Chapter 7- Police Administration Flashcards
Leadership
Two definitions of leadership:
all definitions incorporate the notion that the essence of leadership is interacting with and influencing others
Explain and elaborate on “leading and managing are co dependent skill sits”:
Effective administrators must be both leaders and managers.Leadership and management skills sets are usually not co-equal. Instead they represent a mix. It seems perhaps inevitable that leaders subconsciously or through introspection gravitate toward assignments that are a good match with their skill set.
Provide key characteristics and activities of effective senior police leaders:
- Ethical behavior
- Trustworthy
- Legitimacy
- Being a role model
- Communication
- Decision making
- Critical, creative, innovative and strategic thinking ability
- Create a shared vision
- Engendering organizational commitment
- Caring for subordinates
- Driving and managing change
- Problem solving
Rational- legal authority vs. power
Rational legal authority is a grant of authority made by an organization to a position, the incumbent of which uses it for fulfilling his/her job responsibilities. Some power accompanies a grant of authority, for example, to give a verbal or written reprimand, but to a large extent power is a grant made by the led to the leader. Authority and power are related but separate concepts.
Compare socialized and personalized power needs
Socialized power can be defined as wanting/needing to have a positive impact on a police department’s administration and operations. In contrast, personalized power needs include the need to be in control for selfish, self aggrandizing reasons.
The three components of the leadership skill mix:
The skill mix has three components: 1) Human relations, 2) Conceptual, and 3) technical. Human relations skills involve the capacity to interrelate positively with other people and are used at all levels of a police department.
Conceptual skills include the ability to understand and to interrelate various parcels of information that seem unrelated, or those for which the meaning or importance is not immediately apparent.
Technical skills are essential to doing a job and vary by level within a police organization.
At each of the different levels of an organization, the mix of these skills and their content varies.
For sergeants, human relations and technical skills are more important than conceptual skills.
At the top management levels, conceptual skills are most important.
State 2 Great Man Theories:
Carlyle believed unusually gifted people made history, while Hegel believed that it was events that produced the “great man”.
Define the Big Five:
The big five was the result of efforts to find a small number of broad traits into which many specific traits can be placed.
Describe “organizational citizenship behavior”
OCB consists of subtle things employees do voluntarily and are not required to do or expected but contribute to overall organizational effectiveness.
Distinguish amount authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership:
authoritarian: “my way or highway”
democratic: “let’s talk about it
laissez-faire: whatever- takes a passive, hands off posture–only reluctantly do they use the authority of their position.
Down’s Four Leader Styles:
- Climbers, strongly motivated by power and prestige needs to invent new functions for their unit, especially if they have not already preformed elsewhere
- Conservators, who have a bias of maintaining things as they are (ex: longer attached to job- attached to job security)
- Zealot’s behavior stems from two sources, their narrow interest and the missionary-like energy they focus almost exclusively on their special interest.
- Unlike zealots, advocates promote everything under their control (appear highly partisan to outsiders, but within their units they are fair and impartial.
Contrast station house sergeants and street sergeants
station house sergeants are said to stand behind their officers, whereas street sergeants are said to stand beside their officers.
Three organizational forces Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s contingency theory:
- Forces in the leader, such as his/her value system
- Forces in the subordinate officers, like their knowledge, skills, and experience
- Forces in the department, for example, a practice of not arresting non-persistent panhandlers.
State the “central thought” or the “essence of House’s Path-Goal Theory:
The essence of House’s Path-Goal Theory is that for leaders to be effective, they must engage in leader behaviors.
Define the “merit” of a police officer in Leader-Member-Exchange Theory
The merit of an officer is contingent on how well he or she fits with the values, attitudes, preferences, and outlook of the leader
