Case Study: Captain Edith Strong Essay

Captain Edith Strong is the first woman to be promoted to captain. She has spent 18 years working through the ranks to achieve this high of a position in her agency and she is familiar with the internal problems her agency has a problem with. All the patrol officers believe they have a heavy workload and complain that they go from one incident to the next and spend too much time generating reports. The patrolmen fell that they have to cut corners to get their preliminary investigations completed because the time consumed generating reports. The patrol officers do not interact with each other except during shift change and roll call. A survey shows that the job is viewed as dissatisfying, morale is low, response time is long, the number of citizen-initiated complaints is up, more officers are filing disability claims, and employee turnover is exceeding projections. Captain Edith Strong is now in a position to make a difference to create a solution program that meets the needs of the d epartment and the employees (More, Vito, & Walsh, 2012,). WHAT PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH DO YOU BELIEVE CAPTAIN STRONG SHOULD TAKE IN CARRYING OUT THIS PROJECT Abraham Maslow’s progression theory and hierarchy of needs for police administrators need to identify unfulfilled needs of their subordinates, this will help explain why police officers perform they way that they do. Then the management must create incentives that will make their officers perform better than marginally. Police administrators need to recognize what is needed by subordinates for personal growth such as job self esteem, encouraging self development, and career advancement (More, Vito, & Walsh, 2012,). David McClelland’s Acquired Needs Theory came up with three basic needs in human beings. One that human beings have a need to be successful. Two humans have a need for socialization individually and in social groups. Three human beings also have a need for or strive for power in controlling the behavior of others. These three needs exist in all people all of the time and these three motivate people to act on their jobs (More, Vito, & Walsh, 2012,). Typically most employees who become police officers want to help people, have a high value of community service because they know that being a police officer they will not become rich. The police officer does not dislike the work that they do but the opposite, they like the physical and mental effort it takes to do the job. Police officers excursive self direction and most time self control in order to complete their jobs. In this case study there is no motivation, potential for development, and capacity to assume responsibility in their agency because of the workload each patrolman has to achieve the agency’s goals (More, Vito, & Walsh, 2012,). WHAT SPECIFIC MOTIVATIONAL STRATEGIES WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THAT SHE SHOULD CONSIDER Job enrichment is designed to counteract the negative impact of specialization by building motivating factors into job content. Captain Edith Strong should use job enrichment as one process of her tools for motivational factor on the job. The captain can remove some controls the  patrolmen have like allowing patrolmen to work together while still maintaining accountability and responsibility of each person for his/her own work. Grant additional authority to the patrolman in their area of responsibility. Encourage autonomy in decision making as it relate to the job being done. Allow more difficult tasks to be performed by patrolman not normally handled said patrolman when they have the help they need. Last the captain should assign patrol officers into highly specialized tasks to become subject matter experts (More, Vito, & Walsh, 2012,). E.R.G. THEORY IS NOT APPLICABLE IN THIS INSTANCE Clayton Alderfer’s Existence, Relatedness, and Growth needs (ERG) would not work in the instance with Captain Edith Strong problem. ERG theory is built on three principles, need-escalation principle, Satisfaction-progression theory, and frustration-regression principle. The satisfaction-progression principle is when a lower level need has been satisfied the employee will desire for satisfaction for a higher level need and currently with Captain Strong’s agency there is not any time for a patrolmen to go after a higher level need. Since there is not any time to achieve higher level needs, there is no expectation of getting help with their preliminary investigations to stop cutting corners to get their work done then the patrolman have to be satisfied with the lower level needs of just getting their job done and going home (More, Vito, & Walsh, 2012,). HOW JOB ENLARGEMENT OR JOB ENRICHMENT IS APPLICABLE IN THIS CASE When it comes to job enlargement the authors view is that more officers need to be hired if the budget can support it. More officers need to be used to take some of the stress of not being able to communicate with likeminded people on the job. Having someone else to work with will make the paperwork get done more quickly while preliminary investigations can get the necessary time needed to be completed properly without cutting corners. Having a larger pool of patrolman means that Captain Strong can assign some of the patrolmen into more demanding positions to become specialized (More, Vito, & Walsh, 2012,). Job enrichment will only work in this case study when all the patrolmen are working together and not independently. When the patrolmen are able to help each other out on their assignments, report writing, and their preliminary investigations then they will able to get their work done in a less stressful manner giving each patrolman a feeling of satisfaction. Each employee will feel satisfied at the end of the day when they have help to complete their tasks which will give them a feeling of well being which is job enrichment (More, Vito, & Walsh, 2012,). Reference More, H.W., Vito, G.F., & Walsh, W.F. (2012). _Organizational Behavior and Management in_ _Law Enforcement_ (3rd ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database