Stress and performance: Investigating relationship between occupational stress, career satisfaction, and job performance of police employees
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to explore the impact of occupational stress on job performance of police employees. We theorized and tested the role of career satisfaction in the relationship between occupational stress and job performance as an underlying psychological mechanism. Primary data have been collected from 271 police employees working at AJ&K Pakistan. Results of this research study have shown that occupational stress is negatively related to career satisfaction, in-role performance, and extra-role performance of police employees. Moreover, career satisfaction mediates the relationships between occupational stress and in-role and extra-role performance of police employees. This research study has called researchers' and policy makers' attention towards an important issue of occupational stress in the police profession. The research will play an important role in compelling the top management, authorities, policy makers, and government officials of police to ponder over the issues of occupational stress aimed at enhancing the job performance including in-role and extra-role performance of police employees.
1 INTRODUCTION
Policing is one of the most stressful professions in public sector organizations around the world (Bano, 2011; Hammad, Awan, Akhtar, & Imdadullah, 2012). Police profession is highly dangerous and vulnerable profession because of several reasons including traumatic events (Naz & Gavin, 2013). Researchers have pointed out police as one of the most stressful occupations around the world (Luo & Ruiz, 2012; Wang, Zheng, Hu, & Zheng, 2014). In Pakistan, police sector is one of the most neglected and ignoring area of research. Scholars and researchers have paid very little attention to conduct studies on police sector in Pakistan (Ullah, Hussain, Alam, & Akhunzada, 2016). It is important to search and find reasons behind the attitude and general behavior of police personnel (Bilal, Tariq, Azam, & Ali, 2009) and to suggest some implications for the policy makers of this profession.
Occupational stress is a world-wide problem for police personnel as Nieuwenhuys and Oudejans (2011) discussed that due to occupational stress, police shooting-accuracy efficiency decreases against opponents. Morrison and Vila (1998) highlighted that annual reports of United States show that during low stress, police shooting efficiency reaches nearly 90% and in stress situations their shooting accuracy is below 50%. Nieuwenhuys and Oudejans (2010) also found in their studies that due to anxiety police efficiency decreases significantly. Khan and Manarvi (2011) discussed that a large number of police personnel have been killed in terrorist attacks in Pakistan after 9/11 incident, which has increased the problem of job stress in Pakistan police. Abbas (2004) suggested that police in Pakistan is the most affected force among other military and para-military forces, which has suffered a lot due to attacks and fight with terrorism. Naz and Gavin (2013) discussed that among the increasing terrorism issue after 9/11, shortage of force is a major problem why police employees are facing severe job stress. She added that law and order situation in Pakistan is worst as compared with its other neighboring developing countries and police force is not only busy in dealing with terrorism issue, but the workload is much high in police profession, which includes activities such as maintaining law and order, dealing with riots and disorder, monitoring VIP movement, and managing security of VIP personnel as well as places (Figure 1).
These concerns make the study of occupation stress among police profession as an important topic of research. Exploring the issue of occupational stress in police profession will help the researchers, policy makers, authorities, and government to think about the stress and its impact in police and to take effective measures to erode this problem. Some recent studies have highlighted issues and problems of Pakistan police and have called for more research in this area (Khan & Manarvi, 2011; Naz & Gavin, 2013; Nisar, Rasheed, & Qiang, 2018). We assume that occupational stress decreases career satisfaction in police, which subsequently decreases their job performance. Our assumptions are consistent with conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 1989), which describes that occupational stress as a resource loss causes several negative outcomes for the individuals in organizations. In our research we take occupational stress as a resource loss, which subsequently causes decrease in career satisfaction as well as job performance of police employees. Our assumptions are also consistent with past empirical research studies, for instance, M. L. Griffin, Hogan, Lambert, Tucker-Gail, and Baker (2010), who found that occupational stress has a negative influence on employee satisfaction and performance. Similarly, Allisey, Noblet, Lamontagne, and Houdmont (2014) conducted their research study in United Kingdom police and found a negative effect of job stress on career satisfaction in police personnel.
