The loosely coupled factors of organizational stress in police forces

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the recursive perspective that emphasizes bureaucracy as a source of officers’ stress, explain officers’ stress as a loosely coupled effect, examine the positive effects of loose coupling and legitimize the necessity of improving context management as a stress-reduction factor. Design/methodology/approach The research methodology uses a quantitative perspective; the members of two police forces constituted the universe; the sampling technique was not random and accidental; and an exploratory factor analysis and an invariance measure were performed. Findings The stress phenomenon is common and similar in both police forces, which means that it is indifferent to their organizational differences and has common causes. Loose coupling is present in both police work settings and entails significant stress; and the search for an explanation of the stress caused by loosely coupled elements should focus on both the value chain and the processes. Practical implications Addressing this phenomenon should entail a twofold improvement strategy: the correction of loosely coupled organizational factors by revising the management processes that cause stress and the prevention of loosely coupled effects by using professional training to enhance adaptive behavior within specific contexts. Originality/value Police organizations are addressed as loosely coupled (anarchic organized) systems instead of tightly coupled (bureaucratic) systems. The loosely coupled factors that emerge inside bureaucratic organizations cause significant stress among officers and complementary research is necessary to analyze the fallacious nature of the recursive attribution of police stress to bureaucratic characteristics.