Study on Leadership Styles of Royal Malaysia Police Work Performance in Narcotics Crime Investigation Department and Criminal Investigation Department

Globalization, technological advancements, and a competitive environment have all compelled the Royal Malaysia Police to adapt to strategic change in order to remain relevant and competitive in Malaysia enforcement. As a result, effective leadership behaviour is now more important than ever. Previous research has discovered that the support of transformational leaders is a critical component in fostering effective organisations. However, how true this is, particularly at Malaysia Enforcement, remains to be seen. This study was intended to examine the relationship between Transformational leadership, transactional Leadership, Laissez faire leadership and its augmentation effects among the Police officer. A total of 169 police officer from two department, Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) and Criminal Investigation Department (CID) took part in the study, which used a stage cluster sampling method. The findings indicated that police officer in two department thought their superiors used transformational and laissez faire leadership styles rather than transactional leadership. he leadership styles of these two groups differed significantly. The implications of the study were discussed in this publication. This study is useful for anyone interested in the preferred leadership styles of followers in organisational settings.

Study on Leadership Styles of Royal Malaysia Police Work Performance

in Narcotics Crime Investigation Department and Criminal Investigation

Department Tharmalingam A/L Chandram1, Masri bin Abdul Lasi2, Monisha A/P Arumugam3

1,2,3 City Graduate School, City University Malaysia

Abstract

Globalization, technological advancements, and a competitive environment have all compelled

the Royal Malaysia Police to adapt to strategic change in order to remain relevant and

competitive in Malaysia enforcement As a result, effective leadership behaviour is now more

important than ever Previous research has discovered that the support of transformational

leaders is a critical component in fostering effective organisations However, how true this is,

particularly at Malaysia Enforcement, remains to be seen This study was intended to examine

the relationship between Transformational leadership, transactional Leadership, Laissez faire

leadership and its augmentation effects among the Police officer A total of 169 police officer

from two department, Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) and Criminal

Investigation Department (CID) took part in the study, which used a stage cluster sampling

method The findings indicated that police officer in two department thought their superiors

used transformational and laissez faire leadership styles rather than transactional leadership he

leadership styles of these two groups differed significantly The implications of the study were

discussed in this publication This study is useful for anyone interested in the preferred

leadership styles of followers in organisational settings

Keywords— Leadership Style, Transformational Leadership, Transactional Leadership,

Laissez-Faire Leadership, Royal Malaysia Police

Introduction

In today's globalized world and ever-changing

environment, the Royal Malaysia Police (RMP)

faces an ongoing challenge, whether direct or

indirect, to the country's current security,

political, economic, and social situation

(Ramakrishnan et al., 2020) These changes have

pushed the Royal Malaysia Police into a state of

complexity as it strives to fulfil its core

competencies in providing services by upholding

the country's law and order Officers and men in

the force have been tasked with taking the

challenges to the next level, with their

performance being monitored as critical to the

image and realisation of the police force's vision and mission (Ramakrishnan et al., 2020)

Work in this field began primarily a few decades ago The Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) has developed several strategic plans, such as the PSPDRM for 2015-2020 and the 2016-2020 Police Integration Plan, to increase dynamism and achieve maximum employee job performance (Nizam et al., 2019) In order to make sure that their work and society be affected, the police force works effectively and ensure the progress soar The excellence of a police personnel in an organization measured based on the individual performance in conducting their duties Meanwhile, the police

force is an essential institution for ensuring

prosperity, specialized, complex, and risky

policy responsibilities Police officers work in a

high-pressure environment, putting their lives in

danger (Ramakrishnan et al., 2020)

Police officers would be the most mature field,

which is now transitioning to civil servant

service The position of police officers in each

division is primarily determined by the type of

crime that occurs within the area of expertise

and the number of people covered by police

officers to carry out their obligatory obligations

in terms of the observance and preservation of

law and order, the preservation of public

property, and the elimination of crimes within a

joint department (M A Lasi, 2020a) The

Royal Malaysian Police Department's work has

focused on domestic and external circumstances,

with many factors leading to police corruption

and a wide range of bribes, such as poor pay, the

nature of their work, poor working conditions,

and the legal framework, where most people are

not taken into account when their leaders are

promoted and maintained (M A Lasi, 2020a)

The skills and knowledge they employ to deal

with issues such as a rigorous analysis of

offences, which enables investigators and the

justice system to focus on what is at the heart of

the violation and its intent to provide victims

with recourse The effectiveness and efficiency

of police work benefit citizens who are their

constant clients (Nizam et al., 2019)

Several factors influence employees' job

performance at work Employee job

performance is a critical component of corporate

sustainability (M B A Lasi & Yunusi, 2020)

