = −.08, p = .03). Gender had a positive impact on external procedural injustice (β = .06, p = .04), with male officers more likely to engage in procedurally unjust behavior toward citizens. Finally, Croatian officers were more likely than their Taiwanese counterparts to report lower occupational stress (β = −.33, p < .001), modestly more likely to be satisfied with their job (β = .7, p = .03), and less likely to engage in procedurally unfair practices toward citizens (β = −.31, p < .001).

Indirect Effects

What cannot be determined by the model’s direct-effect coefficients alone is the degree that PPJ and SPJ indirectly impacted the two police outcomes. For this reason, we conducted a formal mediation analysis to decompose the direct and indirect effects of just peers and supervisors on external procedural justice and injustice (see Table 4).

Table 4:

Total, Total Direct, Total, and Specific Indirect Effects of SPJ and PPJ (N = 1,189)

Variable	External procedural justiceβ (SE)	External procedural injusticeβ (SE)
Supervisory procedural justice (SPJ)
Total effects	−.02 (.04)	−.03 (.04)
Total direct effects	−.03 (.05)	.04 (.04)
Total indirect effects	−.02 (.02)	−.04* (.02)
Specific indirect effects
SPJ → job satisfaction → outcomes	.04* (.02)	−.02 (.02)
SPJ → occupational stress → outcomes	−.06*** (.02)	−.03** (.02)
Peer procedural justice (PPJ)
Total effects	.13** (.04)	−.19*** (.04)
Total direct effects	.15** (.05)	−.16*** (.01)
Total indirect effects	−.02 (.01)	−.02* (.01)
Specific indirect effects
PPJ → job satisfaction → outcomes	.02* (.01)	−.01 (.01)
PPJ → occupational stress → outcomes	−.04** (.01)	−.02* (.01)

p < .05.

p < .01.

***

p < .001.

The mediation analysis found that PPJ had a significant total effect on external procedural justice (β = .13, p = .006), based entirely on PPJ’s positive direct effect on external procedural justice (β = .15, p = .005). PPJ does not have a significant total indirect effect on external procedural justice, despite two significant, specific indirect effect paths. That is, although PPJ affects external procedural justice through the linking mechanisms of job satisfaction (β = .02, p = .03) and occupational stress (β = −.04, p = .009), these two mediating relationships are opposite in direction and counter each other out. Meanwhile, despite SPJ’s strong direct effect on the two mediators, SPJ had no significant total or total indirect effect on external procedural justice. Like the results for PPJ, SPJ exerted significant, specific indirect effects on external procedural justice through job satisfaction (β = .04, p = .04) and occupational stress (β = −.06, p < .001). The opposite directions of these indirect paths render the total indirect effects nonsignificant.

PPJ also had a significant total effect on external procedural injustice (β = −.19, p < .001), based largely on the direct effect (β = −.16, p < .001) and also marginally on the indirect effect (β = −.02, p < .04). PPJ’s only significant, specific indirect impact on external procedural injustice was through the occupational stress mediator (β = −.02, p = .04). SPJ did have a modest yet significant indirect effect on external procedural injustice (β = −.04, p = .03), mainly through the same occupational stress mediator (β = −.03, p = .03).

In brief, the study supported H1 expectation that PPJ would directly raise officer external procedural justice and reduce officer external procedural injustice. Partially supporting H2, PPJ had a modest, significant indirect association with EPI but no significant indirect connection to external procedural justice. Finally, H3 is supported because of the varying pathways linking each of the two organizational justice factors to external procedural justice and external procedural injustice.

Discussion

Folger and Cropanzano (1998) observed that justice holds people together, whereas injustice drives people apart. Certainly, a decade of police research has demonstrated that organizational justice impacts officer–citizen interactions. This study’s introduction of PPJ into an organizational justice model found PPJ had a greater influence than SPJ on officers’ self-reported external justice that holds people together as well on officers’ self-reported external injustice that drives them apart. The positive findings for the study’s three hypotheses on the role of PPJ make a strong case for further testing of PPJ as part of police organizational justice models.

Peer Procedural Justice

The SEM analysis sustains the hypothesis that peer justice had both a significant positive impact on external procedural justice and a significant negative direct impact on external procedural injustice. The significant effect of PPJ on officer just and unjust anticipated behaviors supports past studies reporting an independent effect of peer interactions on officer attitudes and behavior (Getty et al., 2016; Ingram et al., 2013). Moreover, the total effects of PPJ on both external procedural justice and external procedural injustice are substantially larger than those of SPJ. These results demonstrated the necessity for PPJ to join SPJ as an important antecedent variable in the work relations models of fair policing.

The finding that PPJ was the stronger predictor of officers’ anticipated just and unjust behavior supports the nascent effort to broaden the antecedent measures in organizational justice models. Specifically, the addition of PPJ can provide a more accurate and complete representation of the whole of an agency’s organizational climate. Moreover, the distinct impacts of PPJ and SPJ on policing outcomes and the lack of statistical convergence between the two factors in the analysis suggest researchers should test their models with an independent PPJ measure to better understand the divergent roles of SPJ and PPJ.

