The Benefits and Supervisory Styles of Women Police Leaders

• Author: Blake Beaton,Natalie Todak,John A. Shjarback
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15570851211066107
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Feminist Criminology

2022, Vol. 17(5) 619–640

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/15570851211066107

journals.sagepub.com/home/fcx

The Benef‌its and Supervisory

Styles of Women Police

Leaders

Blake Beaton

1

, Natalie Todak

2

, and John A. Shjarback

3

Abstract

While research has identif‌ied four main police supervisory styles, it is unclear whether

the framework accurately represents the supervisory styles of women. We explored

the benef‌its of promoting women in policing and examined their supervisory styles,

drawing on interviews with 38 ranking women. Participants attributed three benef‌its to

promoting women –diversity, people-orientation, and conscientiousness. All 34 who

described their supervisory style fell into one of the four previously identif‌ied cat e-

gories. Most common was innovative (50%), then supportive (32%), traditional (12%),

and active (6%). We link f‌indings to calls for gender diversity up the ranks of law

enforcement.

Keywords

policing, women, leadership, supervision, interviews

The Benef‌its and Supervisory Styles of Women Police Leaders

Quality leadership and f‌irst-line supervision are essential for well-functioning police

departments (e.g., Muir, 1977;Tyler, 2011;Van Maanen, 1983;Wilson, 1968). Police

leaders set administrative policies and organizational priorities, which then set the

1

Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA

2

University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA

3

Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

Corresponding Author:

Natalie Todak, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1201 University

Boulevard, Birmingham, AL 35233, USA.

Email: ntod@uab.edu

overarching tone and culture of departments. Meanwhile, supervisors perform crucial

intermediary roles between upper management and line-level off‌icers (Walker & Katz,

2013) where they are directly responsible for monitoring behavior, addressing ac-

countability and discipline, and reinforcing management’s desired practices. Police

leaders and supervisors, collectively, perform a vital role in placing a check on the high

degree of discretion that front-line staff possess (Skolnick & Fyfe, 1993;Walker, 1993),

which can be problematic given the high stakes of police work where off‌icers can

deprive people of their liberty and take life (Bittner, 1970).

Additionally, a burgeoning body of research is f‌inding how important police leaders

and supervisors are in fostering organizational justice—def‌ined as subordinates’

evaluations of fairness in processes, outcomes, and treatment by supervisors and

leaders (Cohen-Charash & Spector, 2001)—throughout their respective agencies.

Front-line police off‌icers’perceptions of organizational justice have been found to

inf‌luence commitment to their agencies, job satisfaction, productivity, self-legitimacy,

engagement in rule violations, and misconduct (see Wolfe & Lawson, 2020 for an

overview). Therefore, examining how police leaders and supervisors view and perform

their roles is an empirical priority that has implications for organizational eff‌iciency and

impact.

Yet, not all leaders and supervisors are created equally. Instead, there is variation

across supervisory styles (Engel, 2001;Maskaly & Jennings, 2016), which likely

impacts the behavior of the front-line off‌icers under their command (Engel, 2000,

2002). However, prior research on police supervisory styles has been limited by

samples that are overwhelmingly comprised of men. Certainly, this is not surprising

because the vast majority of those occupying positions of power in police organizations

are men (Hyland & Davis, 2019;Shjarback & Todak, 2019). It is nevertheless possible

that supervisory styles vary by gender, although relatively few studies have examined

these potential differences.

If men and women possess different styles and qualities, then the lack of gender

diversity in existing research would limit our understanding of police leadership and

supervision overall and, ultimately, how gender differences in those positions may

differentially affect frontline policing. For example, given the role of organizational

justice for shaping police off‌icer behaviors, it is possible that women leaders/

supervisors—if they do possess more personality traits and exhibit behavior con-

ductive to fostering organizationally just perceptions—may serve as a protective factor

against harmful departmental/sub-organizational culture (Crank, 2004). Further, with

tangible evidence of the differences between men and women in positions of power, as

well as evidence of the possible benef‌its associated with their increased representation

in these roles (i.e., a business case), police agencies may see greater value in gender

diversif‌ication and place a greater priority on promoting and retaining more women

leaders.

The current study addresses the exclusion of women in the research on police

supervisory styles by 1) exploring the traits and skills of a sample of women leaders and

supervisors and 2) examining their supervisory styles, drawing on 39 semi-structured

620 Feminist Criminology 17(5)