Suggesting and testing the impact of occupational stress on job performance of employees in police profession our research make several contributions to literature. For example, this is one of the pioneer studies that investigate the issues related to police personnel in AJ&K Pakistan. A research investigation on Pakistan police is also relevant as recent researchers (Khan & Manarvi, 2011; Naz & Gavin, 2013; Nisar et al., 2018) have called for more research studies in this area. Second, our research model does not only suggest a relation between occupational stress and job performance of employees in police but it also explains the underlying mechanism of career satisfaction. It implies that career satisfaction serves as a mediating mechanism in the negative relationship between stress and performance such that occupational stress is associated negatively with employee career satisfaction, which is subsequently associated positively with job performance in the form of in-role performance and extra-role performance. Third, this study provides a deep insight to the real issues and problems being faced by police personnel, and therefore, this study helps the policy makers and government officials to design policy guidelines, which may help police personnel in reducing the negative impact of their job performance.
2 THEORY AND HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
2.1 Stress, satisfaction, and performance
Occupational stress is an emotional condition resulting from external factors placing too much demand to an individual. Selye (1956) was the first person who discussed and introduced the stress concept. Occupational stress is a recent topic for researchers in organizational studies (Deschamps, Paganon-Badinier, Marchand, & Merle, 2003). Stress is described as a self-perceived unpleasant or bad impact on an individual (Brown & Campbell, 1990). Hammad et al. (2012) discussed that Oxford Dictionary defines occupational stress as emotional state of a person generating from his/her outside or inside environment and placing too much demand on employee. Goodheart, Clopton, and Robert-McComb (2001) described stress as a negative experience among all age groups. Stress can be viewed as tensions, back pain feeling, headache substance abuse, high blood pressure, eating disorder, and especially in terms of bad and poor performance. Bashir and Ismail Ramay (2010) defined stress as a situation which occurs when someone gets or feels burden. They stated that stress is an undesirable state, which any person can suffer from it. Anderson (2003) discussed that stress occurs in each and every large and small organization and workplace. Similarly, Dar, Akmal, Naseem, and din Khan (2011) pointed out that occupational stress is a common phenomenon in all sphere of life.
Stress is unavoidable on workplaces, employees who feel stress are more likely to be less motivated, less satisfied, show poor performance, and less productivity (Leka, 2005).
Wang et al. (2014) took occupational stress as harmful psychological and physical feelings of emotional reactions that are produced due to job requirements, which do not match capabilities and resources of employees. Kahn (1970) discussed that occupational stress is the consequence of feature that allocated responsibility of employees in organization. Rosenthal and Alter (2012) emphasized job stress as individual anxiety on job place. Topper (2007) discussed occupational stress as a situation being faced by individuals where natural demands are in inconsistency with employee abilities to fulfill expectations. He discussed that occupational stress creates negative impression on work place and also puts negative impact on employee performance in organizations.
Over the past two decades, occupational stress has been a major topic of research for many academic researchers, business practitioners, and public sector authorities (Brymer, 1982; Faulkner & Patiar, 1997; Magnavita, Capitanelli, Garbarino, & Pira, 2018; Mathur, 1995; Maurya & Agarwal, 2018; Ross, 1995). Deschamps et al. (2003). From the past decades researchers are investigating the impact of occupational stress on physical and psychological health and behavior of employee (Alexopoulos, Palatsidi, Tigani, & Darviri, 2014). Most of occupational stress occurs when an employee feels that he is unable to match the demand of his job or supervisor as Ullrich and FitzGerald (1990) discussed that “workplace or occupational stress generates when there is an difference between the demands of the workplace or boss and an employee ability to manage.” A number of research scholars have investigated the causes of occupational stress such as heavy workload (Barnett & Brennan, 1995; Perrewe & Ganster, 1989), role conflicts (Bedeian & Armenakis, 1981; Cosway, Endler, Sadler, & Deary, 2000), long working hours and nonflexibility of work (Russell, O'Connell, & McGinnity, 2009), and work characteristics (Yeung, Genaidy, Deddens, & Sauter, 2005). Supervisors also play an important role in increasing or decreasing occupational stress for employees (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986).
