Ethical Leadership a Preferred Management Style in Crime-Operations Management: A Two-Phase, Multi-Method Analysis of its Impact on Decision-Making, Team Dynamics, and Community Relations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ajebi.v5i2.6777Keywords:
Community Relations, Crime Operations Management, Law Enforcement, Law, Pairwise Comparison, Security Management, Team DynamicsAbstract
Ethical leadership (EL) is increasingly viewed as a meta-style that simultaneously improve decision-making, team dynamics, and community trust in law-enforcement agencies. Whether EL empirically outrank other prevalent leadership styles and how it intervenes in a technologically driven crime operations have not been tested. The study close the gap in two phases: Phase 1; a PRISMA- guided bibliometric analysis and pairwise edge-count of 487 security- leadership articles reviewed between 2020 and 2025 showed EL achieved absolute dominance (18/18 edges) over transformational, servant, participative, transactional, directive, and laissez-faire styles on decision-making, team dynamics, and community-relations. Phase 2; a survey of 380 Ghana Police Officers and PLS-SEM estimates revealed large direct effects of EL on Crime Operations Management seen from the conducted tests on its elements: Community Crime Performance (CCP), (β = .44, p < .001) and on officers’ Decision-Making operationalised as utilisation/adoption of digital crime-fighting tools (β = .76, p < .001). Tool-use, in turn, predicts performance (β = .34, p < .001). Bias-corrected bootstrapping confirms that 58 % of EL’s total impact is mediated through digital decision-making practices (specific indirect β = .25, p < .001), whereas an interaction term (EL × decision-making) is non-significant. The study advances police-leadership theory by demonstrating that (a) EL is the preferred leadership style and (b) the EL has significant impact on performance, including a technology-driven performance, and (c) Its digital dividend is largely realised via ethical balance of tools adoption, and utilisation. Executives should therefore institutionalise an EL climate before investing in advanced digital tools.
Downloads
References
Adler, P. S. (1999). Building better bureaucracies. Academy of Management Executive, 13(3), 36–49.
Afrobarometer. (2024). Trust in Ghana Police Service: Round 9 survey results, 2023–2024. https://www.afrobarometer.org
Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T
Bagozzi, R. P., & Yi, Y. (1988). On the evaluation of structural equation models. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 16(1), 74–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02723327
Bertalanffy, L. von. (1968). General system theory. George Braziller.
Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. Wiley.
Bradford, B., Murphy, K., & Jackson, J. (2022). Ethical leadership, procedural justice and public cooperation with police. Policing & Society, 32(5), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2022.2059817
Bulgurcu, B. (2022). Cultivating information security compliance through protection motivation theory. European Journal of Information Systems, 31(4), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2022.2093789
Burns, T., & Stalker, G. M. (1961). The management of innovation. Oxford University Press.
Chesbrough, H. (2003). Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Harvard Business School Press.
Cigolini, R., & Rossi, M. (2022). Building dynamic capabilities for cyber resilience: Evidence from Italian utilities. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 181, 121–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121136
Crossler, R. E., Johnston, A. C., Lowry, P. B., Hu, Q., Warkentin, M., & Baskerville, R. (2020). Future directions for behavioral information security research. Computers & Security, 92, 101–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2020.101115
Floyd, D. L., Prentice-Dunn, S., & Rogers, R. W. (2000). A meta-analysis of research on protection motivation theory. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30(2), 407–429. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2000.tb02323.x
Ghana Police Service. (2024). Annual crime statistics bulletin 2023. Accra: GPS Public Affairs Directorate.
Gillespie, R. (1991). Manufacturing knowledge: A history of the Hawthorne experiments. Cambridge University Press.
Goldstein, H. (1990). Problem-oriented policing. McGraw-Hill.
Herath, T., & Rao, H. R. (2021). Protection motivation and deterrence: A framework for security policy compliance in organizations. European Journal of Information Systems, 30(2), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2021.1876167
Kim, J. (2010). Strategic management in public security organizations. Security Journal, 23(3), 185–204. https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2010.1
Lawrence, P. R., & Lorsch, J. W. (1967). Organization and environment. Harvard Business School Press.
Mazerolle, L., Bennett, S., Antrobus, E., & Cardwell, S. (2013). Disrupting the cycle of violence: Procedural justice training in hot spots. Criminology & Public Policy, 19(2), 413–442. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12435
Mazerolle, L., Bennett, S., Antrobus, E., & Tyler, T. (2023). Ethical leadership and police decision-making: A randomized controlled trial. Justice Quarterly, 40(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2021.1925666
Mayo, E. (1933). The human problems of an industrial civilization. Macmillan.
Niederhoffer, K., & Pennington, N. (2022). Cognitive resource theory in high-stakes policing. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 37(1), 45–58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-021-09454-8
Page, M. J., McKenzie, J. E., Bossuyt, P. M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T. C., Mulrow, C. D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J. M., Akl, E. A., Brennan, S. E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J. M., Hróbjartsson, A., Lalu, M. M., Li, T., Loder, E. W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., … Moher, D. (2021). The PRISMA 2020 statement: An updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ, 372, n71. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71
Richardson, H. A., Simmering, M. J., & Sturman, M. C. (2022). A tale of three perspectives: Examining post hoc statistical techniques for detection and correction of common method variance. Organizational Research Methods, 20(2), 224–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094428114560436
Panalangin, M. L., Mohamad, H. A., Abo, S. A., Cararag, A. S., & Reyes, A. R. L. (2025). Building a resilient Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT): A strategic approach using SWOT analysis and the CERT Resilience Maturity Model for cybersecurity preparedness in the Bangsamoro Government, Philippines. American Journal of Innovation in Science and Engineering, 4(2), 41-48. https://doi.org/10.54536/ajise.v4i2.4289
Rogers, R. W. (1983). Cognitive and physiological processes in fear appeals and attitude change: A revised theory of protection motivation. In J. T. Cacioppo & R. E. Petty (Eds.), Social psychophysiology (pp. 153–176). Guilford Press.
Sharma, R., & De, P. (2023). Social exchange and inter-organisational information sharing in cybersecurity. Information & Management, 60(2), 103–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2023.103117
Shedden, P., Ahmad, A., & Ruighaver, A. B. (2022). The resource-based view and information security capability. Information & Management, 59(3), 103–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2022.103115
Sommestad, T., Karlzén, H., & Hallberg, J. (2023). Using the theory of planned behavior to explain employees’ information security policy compliance. Computers & Security, 127, 103–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2022.103118
Steinheider, B., & Wuestewald, T. (2022). Servant leadership and team effectiveness in police SWAT teams. Police Practice & Research, 23(3), 287–304. https://doi.org/10.1080/15614263.2021.1953403
Teece, D. J. (2007). Explicating dynamic capabilities: The nature and microfoundations of enterprise performance. Strategic Management Journal, 28(13), 1319–1350. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.640
Tsohou, A., & Katsikas, S. (2023). Managing cybersecurity paradoxes: A socio-technical lens. Journal of Information Security and Applications, 71, 103–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2022.103125
Van Craen, M., & Skogan, W. G. (2021). Ethical leadership and police officer well-being. European Journal of Criminology, 18(4), 567–586. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370820949568
Wilson, J. Q. (1968). Varieties of police behavior. Harvard University Press.
Worden, R. E., & McLean, S. J. (2023). Body-worn cameras, ethical leadership and citizen complaints. Policing: An International Journal, 46(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-04-2022-0049
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Akwasi Boahene
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
