Contrasting the role of trustworthy versus fair supervisors in organizational justice models of policing outcomes

Though contemporary police organizational behavior scholars often limit their measure of organizational justice to just supervisory procedural justice, this study examines how the additional dimensions of supervisor trustworthiness and peer procedural justice compare with procedural justice in their role shaping police outcomes.

A survey of 638 police officers in Zagreb, Croatia, was used to regress three separate dimensions of organizational justice on key officer attitudes toward their duties.

The authors found that supervisor trustworthiness and peer procedural justice were the dominant predictors of officers' rule compliance and trust in the public.

The findings suggest that police scholars and practitioners seeking to better understand the role of officer judgments on resisting agency reform should consider the precedent in corporate behavior research to specifically test the unique roles of multiple components of police organizational behavior on policing outcomes.