View From the Top: Correctional Organization Climate and Managerial Style Related to Work-Related Concerns of Correctional Officers in Two Departments of Correction

• NCJ Number: 107880
• Author(s): P Wickman
• Date Published: 1986
• Length: 43 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, in Orlando, Fla., on March 19, 1986.

Annotation

This study analyzed institutions in the New York State correctional system and a southern correctional system to determine how external pressures due to overcrowding and legal mandates, organizational climate, and management style impacted job satisfaction among correctional guards in the two systems.

Abstract

Data were obtained from site visits to three institutions in each of the systems. Collection instruments included questionnaires and interviews administered to correctional managers, observations, and the administration of the Occupational Concern Scale-Revised to corrections officers. There were clear differences in the extent of overcrowding between the two prison systems and the manner of organizational response to this problem, but the job satisfaction of corrections officers was less related to inmate population density than to organizational climate and managerial style. The organizational climate of the southern system was informal and paternalistic in association with an emerging professionalism reflected in the managers' definitions of officers' work roles. The New York system was more rational, bureaucratic, and impersonal. Regarding management style, the southern managers were more flexible than their New York counterparts. Further analysis will delineate precise differences in officer work attitudes under the two systems. 6 tables, 1 figure, and study instruments.