Does trust in supervisors translate to compliance and cooperation? A test of internal procedural justice among Taiwanese police officers
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865820917996 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Does trust in supervisors
translate to compliance
and cooperation? A test
of internal procedural
justice among Taiwanese
police officers
Shun-Yung Kevin Wang
Department of Criminology, University of South Florida,
St. Petersburg, FL, USA
Ivan Y Sun
Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of
Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
Yuning Wu
Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne State University, Detroit,
MI, USA
Maarten Van Craen
Leuven Institute of Criminology, University of Leuven, Leuven,
Belgium
Kevin Kuen-Lung Hsu
Central Police University, Taoyuan, Taiwan
Abstract
The procedural justice model of policing has gained much popularity in scholarship and
empirical support in democracies, yet research on the procedural justice within police
organizations, particularly the mediating mechanisms connecting internal procedural justice
and officer behavioral tendencies, is rather limited. With an aid of survey data collected from
Corresponding author:
Shun-Yung Kevin Wang, Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA.
Email: ShunYungWang@usf.edu
Australian & New Zealand Journal of
Criminology
2020, Vol. 53(3) 433–453
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865820917996
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Taiwanese police officers, this study tests the connections between internal procedural jus-
tice and officers’ compliance with agency rules and cooperation with supervisors via an
essential element—trust in supervisors. Internal procedural justice was found to be directly
related to trust in supervisors and officer cooperation with supervisor, whereas the associ-
ation between internal procedural justice and compliance with agency rules is mainly indirect
through trust in supervisors. This study concludes with discussing research and pragmatic
implications of findings.
Keywords
Compliance, cooperation, internal procedural justice, management, policing, Taiwan police,
trust
Date received: 9 November 2019; accepted: 16 March 2020
Introduction
Procedurally fair treatments strengthen a mutual trust relationship between supervisors
and subordinates in democratic societies. Drawing upon Tyler’s (1990) procedural jus-
tice model, a large number of studies have empirically supported the importance of
officer fair treatment given in a respectful manner during police–citizen encounters in
promoting public trust and perceptions of legitimacy (Donner et al., 2015; Gau, 2011;
Jackson et al., 2011; Jonathan-Zamir et al., 2015; Sun et al., 2017; Sunshine & Tyler,
2003).Much less attention, however, has been paid to internal procedural justice (IPJ;
i.e., procedurally fair treatments officers received from their supervisors) and its con-
sequences within law enforcement agencies. Rooted in organizational research, a fair
protocol operating within police agencies has been found to increase officers’ job satis-
faction and performance (Haas et al., 2015; Roberts & Herrington, 2013), commit
officers to organizational values (Angelis & Kupchik, 2009), enhance officers’ moral
alignment with supervisors and citizens (Sun, Wu, et al., 2019), buffer the impacts of
negative incidents on officers (Nix & Wolfe, 2016; Wheatcroft et al., 2012), and reduce
police misconduct (Wolfe & Piquero, 2011). Nonetheless, the mechanism between offi-
cers’ perceived IPJ (i.e., treatments received from supervisors) and their subsequent
organizational behaviors remains under-investigated.
Relying chiefly on the work of procedural justice and organizational justice, the
present study tests a conceptual model connecting IPJ received from supervisors and
officers’ compliance and cooperation with agencies and supervisors through the essential
theme of supervisory trust (Van Craen, 2016). Trusting relationships in the working
environment boost efficiency of operations as a group (Wheatcroft et al., 2012) and
improves the productivity and health of individuals (Gurtman, 1992; McKay, 1991;
Roberts & Herrington, 2013). Built upon previous research that assessed police compli-
ance with organizational rules (Bradford et al., 2014; Haas et al., 2015), this study
specifically examines whether and to what extent that officers’ compliance with organi-
zational policies and rules and cooperative behaviors connect to the procedural justice
that officers received from supervisors through the level of trust they have in
supervisors.
434 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 53(3)
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