Some companies' operations have deteriorated as

a result of employee losses, resulting in high

profits in some cases Insecurities, which have

been linked to negative synergies in fighting

crime by police officers, were recently described

as a force in Malaysia by the Royal Malaysia

Policemen (M B A Lasi & Yunusi, 2020) The

police are viewed as working to prevent crime

Because of the conditions that contribute to unprocessed police forces, the motivations for system restructuring in terms of improved recruitment and the government's purchase of modern police equipment have not been taken into account (M A Lasi, 2020b)

This considerable influence may be measured in terms of the leaders' ability to promote and protect the interests of various department in Royal Malaysia Police

Research Question

This study examined the following research questions

1) What are the heads of department

leadership styles as perceived by the police officer in Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) and Criminal Investigation Department

(CID)

Assumptions

The following assumptions were used to perform this research:

1) At the time of the study, the participants were engaged as royal Malaysia police

in Malaysia In Narcotics Crime Investigation Department (NCID) and Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had sufficient interaction with supervisors to adequately represent their preferences across all leadership styles

2) Participants answered the biographical and leadership survey questions honestly and truthfully, knowing that the information they provided would be kept secret and anonymous

3) Each participant completed one survey

Literature Review

Employees’ Job Performance

Leadership is one of the most complicated and

poorly understood phenomena in the complex

world of human organisations According to

(Nizam et al., 2019) Police officers would be the

most mature field, which is now transitioning to

civil servant service The position of police

officers in each division is primarily determined

by the type of crime that occurs within the

division's area of expertise and the number of

people covered by police officers to carry out

their obligatory obligations in terms of the

observance and preservation of law and order,

the preservation of public property, and the

elimination of crimes within a joint department

Police officers would be the most mature field,

which is now transitioning to civil servant

service The position of police officers in each

division is primarily determined by the type of

crime that occurs within the division's area of

expertise and the number of people covered by

police officers to carry out their obligatory

obligations in terms of the observance and

preservation of law and order, the preservation

of public property, and the elimination of crimes

within a joint department (Al Khajeh, 2018)

Transformational Leadership

James MacGregor Burns (1978) originally

proposed the notion of transforming leadership

in his descriptive study on political leaders, and

it has now been expanded to organizational

psychology Transforming leadership, according

to Burns, is a two-way process in which leaders

and followers influence one another to achieve

better levels of morale and motivation The

transformative method has a significant

influence on people's and organizations' lives It

reshapes followers' expectations and goals

through changing perception and ideals

Transforming leaders are portrayed as role

models who put the team, company, and/or community first (Gemeda & Lee, 2020)

The current focus of organizational leadership concepts is transformational leadership These ideas are founded on vision statements, which define the organization's orientation A mission statement that energizes and motivates all members of the company as they achieve attainable organizational objectives should be added to the vision statement (Nizam et al., 2019) The organization's long-term goals are established by the vision and mission statements, which serve as the foundation for the organization's strategy and the development of means for implementing the plan

According to transformational leadership theory, these leaders may push and inspire themselves and their group members to achieve greater performance by establishing difficult goals and implementing a sequence of adjustments (Bass

& Avolio, 2009, & Northouse, 2015) Many studies have shown the positive impact of transformational leadership to trigger the extra effort of the followers, leading to higher leaders’

satisfaction and performance (Khan 2017 &

Notgrass, D 2014) Previous research has shown that executives who embrace a transformational leadership style achieve higher levels of performance and efficiency, and these findings are consistent across all levels of management in both the public and commercial sectors (Keshtiban, A E 2013 & Northouse 2015)

Transactional Leadership

Transactional leadership theory is frequently employed Transactional leadership, according

to (Aga, 2016), is “largely cantered on the exchange of benefits depending on performance

"Transactional leadership places a premium on the leader-follower relationship It's a term commonly used in the classroom to describe the interaction between teachers and students

Students are expected to complete projects, assignments, or examinations successfully, and

if they do, they will receive excellent grades or

the ability to pass the course This procedure

may be a simple extension of the performance

criteria at the Royal Malaysia Police outside of

the department (Nizam et al., 2019)

Both transformational and transactional

leadership styles, according to (Ibrahim, 2019),

have been found to favourably correlate with

organizational results in many types of

companies Transformational leadership is

favourably associated with organizational

success, according to research conducted by

Avolio and Bass (2004) and Dumdum et al

(2002) Transformational leadership, according

to other research, increases the effectiveness and

happiness of followers more than transactional

leadership (Hussain et al., 2017) (Hussain et al.,

2017) discovered, for example, that

transformative leadership has a substantial

impact

Transformational leadership, according to (Khan

et al., 2020) may improve employees' feeling of

belonging, meet their demands for

self-actualization, and ultimately increase employee

productivity Employees, on the whole, prefer

transformational leadership over transactional

and laissez-faire leadership transactional

leadership has a substantial positive connection

with job satisfaction, but transformational and

laissez faire leadership styles have minor

impacts (Ghasemy et al., 2018)