The study’s support for the last research hypothesis that external procedural justice and external procedural injustice represent different outcomes to the officers surveyed suggests the need for further development of organizational justice models that capture what appear to be independent positive and negative procedural justice judgments. PPJ and SPJ had quite different impacts, direct and indirect, on the two policing outcomes. Future research should continue to pursue the conceptual and statistical distinction between external procedural justice and external procedural injustice outcomes and evaluate the different factors and mechanisms that account for the divergent outcomes.

Policy Implications

In a tragic 2020 incident that reverberated around the globe, two rookie officers assisting a more experienced officer in holding down a dying George Floyd, stated they sought to ease up but were not listened to by the veteran officer Derek Chauvin (Condon & Richmond, 2020). The incident echoes decades of police research that has revealed a thin blue line across more than two dozen countries regarding the (lack of) willingness of officers to stand up to peer misconduct (see Klockars & Kutnjak Ivković, 2004; Kutnjak Ivković, 2015). With the exponential growth in security cameras, police body-cameras, and bystander smart phones leading to more and more videos of similar police misconduct (Ariel et al., 2016; Sandhu, 2016), greater attention will focus on not just officers directly involved but colleagues who either remain silent or are ignored by peer officers.

Contemporary police research has largely ignored the potentially positive impact of peer officer roles on police behavior on the street and has been focused nearly exclusively on negative influences of peer interactions. The finding that PPJ has a significant impact on officer self-reported just and unjust behavior supports further the argument for the introduction of the PPJ construct in models of organizational justice. Moreover, the significance of PPJ raises a larger question on the continuing gaps in our knowledge of the multifaceted influence of peers in an agency’s organizational culture. Gaps that may limit insights into developing a positive role for peer officers in police accountability.

Past organizational justice research suggests that agencies benefit from adopting participative and transactional leadership styles associated with fair policing (Peacock et al., 2021; Wolfe & Piquero, 2011; Wu et al., 2017). As a result, this study supports past findings and expands the existing policy prescription by suggesting that police reform should not only target the selection and training of just supervisors but also focus on the development of healthier peer interactions. By cultivating values like open communication and equality in their organizations, police chiefs can play an important role in the reshaping of the set of assumptions, values, and norms that guide not only supervisor but peer behaviors that help promote positive police behaviors on the street.

Limitations

The limitations to this study should be acknowledged. First, the analysis is based on cross-sectional data. This assumes that supervisor and PPJ precede the mediating and outcome variables in time, but cross-sectional data do not offer the prospect of testing the direction of causality. Second, as with most survey-based analysis, this study did not observe officers’ behavior toward citizens but measured officers’ self-reported attitudes toward the treatment of the public (i.e., anticipated behavior). This means that a social desirability bias may have influenced some answers. Future studies should incorporate mixed methods to facilitate observed behavior and longitudinal data to assess the key relationships over time (see Mastrofski et al., 2010).

This study was part of a cooperative scholarly effort to move organizational justice studies beyond the narrow confines of a few English-speaking countries, but the findings were not intended to be generalized beyond the two large regional departments surveyed in Europe and Asia. Nevertheless, national and longitudinal surveys of officers are rare, and this study offered an uncommon opportunity to test an important addition to the current organizational justice frameworks on thousands of officers responding to identical questions on two sides of the globe. The findings should be replicated across a wide sample of police agencies. Long suggested by the United States and European researchers examining fair police organizations, PPJ is finally empirically tested and its prominence highly supported.

Footnotes

Appendix

ORCID iDs

Robert P. Peacock

Ivan Sun

Robert P. Peacock, PhD, is the 2019 recipient of the Michael C. Braswell/Routledge Outstanding Dissertation Award. He is an Assistant Professor at Florida International University. He has spent more than two decades managing U.S. Department of Justice overseas training assistance programs prior to transitioning to academia. His research is primarily focused on the training and integrity of enforcement personnel in police and cybersecurity institutions.

Yuning Wu is Professor and Graduate Director in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Wayne State University. She obtained a doctoral degree in Criminology from the University of Delaware. Her research is focused on policing and criminological theories. In 2015, she received the Dorothy Bracey/Janice Joseph Minority and Women New Scholar Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and a Junior Faculty Award from Wayne State University Academy of Scholars.

Sanja Kutnjak Ivković, PhD, is Professor at the School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University. Her research focuses on police integrity and police accountability. She recently published a coauthored book Police Integrity in South Africa (2020) and a coedited book Exploring Police Integrity (2019). Her research has appeared in Policing & Society, European Journal of Criminology, and Policing: An International Journal.

Ivan Sun, PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware. He received his PhD in criminal justice from the State University of New York, University at Albany. He has published more than 120 refereed journal articles, including over 80 pieces on mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. His recent books include Race, Immigration and Social Control: Immigrants’ Views on the Police (2018), Policing in Taiwan: From Authoritarianism to Democracy (2014), and The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Criminology (2014).

Marijan Vinogradac is a psychologist, whose research interests include comparative criminology in Southeast Europe, organizational psychology, and Croatian migration.

Valentina Pavlović Vinogradac is sociologist in the Zagreb City Administration, Ms Vinogradac’s research interests include comparative criminology and human rights in Southeast Europe.

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