Rabindrik Value Orientations of War Returned Senior Rank Police Officers

Abstract

Policing is a value driven noble profession. Functions of police are to protect people and property of the nation. They assist in maintaining law and order in the community. There is limited empirical evidence focusing on value orientation of police. Therefore there is a gap to understand how far police values are in conformity with values of common people. Value is an enduring belief that has specific mode of conduct and end state of existence. Dutta Roy and Bandopadhay (2010) by analysis of the script of Reverend Rabindranath Tagore's songs identified 14 path and 14 goal oriented work values. The path-oriented values are instrumental to goal oriented values.This study has two objectives (a) to determine value hierarchy of police officers and (b) to determine extent of profile similarity between value orientation of police and the common people. Data were collected from 18 war returned senior rank police officers through Rabindrik value scale. The scale measures orientation to path and goal values. Results revealed value hierarchy of police officers. Police officers preferred self-understanding, cleanliness, active, self-awakening, and no work-family conflict values. With respect to goal oriented values, they preferred morefamily security, self-respect, positive feeling, inner harmony and peace. When compared with comparison group, results show high similarity in path orientation values than goal oriented values suggesting unique development of human values in the police officers. Finally, some suggestions like positive feeling, feedback and public-police interface were given to design value based training for the police officers.