CASE: I Pushing Paper Can Be Fun

1. What performance problems is the captain trying to correct?

Ans. Underperformance shows itself in the form of a negative deviation between what you planned or could have achieved and

your actual accomplishments.

You could also become aware of underperformance through the actions/reactions of your stakeholders.

Signs of performance problems

Deviations from planned outputs, outcomes and impacts

Costs  deviations from your budget

Frequent shortage of cash

Customer complains about products and services

Negative feedback from donors, grant makers or beneficiaries

High consumption of resources

Frequent downtime of key manufacturing or office infrastructure

Performance problems can be caused by

Top Management (e.g. due to lack of leadership)

Administrative functions (e.g. financial management, fundraising)

Programs/ projects leaders and teams

Individual employees

Influences from outside (e.g. energy supply, poor infrastructure)

The police commissioner is trying to demonstrate the problems he faced, during the seminar ,to have a remedy in return. He thinks

that the hiring of inexperienced young ones who do not have sufficient role perception and neither are competent is the gist cause of

problem. Young and inexperienced workers don't always understand what is expected of them in terms of performance.

Unfortunately, too often they're left floundering and trying to figure it out for themselves. A young worker may not reach expectations

without help and guidance from you or other staff. This is leading to avoiding the paperwork or recording the history of whole day

working for further processing. This poor reporting creates problem in court where there is always need of unambiguous and highly

detailed reporting. In overhaul, employees are not motivated neither aware of the job they have to perform nor that's what

commissioner is trying to correct.

2. Use the MARS model of individual behavior and performance to diagnose the possible causes of the

unacceptable behavior.

Ans. Most people behave acceptably at work, despite too high a level of employee disengagement across the entire workforce.

However there is a minority of people who behave unacceptably and are definitely disengaged. These people cause the greatest

problems and weaken the enterprise culture dramatically. Following may be involved in possible causes of unacceptable behavior:

1. hiring of inexperienced recruits2. insufficient training programs3. no "Person-Job Matching" criteria is followed4. no Role Perception in minds of officers5. low motivation or Morale Level

MARS is a model in ‘Organizational Behavior’ that explains individual behavior using four factors:

1. Motivation

2. Ability3. Role Perception,4. and Situational Factors.

In combination, these four factors have a strong influence on individual behavior and the resulting performance.

Motivation. There are several facts that suggest that the poor paperwork is due to lack of motivation. First, officers come into this profession because they want to work with the public and catch criminals, not sit in an of1ice 1illing  out reports. Thus, the paperwork task does not ful1ill their needs for personal growth. Second, social rewards (praise, recognition) result from the outside activities, not paperwork. Third, 1inancial rewards do not encourage people to do paperwork. Promotions are based on seniority, so they motivateofficers to stay with the force, not to complete paperwork. Competitions did not work, either. 

Ability. It isn’t certain thatofficers are able to complete the paperwork task well enough. They don’t seem to receive any training in this area. However, the captain’s discussion of the report competition suggests that at least someofficers are able to perform this task well enough. 

RolePerceptions. The captain seems to have emphasized the importance of paperwork to the officers, and they probably have learned that some cases have been lost due to poor reports. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that manyofficers know that the quality of reports is an important activityof their job. At the same time, it may be possible that the captain has not emphasized the importance of report writing to theofficers. Moreover, there is no evidence that rookies have clear role perceptions about this task when they first enter the department.

SituationalFactors. There is no information about factors beyond theofficers’ control that might hinder or facilitate their job performance in report writing. It may be possible that more time and other resources are needed to complete the reports better, but this information is not given in the case. 

3. Has the captain considered all possible solutions to the problem? If not, what else might be done?

In the given scenario the major problem under discussion is the lack of determination and interest of the officers towards the written description and documentation of the crimes. Officers are termed as “Rookies” here as they are quite young, immature, inexperienced and seemed a bit irresponsible for their work of reporting the crimes, antisocial behaviors, corruption, misconducts etc. Rather they are sent to streets, on police cars or on beat with a trust to work and they rather seemed satisfy and happy with their duties to contact public in different matters, to face difficult situations i.e. crime preventions, apprehensions of criminals, save people from fires, accidents and other emergencies. But still the real problem arises with their attitudes when they come to contact with the written recording of their crimes. They appeared rather discriminate against the paperwork of reports against criminals despite of the fact that if any one part of the report is incomplete or misinterpreted due to any ignorance, the whole case can become spoiled or distorted.

The ultimate solution reorganized in the scenario to this problem is to motivate the officers to bring clear detailed, factual and unambiguous reports with them. But at the same time there is a problem that how to motivate them i.e. it requires finances to reward them on their performances, conducts performance appraisals etc. He could not recognize how to make job interesting for them. So the ultimate solution to this problem might be to conduct surveys, seminars, discussion meetings etc to develop their interest towards the literature. This can be done with minimum cost and finance i.e. they can trained officers through the high authorities by giving lectures through them. Highly skilled officers can motivate them to do their job effectively and efficiently through motivation, their abilities, competencies, person job matching and role perception i.e. he have to build courage and determination to employees to use their skills, knowledge, abilities and aptitude and other characteristics in the execution of paperwork. They have to just urge them or polish their characteristics.

Similarly they have to match individual’s competencies with job requirements. There are three approaches to matching individual competencies with job requirements. One strategy to select applicants whose existing competencies best fit the required task. Or the 2nd strategy is to provide training so the employees develop required skills and knowledge and the third strategy might use is to redesign jobs so employees are given only tasks within their capabilities. Every matter needs detailed analysis and should be based on facts and figures conducted from nature and all the possible consequences.

The commissioner could follow the strategy to redesign the job so that the employees are given tasks within their capabilities. The commissioner has to identify the officers that have strong written communication for the job of the paper work. The officers right on the streets performing face to face interactions with public, keep providing continuous reporting information to the officers sitting in the office by walky-talky or any other communication device possible. These officers after obtaining information write accurate reports in order to avoid losing more cases than another factor.

The police chief might also consider the possibility that those officers lacking the competencies to perform the report writing task should receive formal training in report writing. A “train the trainer” approach might be considered where officers who are most effective at report writing receive special training to teach other officers. This might add further social esteem to performance in report writing.