Police commitment and its relationship to superior’s transformational leadership style : a study on the Malta police force

Abstract

This research explores the organisational commitment (OC) of police officers in the Malta Police Force (MPF) and assesses its relationship with subordinates’ perception of their direct superior’s transformational leadership (TL) style. The officers’ OC was examined through the theory by Allen and Meyer (1990) using the Three-Component Model (TCM) Commitment Survey (Meyer and Allen, 1991, 2004). The police officers’ perception of their superior’s leadership was assessed through the transformational leadership theory by Bass (1985) using the Global Transformational Leadership (GTL) instrument by Carless, Wearing and Mann (2000). The data was collected over 24 days, between November-December 2014, through an online survey questionnaire conducted among 1200 police officers from the various branches and districts who had an MPF’s email address available in their name. The response rate was 16% and data collected from the 193 police officers was analysed quantitatively using the IBM SPSS Statistics V22.0 software package. Major findings reveal a positive police officers’ perception of their immediate superior’s transformational leadership, a positive affective commitment (ACS) and a negative continuance commitment (CCS) towards the MPF. Spearman correlation analyses indicate that subordinates’ perception of their direct superior’s TL was significantly and positively related to the ACS of subordinates. Research results also reveal that officers’ clarity of the organisational mission has a positive relationship with their ACS. Responses show that a degree of uncertainty and ambiguity, about the MPF’s mission statement exists amongst police officers. This shows that there is a need for the mission statement to be formally documented, distributed and communicated with all the police officers. Other findings include the relationship between the demographic variables and the police officers’ ACS. These findings are interpreted and discussed as implications for the MPF’s management of human resources. This is followed with future research recommendations that further supports police commitment and effective leadership. This research underscores the importance of effective leadership and that it will be beneficial for the MPF’s police officers to participate in a leadership development programme adapted for the various ranks. This research substantiates the literature in that transformational leadership can contribute to higher ACS which consequently has a positive effect on the subordinates’ output.