Investigating causes of stress is important but to explore the impact of occupational stress in police profession is more relevant as recent studies have highlighted police as one of the most stressful profession in Pakistan (Bano, 2011). Some of the researchers have explored law enforcement professions as most stressful occupations in Pakistan (Hammad et al., 2012). Dantzer (1987) stated that police has ranked topmost stressful profession for many years. Alexopoulos et al. (2014) discussed that police officers face higher level of stress, tension, and anxiety. S. Johnson et al. (2005) stated that police is one of the most stressful occupations in world. They discussed and analyzed in United Kingdom that police profession is included in top six most stressful professions. Chen (2018) discussed that police work involves unpleasant incidents, encounter with criminals routine conflict, and other difficult job duty can reason and cause of occupational stress anxiety and depression. Phelps (1975) discussed that there are three types of occupational stress in police: one is personal stress; second is stress from environmental means, that is, stress from job nature; and third is administrative stress in the organization.
Kula (2017) discussed that police force faces high occupational stress, which leads to lower job satisfaction among police personnel. He discussed that it is very necessary to pay attention to impact of stress on police force as it is very vital for well-being of police performance. Murray-Gibbons and Gibbons (2007) emphasized that occupational stress in police force has a direct and negative impact on their well-being and job performance. He, Zhao, and Ren (2005) discussed work place stress as fatiguing result of physical and mental pressure during police job, which reduces career satisfaction. Singer, Singer, and Burns (1984) found in his research on New Zealand police that married police officers fee higher stress as compared with singles and show less satisfaction at their jobs. They further added that the family life of police personnel is disturbed a lot not only because of excessive work, long working hours, and hectic routine but also because of negative social opinion and no social recognition. Zavala and Curry (2018) discussed that Australian police force are under stress and they are using alcohol to divert pressure, which is causing health issues among police personnel in Australia. Selokar, Nimbarte, Ahana, Gaidhane, and Wagh (2011) mentioned that career satisfaction and job performance of police personnel are low due to occupational stress in India. Senjo and Dhungana (2009) discussed that exhausted and stressful police officer likely to face low satisfaction. Wang et al. (2014) found that police force autonomous region in China is facing high stress and its impact on negative impacts their career satisfaction and job performance. On the bases of these theoretical evidences, we assume that occupational stress decreases career satisfaction and job performance of police employees including both in-role performance and extra-role performance. Therefore, we hypothesized the following:
Hypothesis 1.Occupational stress is negatively related with career satisfaction of police employees.
Hypothesis 2.Occupational stress is negatively related with in-role job performance of police employees.
Hypothesis 3.Occupational stress is negatively related with extra-role job performance of police employees.
2.2 The mediating role of career satisfaction
Satisfaction is defined as a state in which an individual feels glad, happy, and good or wherein someone achieves some specified goal or when something occurs which a person wanted to occur Dinham and Scott (1998). Burke (1989) described career satisfaction as the state what an employee observes and thinks about his/her current job or work. Judge, Cable, Boudreau, and Bretz (1995) discussed that career satisfaction is internal satisfaction of an employee derived from internal and external factors of individual career within an organization. Dalton, Thompson, and Price (1977) discussed that there are different stages of career and every stage has its own unique effect on an individual, which is effected by different internal and external factors. Loi and Ngo (2010) suggested that managing career satisfaction is important for both employees and employers. They further emphasized that occupational stress has a very negative impact on employee career satisfaction.
