Date of Award

Spring 5-8-2021

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Education

First Advisor

Dr. David Van Heemst

Second Advisor

Dr. Stephen Lowe

Scholarship Domain(s)

Scholarship of Discovery

Abstract

Since 2015, policing has suffered from negative publicity due to unfortunate and often deadly interactions between police officers and people of color. As a result of these sad events, various programs have been incorporated into many police departments to increase professionalism among officers. One such program focuses on increasing legitimacy by teaching procedural justice concepts to officers. This study examined the impacts of organizational fairness on officers from the perspective of procedural justice. Building on previous research, this study focused on the officers and sergeants employed in two small municipal police departments in the Midwestern United States. Ninety-eight participants from the two departments were recruited and surveyed to test this study’s assumptions. The questionnaire was based on one used by Van Craen and Skogan in 2017. The survey examined participants’ self-reported attitudes and beliefs about procedural justice and their perception of organizational fairness and treatment of citizens. A correlational analysis, multiple regression analysis, and factorial analysis of covariance were used to demonstrate and test the relationships between internal and external procedural justice and the variables associated with fairness in discipline, job assignment, and promotions. This study’s findings suggest that officers who are treated fairly by their organizations have a higher tendency to treat citizens sensibly and judicially, r(87) = .29, p = .005. This study has various implications for policing organizations, and it offers an insight into organizational dynamics in small municipal police departments, which are often understudied.

Comments

Ed.D. Cohort XX

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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