An empirical exploration of the dimensionality of inter‐employee trust in police organizations

Abstract

Purpose

The police force in the USA is a unique organizational type that combines structural traits of military and professional bureaucracy. The specifics of police work require high levels of trust between employees on all hierarchical levels. This paper aims to construct a viable measurement tool that will help law enforcement administration diagnose and change the state of trust in their agency.

Design/methodology/approach

Exploratory factor analysis along with multiple regressions and reliability calculations are used in order to understand the elements comprising the structure of organizational trust in a police agency. The data were collected from a large law enforcement agency in the Midwest of the United States of America.

Findings

The organizational trust questionnaire (OTQ) is comprised of six dimensions: individual propensity to trust others; individual propensity to distrust others; perceptions of co‐workers' character and behavior; friendships outside of the organization; perceptions of superior's behavior; and procedural justice. The reliability scores for the six dimensions range from α=0.691 to α=0.957; the overall instrument reliability score is α=0.907. Differences in trusting behaviors between sworn and civilian employees are examined.

Research limitations/implications

The current study is limited to the analysis of one organization. Although existing structural and cultural similarities across comparable police agencies make it possible to suggest that the instrument will be equally applicable in other law enforcement organizations, further data collection across additional agencies is necessary to extend the findings to a fully inferential level.

Practical implications

The OTQ is both an assessment and a diagnostic tool that can be used by practitioners to get a quick snapshot of the trust level in their agency at a given time and gain a better understanding of how particular dimensions contribute to the overall level of trust.

Originality/value

Despite the existing interest in organizational trust across multiple academic fields, trust within law enforcement has not been deliberately studied. The paper opens a new venue for understanding how the specifics of police work affect the formation of trust on all hierarchical levels and toward the organization itself.

Citation

Ralston, E.S. and Chadwick, S.A. (2010), "An empirical exploration of the dimensionality of inter‐employee trust in police organizations", Policing: An International Journal, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 431-451. https://doi.org/10.1108/13639511011066845