Burke (1989) discussed five phases of career in police officers. He analyzed that lower level policemen such as constables in midcareer period show high occupational stress, low job satisfaction, and work–family conflict during service or career, which negatively affects their performance. Hall (2002) discussed that during past 20 years, fast transformation in technological, environmental, business, and economic changes have put large impact on employee career satisfaction and work performance in organizations. Renee Barnett and Bradley (2007) discussed that employers, organization, and stakeholders must think and make strategies to develop career satisfaction, which will not only benefit individuals, but the organizations as well. Loi and Ngo (2010) stressed that a strategy of maintaining career satisfaction is important and for both parties that is employee and employer and it helps organizations in achieving its goals and objectives. Ding and Lin (2006) discussed that organizations, which develop career satisfaction of their employees, get benefit in terms of having highly motivated workers who contribute effectively towards achieving organizational goals.
Martínez-León, Olmedo-Cifuentes, and Ramón-Llorens (2018) found in his study that career satisfaction is important for the personnel in engineering professions. He discussed that low career satisfaction decreases job performance of employees. Similarly, it is also found that maintaining career satisfaction of employees is important for the improvement of job performance of employees. Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Wormley (1990) discussed that developing career satisfaction of employees in organizations help employers to reduce the negative impact of occupational stress, which improves job performance of employees in organizations. Naseem (2018) found similar results in his study and discussed that in Pakistan telecommunication employees are facing high level of job stress, which has a negative impact on their satisfaction and work performance. Dinham and Scott (1998) conducted their study on school executives in western Sydney Australia and found that 35% respondents are highly facing highly dissatisfaction with their jobs and are the victims of job stress. Tao, Guo, Liu, and Li (2018) discussed that occupational stress in nursing profession in China is a major problem, which is putting negative impact on their career satisfaction. Myers, Rogers, LeCrone, Kelley, and Scott (2018) discussed that nursing is one of the difficult jobs in health industry of America. They found a high level of job stress among nursing, which also has a negative impact on their satisfaction.
Scholars have highlighted the negative impact of high occupational stress on career satisfaction of employees in police profession (Wang et al., 2014). Research studies have discussed that occupational stress in workplaces has a negative impact on police officers (Kuo, 2015). R. R. Johnson (2012) suggested that organizational role is important for decreasing the negative impact of occupational stress and developing career satisfaction of police. Adebayo and Ogunsina (2011) said that supervisor role is a key factor in decreasing stress and increasing career satisfaction to enhance job performance of employees in police profession. M. L. Griffin et al. (2010) also found that occupational stress has a negative influence on employee satisfaction and performance. Allisey et al. (2014) found that UK native police officers are the victims of occupational stress and their career satisfaction is too low. Maurya and Agarwal (2018) found that occupational stress has negative impact on satisfaction of female police employee.
In role job performance can be described as those actions, which are associated to workers regular and formal job duties, and are defined in their job descriptions (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997). Bedeian and Armenakis (1981) stated that career satisfaction affects workers in-role job performance in organizations. Sattar, Rasheed, Khan, Tariq, and Iqbal (2017) discussed that adaptability and satisfaction are the antecedents of employees' in-role job performance in organizations. Moss, Valenzi, and Taggart (2003) discussed that occupational stress and low career satisfaction negatively affect in-role job performance of employees in organizations. Janssen and Van Yperen (2004) investigated a question that why employees perform better in organization and discussed that employees with low stress perform better.
Organ (1988) described extra-role job performance as an individual's actions that encourage him to contribute beyond his formal work duties in organizations. Van, Cummings, and Parks (1995) said that extra-role job performance is beyond the formal job responsibilities of a person. Campbell Pickford and Joy (2016) is of the view that an individual's extra-role performance refers to an employee's volunteer role in organizations. He found that employees with low job stress and high satisfaction show extra-role job performance in organizations. Koster and Sanders (2007) discussed that when employees are free of stress in organizations, they perform several volunteer tasks, which are not expected of them as per their job descriptions. Bateman and Organ (1983) are of the view that satisfied employees show higher extra-role performance in organizations. Katz and Kahn (1978) discussed that for organization success, organizational citizenship behavior and employee volunteer involvement is important. Smith, Organ, and Near (1983) said that extra-role performance is important for enhancing organizational productivity. On the bases of above discussion we propose that career satisfaction is the underlying psychological mechanism in the relationship between occupational stress and their in-role and extra-role performance in police profession. This implies that in police profession, employees facing occupational stress have low career satisfaction, which further leads to their low performance in the form of in-role job performance and extra-role job performance. We therefore hypothesized the following:
Hypothesis 4.Career satisfaction mediates the relationship between occupational stress and in-role job performance of police employees.
