Police Officer Job Satisfaction: Does agency size make a difference?

Abstract

One of the more interesting aspects of employment is job satisfaction. Despite the growing body of knowledge on job satisfaction, much of it has been limited to certain occupations such as factory workers, teachers, and social workers. More recently, the literature has begun to expand in its coverage and includes policing, as an occupation, in which job satis faction can have impact and influence behavior. However, despite the occupation under study, there are common job, worker, and organization al characteristics attached to the work environment that one can explore in a particular occupation. The area that appears to receive limited atten tion is organizational characteristics. This paper addresses one such orga nizational characteristic, size, and whether there is a difference in per ceptions of job satisfaction among police officers from different size municipal agencies. The data was collected from fourteen municipal agencies using a specifically designed job satisfaction questionnaire. The results suggest that organizational size does make a difference on offi cers' perceptions of job satisfaction.