DISCERNING POLICE ORGANIZATIONAL CLIMATE: A CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

Police personnel are endowed with the most vital and pious tasks apart from maintenance of law and
order during pandemic. For the effective discharge of the onerous responsibilities conducive
organisational climate is a prerequisite. Given the unprecedented times of pandemics, police forces
across the world have given the most important contributory services to handle the situation. On par with
medical professionals and other frontline warriors in healthcare, police forces certainly deserve greater
appreciation for their committed efforts to implement the necessary protocols among the public to
contain the spread of the pandemic. Police and security forces are among the public servants with the
most responsible tasks and are at the risk of exposure to continuous stress throughout their careers. Unlike
many other positions, there are very few chances of risk aversion to staying away from stress for the police
forces. Many times, such stress leads to negative outcomes and takes a toll on the mental health of the
police personnel. Stress in turn leads to further deterioration of work and family conditions, driving the
individual towards high vulnerability. From a broader perspective, if higher proportions of the police forces
are facing intolerable levels of stress, the law and order situation of the country would be at risk. Hence,
it is important to study and regularly measure the exposure levels of police officers to stress and its
relational with organisational climate. Organisational climate has a direct bearing on psychological and
mental health of police personnel. Organisational culture and climate interplay with each other and
determine the behaviour and stress of police personnel. In this context, an attempt is made to examine
the various forms of research carried out on the organisational climate and its impact on occupational
stress levels across the world. This paper comprehensively reviews and summarizes the studies on
organisational climate and stress-related research among police forces. The paper brings out several
studies to light and compares and contrasts the tools used to measure the effect of organistional climate
on occupational stress. The study also advocates the areas having scope for further research in the
context of organistional climate and its impact on stress.