Swedish Police Personnel: Work Climate, Work Engagement, and Organizational Commitment

Background: Different facets of work climate explain how employees perceive their job, workplace relations, supervisory styles, development horizons, and satisfaction. Work climate, in turn, is followed with several organizational outcomes and job attitudes such as organizational commitment and work engagement. Organizational commitment is predicting on-the-job behaviour, turnover intentions and employees health. Positive psychology scholars propose work engagement as a protective factor against burnout as it identifies itself as a mediator in the motivation process that turns job resources into superior positive work attitudes. Swedish police personnel consist of various job positions with completely different tasks, responsibilities and work environments. These differences may result in different perceptions of the work climate they share. Besides, police personnel in diverse job positions may feel different levels of work engagement and commitment. Furthermore, it is worthwhile to investigate what aspects of work climate are playing the main role in making police personnel more engaged and committed towards their work and their organization. Method: Swedish police personnel from four different job positions (police officers, investigators, managers, and non-sworn) participated in three studies (n1=595, n2=353, and n3=307). We investigated differences in (i) police personnel’s perceptions of work climate, organizational commitment, and work engagement in relation to their job positions, (ii) and (iii) aspects of work climate that influence organizational commitment and work engagement. Perceptions of work climate were assessed by Learning Climate Questionnaire which measures seven facets: management relations and style, time, autonomy and responsibility, team style, opportunities to develop, guidelines on how to do the job, and contentedness. Organizational commitment was measured using a questionnaire based on the three-component model and distinguishes between affective, continuance, and normative commitment. Finally, work engagement was assessed by Utrecht Work Engagement Scale, which measures three engagement dimensions: vigour, dedication and absorption. Results: (i) Analysis of variance revealed that all work climate aspects, except for management relations and style, are perceived significantly different among various job positions. Further post-hoc analysis showed that police officers score lower than others in all of these work climate facets. Police officers, also, scored lower in affective and continuance commitment dimensions. Regarding work engagement, while police officers scored lower in absorption, non-sworn personnel scored the lowest level of vigour and dedication. (ii) and (iii) Furthermore, structural equation modelling showed that opportunities to develop, amongst other aspects of the work climate, plays the most significant role in predicting affective and normative commitment, and the vigour and absorption dimensions of engagement. Surprisingly, contentedness showed negative association with dimensions of work engagement. Conclusions: (i) These results denoted that police personnel working under different job positions perceive their work climate differently, and feel dissimilar levels of organizational commitment and work engagement; perhaps as a result of neglecting specific needs and expectations that each job position may require. (ii) and (iii) Moreover, development opportunities and prospects of being capable of undertaking more qualified tasks seem to be the most important factor in keeping police personnel committed to their organization and engaged with their work.