Distinguishing organizational from strategy commitment: Linking officers' commitment to community policing to job behaviors and satisfaction

Previous research has highlighted the important role of officers' attitudes and receptivity to the change to community policing. We identified two levels of commitment-commitment to the police organization as a whole and commitment to the strategic direction of the police department toward community policing and found evidence that the two levels of commitment are distinct. Organizational commitment was directly related to job satisfaction but only indirectly related to officers' behaviors consistent with those expected with a community-policing orientation. Conversely, the level of commitment to a community-policing strategy was unrelated to job satisfaction but directly related to the frequency of community policing-type behaviors. Strategy commitment also mediated the effects of managerial support and organizational commitment and partially mediated the effects of job experience on officers' behavior. Implications of this multiple-level perspective to commitment for future research are discussed.