Does being a HERO really make a positive difference to police officer Street Level Bureaucrats’ well-being?

This study examines the extent to which being a HERO (i.e., Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism) impacts police officer Street Level Bureaucrats (SLBs) operational and organizational stress, and their subsequent perceived well-being. The sample comprised 220 Italian and 228 English SLBs, and hypotheses were tested using the Analysis for Moment Structures (AMOS) v.27 Structural Equation Modelling software. The findings depict that HERO explains approximately a fifth of SLBs’ organizational stress, and together, their variance accounted for approximately two-thirds of SLBs’ well-being. Finally, as one personal psychological resource for helping police officers cope with stress in the workplace, the findings indicate a need to upskill SLBs in HERO to better negotiate bureaucratic processes without becoming more susceptible to negative stress-related outcomes

Comparing the impact of authentic leadership on Italian and UK police officers’ discretionary power, well-being and commitment

© 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited. Purpose: This paper compares the impact of leadership behaviours on the discretionary power, and well-being, and affective commitment of police officers from Italy and the United Kingdom (UK). In contrast to Italy, UK is an example of a core-New Public Management (NPM) country that has implemented reforms, in turn, changing the management and administration of public organizations. Consequently, it is expected that there will be significant differences in the behaviour of police officers. In particular, the paper examines the antecedents and outcomes of police officers\u27 well-being. Design/methodology/approach: The study involves collecting and analysing survey data using Structural Equation Modelling from 220 Italian and 238 UK police officers. Findings: There was a significant path from Leadership to Discretionary Power to Employee Well-being to Affective Commitment – at least for the Italian sample. The UK sample does not have a significant link between leadership and discretionary power. Discretionary power was similarly low for both groups as was affective commitment. Authentic leadership and discretionary power explained approximately a third of their well-being, particularly discretionary power. Together, directly and indirectly (mediated by well-being), they explained at least a third of police officers\u27 commitment to their organization. Well-being appears to be the key to ensuring effective police officers. Research limitations/implications: The limitation of this paper includes the use of cross-sectional data (Podsakoff et al., 2003). However, a common latent factor (CLF) was included, and several items that were explained by common method variance were controlled, as per George and Pandey\u27s recommendations (2017). Additionally, a Harmon\u27s single factor test was applied to the data. Practical implications: The UK police officers have significantly lower commitment compared with the Italian police officers (non-commitment), and both Italian and UK police officers have less discretionary power and well-being compared with police from the United States of America (USA) police officers and other street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). The findings suggest that the present police leadership behaviours erode rather than supports police officers\u27 discretionary power and well-being, leading to a low organizational commitment. Leadership training will better prepare managers to ensure the well-being of police officers working under conditions of work intensification. Originality/value: The UK police officers have significantly lower commitment compared with the Italian police officers (non-commitment), and both Italian and UK police officers have less discretionary power and well-being compared with US police officers and other SLBs. The findings show that the police leadership erodes rather than supports police officers\u27 discretionary power and well-being, leading to low organizational commitment. Leadership models that enhance employee well-being rather than efficiency targets must be a priority if police are to be prepared to cope effectively with emergencies and pandemics

Network and Financial Reporting

This chapter is in the vein of the network evaluation perspective, believing that it is important for entities belonging to a collaborative aggregation, whatever form they take, to be evaluated as a whole and their performance measured, or at least an attempt is made, because the choice whether to collaborate rests on the need to understand and to take informed decisions (Seiler et al., 2020). In particular, the investigation concentrates on business networks and proposes to consider performance measurement and communication through the fnancial reporting system by adopting the perspective of external stakeholders. In this regard, the problems noted in the literature on network evaluation are taken into consideration and analysed from an accounting perspective and following two different and complementary approaches of analysis, the prescriptive and the descriptive ones (Deegan, 2014; Godfrey et al., 2010). The final aim is to propose an alternative and possibly complementing point of view in network evaluation. The topic of performance evaluation of networks has been addressed by many contributions in the literature over the past years. Among the main issues related to network evaluation, and interconnected between them, are the evaluation criteria and the level of analysis (Sydow & Milward, 2003; Turrini et al., 2010). These two issues raised in the network evaluation literature reflect corresponding aspects of accounting studies that should be conveniently related to each other