NCJ Number
141934
Date Published
1990
Length
128 pages
Annotation
This book guides law enforcement administrators, supervisors, and managers in improving the work environment by identifying and eliminating the organizational stressors on police officers.
Abstract
Rather than focusing on the individual-centered, clinical, illness model of stress, this book promotes an approach for managing law enforcement stress through the use of an organizational health model. The premises underlying the model are that personal stress is often the symptom of an unhealthy workplace, and the best stress management approach is to identify the organizational stressors, eliminate them, and work in harmony with the employees in the development of a healthy workplace environment. The first chapter provides an overview of the literature on law enforcement stress from a clinical perspective, including the effects of common stressors in law enforcement work. This is followed by a chapter that examines the stressors internal to the organization, i.e., the management practices and organizational functions that cause stress and their impact on performance. A third chapter analyzes the implications of higher education regarding law enforcement stress, and another chapter presents management strategies for the development of a healthy workplace. One appendix contains selected samples of mission statements and organizational values that have been developed by a wide range of police agencies. In another appendix, techniques are presented that have proven effective for encouraging upward communication within police agencies. A third appendix presents a model stress management training curriculum that provides participants with an overview of police stress and focuses on an organizational health model as its remedy. 90 references