Hypothesis 5.Career satisfaction mediates the relationship between occupational stress and extra-role job performance of police employees.
3 METHOD
3.1 Procedure and participants
Present research study was conducted to explore issues and problems of occupational stress and its impact on job performance of police force in AJ&K Pakistan. The survey was conducted in 4 large cities of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, wherein police officers were asked to fill a survey questionnaire. A random sampling technique was opted for collecting primary data where authors visited police offices in person in order to get survey filled in by the police employees. Authors ensured to inform the purpose of a research study and maintenance of confidentiality to the respondents. It was also ensured that respondents belong to all posts and cadres in police. A total of 550 surveys were distributed among the police employees in AJ&K Pakistan, of which 337 were returned (61.27 response rate). Sixty-six questionnaires were either incomplete or were unable to be used for further study; we therefore conducted our analyses with 271 valid surveys. Out of the total participants, 83% were male respondents, 41% participants were bachelor degree holders, 67% were married, and 42% were aged between 25 to 35 years, with 27% between 35 to 45 years of age.
3.2 Measures
3.2.1 Occupational stress
We used 4-item Motowidlo, Packard, and Manning (1986) to measure occupational stress of police personnel in AJ&K Pakistan. Participants rated the extent to which they are agree or disagree with the question statement designed on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Sample items are, for example, “my job is extremely stressful,” “very few stressful things happen to me at work,” “I feel a great deal of stress because of my job,” and “I almost never feel stressed because of my work.” The internal reliability of the scale in the current study was .81.
3.3 Career satisfaction
We used 5-item Greenhaus et al. (1990) to measure career success of police personnel in AJ&K Pakistan. Participants rated the extent to which they are agree or disagree with the question statement designed on a 5-point Likert scales ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. Sample items are, for example, “I am satisfied with the success I have achieved in my career, “I am satisfied with the progress I have made towards meeting my overall career goals” and “I am satisfied with the progress I have made towards meeting my goals for income”. Alpha reliability of the scale was .87
3.3.1 In-role job performance
We used 5-item in-role performance scale (Williams & Anderson, 1991) in the survey. Scale items are, for example, “I fulfill responsibilities specified in job description” and “I meet formal performance requirements of the job.” Responses are provided using a 5-point Likert scales ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The internal reliability of the scale in the current study was .83.
3.3.2 Extra-role job performance
We used 14-item extra-role performance scale (Allen & Lee, 2002). Scale items are, for example, “I adhere to informal rules devised to maintain order” and “I assists supervisor with his/her work (when not asked).” Responses are provided using a 5-point Likert scales ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. The internal reliability of the scale in the current study was .84.
4 ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
4.1 Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations
Table 1 reveals descriptive statistics including mean and standard deviations and correlations among the variables of study. Results show that career satisfaction is negatively associated with occupational stress (r = −.19, p < .01), occupational stress is negatively associated with in-role job performance (r = −.39, p < .01), and also negatively associated with extra-role job performance (r = −.41, p < .01). Hence, our hypotheses , , and got preliminary support, which were about negative association of occupational stress with career satisfaction, in-role, and extra-role performance of employees in AJ&K Police.
