Promoting a culture of fairness: police training,procedural justice,and compliance

Objectives

Academics and practitioners alike are concerned about the potential “double-edged sword” of procedural justice. In the organizational context, procedural justice is expected to increase compliance with supervisors. However, blind, unthinking, or “hard” compliance with supervisors, may lead to anti-organizational behavior and misconduct. The present study examines the moderating effect of a police recruit cultural training program on the relationship between procedural justice and compliance with police supervisors. We expect that providing cultural training will moderate the relationship between procedural justice and “hard” compliance.

Methods

Participants were police recruits at the Queensland Police Academy who were randomly assigned to an experimental (Voice 4 Values) or control condition (business-as-usual training) upon entry into the academy. Recruits in both groups were surveyed pre- and post- training to capture perceptions of procedural justice and compliance with supervisors.

Results

Results suggest that procedural justice mattered less for predicting “hard” or unthinking compliance among the recruits who received the Voice 4 Values cultural training package, compared to those who did not receive the training.

Conclusions

We conclude that while procedural justice may be of interest to policing organizations, it is important that it is not used as a tool to encourage unthinking compliance. We find cultural training reduces the effect of procedural justice on unthinking or “hard” compliance.

     

Nonincremental Policy Change: Lessons from Michigan's Medicaid Managed Care Initiative

Studies of policy implementation have focused primarily on incremental policy change, yet policy change is sometimes implemented quickly and comprehensively. Such is the case with Michigan's recent implementation of a statewide Medicaid managed care initiative. This article analyzes Michigan's quick implementation and highlights the importance of political support, organizational change, and a supportive policy and administrative environment in affecting successful implementation. It also notes the price paid for quick implementation—namely, stakeholder dissatisfaction, mistakes, and lack of public involvement.     

Chinese dragon or toothless tiger? Regulating the professional competence of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners

The escalation in popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has begun to stimulate regulatory responses to ensure the safety and efficacy of different modalities. The Therapeutic Goods Authority in Australia oversees a scheme of listing and registration, said to lead the world. Established CAM courses now confer recognised bachelor degrees. Victoria has recently regulated Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners, through the Chinese Medicine Registration Act 2000 (Vic), modelled on legislation regulating medical practitioners. CAM is being integrated into conventional medical (especially general) practice, and calls for the "mainstreaming" of CAM are increasing. Integrating CAM, however, involves a critical incoherence, well illustrated by the Victorian legislation. Clinical competence can only be properly assessed against standards established through scientific validation. If CAM systems, which purport to offer alternatives to science-based medicine, are regulated through conventional instruments, they may well be relinquishing the very identities which set them apart.     

District planning and local government in Kenya

In many ways the autonomy of local government in Kenya has declined in the last twenty years. After reviewing the various tendencies towards centralization which can be observed and looking at some of the reforms which have occurred, the current district planning approach, known as the District Focus for Rural Development Strategy, is analysed in order to explore the roles played within it by local government. Policy documents and other official statements are discussed, as are the attitudes of political and administrative leaders. Whilst the new strategy is supposed to bring about greater decentralization, it has led to a continuing reduction of local government autonomy especially for the county councils. However, pessimistic conclusions can not be easily drawn. Local government is not likely to be abolished, the new approach may enable it to play a more effective planning role—even if a less autonomous one—and there are other forms of local participation (especially through community development) which partly compensate for the erosion of formal local government.     

The National Press and Party Voting in the UK

The difficulty with resolving the classic problem of whether newspapers influence voting patterns is self-selection: readers select a paper to fit their politics, and newspapers select particular types of readers. One way round this chicken-and-egg problem is to compare the voting behaviour of individuals whose politics are reinforced by their paper, with those who are cross-pressured by their paper, and to compare both with those who do not regularly read a paper. Using the British Household Panel study to analyse voting patterns in 1992 and 1997, this study suggest that newspapers have a statistically significant effect on voting, larger for Labour than Conservative sympathizers, and larger for the 1992 than the 1997 election. The broader implications of these findings for British politics and democracy are discussed.