IJASOS- International E-journal of Advances in Social Sciences

Abstract

The policemen happen
to be the most noticeable representatives of the government, as they are the
most pervasive associations of the general public. The police headquarters and
a policeman are the most fitting and agreeable unit in an hour of need, peril and
emergency, when a common man does not know what to do. The police is relied
upon to be the most open, intuitive and dynamic organization of the society.
The typical duties of a police officer are to keep the peace, law enforcement,
security of individuals and property and investigations of crimes. Apart from
these duties, there are many other social duties of a police officer.

Stress in police has
been an important area to research since decades. Police work is highly
stressful, as it is one of the very few occupations where employees are asked
continually to face physical dangers and to put their lives on the line at any
time. There are many factors that may act as stressors, but the most common
are; the shiftwork, and the roles and functions of a policeman. According to a
few reports, there is a shortage of police force; due to this shortage, there
is a lot of work load on existing police officers which acts up as a stressor.
The levels of stress in policemen becomes an important area of research looking
at the gap in the number of sanctioned/ required police force and the number of
existing police force; the shift works; risk involved in the job; roles that
disturb personal life and include staying away from family.

The primary objective
of the study was to determine the levels of organizational stress in the police
officers. The sample size for the study was 90 which included 55 male
respondents and 35 female respondents. The data was gathered from various
police stations of Ahmedabad city; there was no age limit. The research was
conducted through self-report questionnaire, Role Stress: Organizational Role
Stress (ORS) Scale by Pareek (1993) and evaluated accordingly using the manual.
Organizational role stress scale is used to measure 10 role stresses;
inter-role distance, role stagnation, role expectation conflict, role erosion,
role overload, role isolation, personal inadequacy, self-role distance, role
ambiguity and resource inadequacy.

Results showed that
there is a significant level of organizational stress in police officers. The
factors that contributed as stressors were found to be inadequate police force,
high work load, irregular working hours, inadequate resources and low pay
scale.