| Variables | Mean | SD | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Age | 36.30 | 4.30 | |||||||
| 2. Gender | 1.53 | 0.39 | .00 | ||||||
| 3.Education | 1.76 | 0.87 | .13 | .18 | |||||
| 4. Experience | 2.41 | 1.76 | .32* | .49 | .17* | ||||
| 5. Occupational stress | 3.91 | 0.29 | .10 | .45 | .36* | .40 | |||
| 6. Career satisfaction | 4.13 | 0.17 | .02 | .69 | .47* | .43 | −.19** | ||
| 7. In-role performance | 2.96 | 0.32 | .16 | .23 | .47 | .31* | −.39** | .42** | |
| 8. Extra-role performance | 4.13 | 0.43 | .07 | .86 | .63 | .54 | −.41** | .21* | .11 |
- Note. N = 271. Gender: 1 = female, 2 = male; age and experience in actual number of years, Education: 1 = high school, 2 = college, 3 = bachelor degree, 4 = master degree, 5 = PhD.
- * Significant at p < .05 (two-tailed).
- ** Significant at p < .01 (two-tailed).
4.2 Hypotheses testing
To test our full hypothesized model, we ran the PROCESS macro (Model 4) using SPSS 24. The findings are reported in Table 2. Consistent with our preliminary analyses results, occupational stress was negatively associated with employees' career satisfaction (B = −.42, t = −.145), in-role performance (B = −.41, t = −5.13, p < .001), and extra-role performance (B = −.14, t = −.156). Moreover, occupational stress was found to have an indirect relationship with in-role performance and extra-role performance (−.37 and −.31, respectively), which is in line with our mediation hypotheses. We also performed Sobel tests using the bootstrap procedure (95% bias-corrected confident interval). The indirect relationships between occupational stress and employees' in-role (Sobel z = −4.11, p < .001) and extra-role performance (Sobel z = −3.39, p < .001) were both significant. The bootstrapped confident intervals also did not contain zero (in-role performance .21 and .53; extra-role performance .19 and .47), which supported our mediation hypotheses. These results showed that career satisfaction operated as a mediator in the relationship between occupational stress and the in-role and extra-role performance of employees; therefore, our hypotheses and are accepted.
| Mediator | Dependent variables | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Career satisfaction | In-role performance | Extra-role performance | ||||||||||
| Independent variable | B | SE | t | R2 | B | SE | t | R2 | B | SE | t | R2 |
| 0.43 | 0.51 | 0.31 | ||||||||||
| Constant | 1.17 | 0.22 | 5.31** | −0.01 | 0.37 | −0.03 | 2.11 | 0.16 | 13.85** | |||
| Career satisfaction | -- | -- | -- | 0.3 | 0.08 | 3.41** | 0.21 | 0.06 | 3.51** | |||
| Occupational stress | 0.42) | 0.29 | −1.45** | −0.41** | 0.08 | −5.13** | −0.14 | 0.09 | −1.56** | |||
| Effect | SE | LLCI | ULCI | Effect | SE | LLCI | ULCI | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indirect effect of occupational stress | −0.31 | 0.14 | 0.21 | 0.53 | −0.36 | 0.04 | 0.19 | 0.47 | ||||
| Effect | SE | z | Effect | SE | z | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Normal theory tests for indirect effect | −0.37 | 0.13 | −4.11** | −0.28 | 0.05 | −3.39** | ||||||
- Note. Unstandardized regression coefficients are shown; bootstrap sample size = 5000; LLCI = bias-corrected lower limit confidence interval; ULCI = bias-corrected upper limit confidence interval.
- * Significant at p < .05.
- ** Significant at p < .01.
- *** Significant at p < .001.
5 DISCUSSION
The basic purpose of this research study is to investigate the issues and problems related to occupational stress in police and let the policy makers develop some policy guidelines to resolve this serious issue. Drawing on theories of occupational stress, authors proposed a conceptual/theoretical model that discusses how occupational stress affects police personnel's job performance including in-role and extra-role through the mediation effect of career satisfaction in police. The first and foremost question of this research study is related to investigating and finding the impact of occupational stress on career satisfaction and in-role performance and extra-role performance of employees in police. The next question relates to identifying career satisfaction as the underlying mechanism in the relationships of occupational stress and in-role job performance and occupational stress and extra-role job performance.
