Massacre at Waco: Biker Violence and Police Overreaction

The research is a qualitative content analyis of articles identified through Google alerts and Proquest searches one year before and two years after the deadliest biker violence in US history. The police biker shootout left 9 dead--four by police--and 18 wounded. The arrest of 177 persons--173 male and 4 females--from a variety of motorcycle clubs appears to be an overeacten by the police. The research examines the public policy issue: Law enforcement authorities made a Type 1 error during the mass arrests thereby misclassifying many of those arrested, causing severe consequences to innocent persons and committing numerous civil rights violations.     

Justice and Effective Cooperation

Justice is important because it facilitates effective cooperation and thereby enables superior forms of social coordination. On the bilateral level people are better able to resolve conflicts if they can refer to shared justice rules. When third parties are needed to facilitate cooperation they can function more effectively when the parties agree that they are exercising their authority through fair procedures;? finally, people are more willing to engage with collectivities when they evaluate them as acting through a shared conception of justice.? Overall justice is central to facilitating cooperation and the key to its success is that there is a consensus about what is just among those involved. This is equally true of the relationship between people who are negotiating about the price of a product or service and people who are members of large-scale communities, organizations, or societies.     

The role of authentic leadership on healthcare Street-Level Bureaucrats’ well-being during the pandemic

This study uses Conservation of Resources Theory, to explain Street-Level Bureaucrats’ (SLBs) workplace behavioural responses to threats to their well-being. We examine whether authentic leadership within street-level organisations positively impacts employee well-being by increasing SLBs’ perception of personal resources, and reducing their perceptions of work harassment. The research design comprises a survey that solicited quantitative and qualitative data from 163 healthcare SLBs working in Australian hospitals during the pandemic in April 2020. Analysis of the means indicates low levels of satisfaction with leadership and low levels of well-being for SLBs. The structural equation modelling findings show that poor leadership is associated with higher levels of work harassment and lower levels of employee well-being. Qualitative data support these findings. As healthcare workers were already listed as over-represented in the stress-related workers compensation statistics, one strategy may be to improve the level of organisational support by upskilling managers in authentic leadership behaviours with the aim of increasing their perception of support so as to increase employee well-being. This will benefit employees and their families, and the community they service.

Points for practitioners

• Street-Level Bureaucrats (SLBs) have been increasingly experiencing the public sector gap (demand outstripping supply of resources) because of the dominance of the austerity-driven managerialist paradigm.
• The recent COVID-19 crisis amplified the severity and impact of the public sector gap causing increased perceptions of work harassment and reductions in SLBs’ well-being.
• However, SLBs with high levels of Psychological Capital had a natural buffer in place to protect their well-being, and as such, they perceived less work harassment and erosion of their well-being.
• The way forward is to complement the austerity-driven managerialist paradigm in management decision-making with authentic leadership behaviours focused on maximising the well-being of SLBs and the public.