| dc.description.abstract | Recent police stress literature has consistently asserted that organizational aspects
of work, rather than operational ones, are identified by officers as being the most
stressful. Exposure to perceived workplace stress can culminate in burnout, a state of
diminished well-being and functionality. Although studied among police populations, no
attempt has been made to examine the link between burnout and the perceptions of
officers regarding chronic exposure to both organizational and operational aspects of
police work. Positive perceptions of work experiences have also been found to influence
employee behaviour at work, specifically organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB),
extra-role discretionary behaviours that contribute to overall organizational efficiency.
The purpose of the present study was to examine the degree to which police officers
appraised organizational and operational facets of work as stressful or uplifting, and to
investigate the relationships among such appraisals and burnout and OCB, respectively. In
order to do so within an integrated framework that addressed a conceptualization of stress
as a process occurring within the person-environment nexus, the moderating effects of
coping style and personality were considered. Officers from the Thunder Bay Police
Service and the Northwest Region of the Ontario Provincial Police completed self-report
measures of these variables. Whereas negative appraisals tended to depend on the
frequency of exposure to the different facets of work, potentially positive organizational
experiences were identified as being more uplifting than operational ones. Some evidence
was found for expected associations among appraisals of work, burnout, and OCB, with
organizational hassles and uplifts being more strongly associated with burnout and OCB,
respectively, than operational ones. Some of the associations were moderated by
disposition and coping style, although not always in expected directions, supporting the
contention that chronic exposure to stress may impact on officer well-being over and
above third variable influences. The study highlighted the importance of considering both
positive and negative appraisals of the working environment in the study of police stress,
and the potential adaptive function of both problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. | |