This is a unique study, which discusses the role of occupational stress on the job performance of police in AJ&K Pakistan. This study comprehensively explores the role of occupational stress in AJ&K police. Specifically, we suggested and tested a comprehensive research model, which investigates how stress decreases performance of police employees and how this issue becomes serious for police employees to implement the policy guidelines in doing their jobs. Another contribution of this study is about identifying the underlying mechanism in the relationship of occupational stress and job performance that is career satisfaction of employees. We believe that career satisfaction is a reason that plays a role as a mediator in the relationships of occupational stress and in-role job performance and occupational stress and extra-role job performance. Identifying career satisfaction as a psychological reason between these relationships as well as discussing its important role in predicting employee job performance in police is a major contribution of this study, which will help the authorities of police and other policy makers in developing policy guidelines to reduce stress in Police employees.
The results of the data analysis have shown that occupational stress in police is negatively related to their career satisfaction, in-role job performance, and extra-role job performance. These results suggest that reducing occupational stress in employees of police can enhance their career satisfaction as well as job performance. The mediation results also support our hypotheses about the critical role of career satisfaction as a mediator in the relationship of occupational stress and in-role and extra-role performance of employees in Police. This suggests that occupational stress reduces performance of employees in the police through the effect of damaging their career satisfaction. Hence, career satisfaction is an important underlying psychological mechanism in order to understand why and how occupational stress in police employees negatively affects their job performance.
This study has several implications for the government officials, policy makers, and authorities. For instance, the human resource policy made for managing the individuals in police profession should be sensitive to the variables explored in this study. Occupational stress has found to be the most important factor that may damage performance of police employees; therefore, this should be given a due importance while designing a policy for the police personnel. When policy guidelines related to police personnel designed, there is a need to give due importance to the career satisfaction and occupational stress of employees in police profession.
5.1 Limitations of study and future directions
We have done our best to enhance the reliability, validity, and scope of this research to maximum extent but as like any other research study our study too has some limitations. The first limitation of the study is its dependence on cross-sectional data. All variables are self-reported and cross sectional in nature where there is a chance of common method variance. A longitudinal study including responses from supervisors as well as employee level is suggested to study the problems related to job stress in AJ&K police.
Another limitation is a limited number of independent variables studied in this research. There are many other factors that also contribute to career satisfaction and job performance issues in AJ&K police; it is suggested that a broad level study including more factors is needed to have the real picture of job stress issues in the AJ&K police. One more limitation of this study is the application of convenient sampling technique; some other sampling techniques can be used in further studies.
6 CONCLUSION
The objective of this study was to explore issues and problems of occupational stress in police profession and to understand policy implications related to this issue. Occupational stress has been found as an important factor that causes problems towards career satisfaction and job performance of police employees in our study. We explored the effect of occupational stress on job performance, including in-role and extra-role performance of Police employees in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ&K) Pakistan. We also theorized and tested the role of career satisfaction in the relationship between occupational stress and job performance as an underlying psychological mechanism. This is a novel research, which attempted to study the impact of occupational stress on job performance of police employees through the mediating effect of career satisfaction. This research study has called researchers' and policy makers' attention towards the issues of occupational stress in the police profession in AJ&K Pakistan. The research can play an important role in compelling the top management of AJ&K police to ponder over the issues of job stress aimed at enhancing the job performance including in-role, and extra-role performance of Police.
Biographies
Sehran Khan Nisar has done Master in Public Affairs from School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China. His area of research includes public policy and administration with a special focus on Police reforms
Muhammad Imran Rasheed did his Ph.D in Business Administration from School of Management University of Science and Technology of China and is currently working as Assistant Professor at the Islamia University of Bahawalpur Pakistan. His research interest is in the areas of organizational behavior and industrial and organizational psychology.