Burns proposed the transactional leadership

paradigm in 1978 This idea is cantered on the

connection between a leader and a follower,

which is based on the leader's establishment of

exchanges or dependent rewards for

achievement recognition (Khan et al., 2020)

Bass (1985) and Bass and Avolio (1997)

elaborated on Burns' (1978) theory, resulting in

three essential characteristics of transactional

leaders: contingent reward, active management

by exception, and passive management by

exception The constructive relationship between

a leader and a follower in which performance decides the reward is known as contingent reward (Gemeda & Lee, 2020) The leader defines the responsibilities and expectations, provides the necessary resources, and rewards good performance The major argument to this leadership theory is its limited motivational source for creative followers Followers may keep their focus on success when the goals are set before; however, this may also drive followers not to put any more efforts since there would be no rewards(Maduraiveeran et al., 2020)

Laissez Faire Leadership

According to (Yang, 2015), Laissez-faire leaders frequently adopt the mindset of "do whatever you want as long as you get the job done right."

These leaders believe that the key to success is

to build a strong team; once the foundation of team players is in place, the leader can step back and let success bloom while things fall into place While laissez-faire leadership is clearly not the best choice for every organisation, it does work well in some situations Some incredible, innovative developments would not have been possible without the participation of laissez-faire leadership (Yang, 2015) Effective leaders recognize the positive impact laissez-faire leadership has on morale, as “this type of leader offers incredible autonomy (M A Lasi, 2020a) For laissez-faire leadership, there are management-by-exception (passive) and laissez-faire leadership scales In this leadership style, the leader uses Management-by-Exception (passive) management, which involves only acting when goals are not met or a problem arises The "passive" Management-by-Exception leader would wait until problems reached crisis proportions before intervening Before acting, the Management-by-Exception (passive) leader waits for flaws to be brought to his or her attention

Laissez-faire behaviour entails deferring

decisions and abdicating responsibilities

Laissez-faire leaders do not provide feedback or

assistance to their followers Laissez-faire

leadership is a "hands-off" leadership style

(Robert & Vandenberghe, 2021) Laissez-faire

leadership is another term for non-leadership

The laissez-faire leader avoids taking on

responsibilities, is unavailable when needed,

fails to respond to requests for assistance, and

refuses to express his or her views on critical

issues The laissez-faire leader delegated the

majority of decision-making authority to the

followers (Robert & Vandenberghe, 2021)

Laissez-faire leaders believe that their

subordinates are naturally driven and should be

left alone to complete tasks and achieve their

goals The laissez-faire leader provides no

direction or guarantees Leaders who use a

laissez-faire leadership style have little influence

over their followers and allow them to complete

their assigned tasks without direct supervision

(Ahmed Iqbal et al., 2021)

Research Methodology

The question about what research technique

should be used in a typical management science

study overlaps with the issue of research

inference and the results of such inference The

choice of suitable research technique has a

significant impact on the success and validity of

research inquiries Similarly, the methodology to

be used is determined by the driving research topic and the researcher's goals While the benefits of understanding followers' leadership style preferences are obvious, little study has been done to determine which style is favoured

by police officer at royal Malaysia police This quantitative study used an online questionnaire

to address the paucity of research The online instrument was constructed using Google Forms

Royal Malaysia Police in Narcotics Crime Investigation Department and Criminal Investigation Department make up the study's population The police officer investigated in this study are those who have worked in in Narcotics Crime Investigation Department and Criminal Investigation Department The focus of this research will be on Narcotics Crime Investigation Department and Criminal Investigation Department The responses range

in age from 26 to 70 years old The reason for picking this set of persons is because they are active in investigating background The reason for choosing only four was to reduce the sample

window

Result and Discussion

RQ1 What are the heads of department leadership styles as perceived by the Narcotics Crime Investigation Department and Criminal

Table 4.1: Comparison of the type of Narcotics Crime Investigation Department and Criminal

Investigation Department

Level of significance is at p<0.05

Table 4.1 shows that the chosen department in

Royal Malaysia in Malaysia total number of

errors for the NCID (Mean=8.97, SD=) than the

CID (Mean=8.37, SD=) Findings from the

independent sample t-test showed that the CID

significantly made less errors than the NCID in

their department leadership (Mean difference=

t=3.93, df=302, p=0.54) Therefore, the findings answer the Research Question that there is significance difference between the heads of department leadership styles as perceived by the royal Malaysia police

Table 4.2 Comparison of the transformational leadership between CID and NCID Department

Level of significance is at p<0.05 Table 4.2 shows that Comparison of the transformational leadership between CID and NCID Total

number of errors for the NCID is higher (Mean=8.97, SD=) than the CID (Mean=8.37, SD=)

Findings from the independent sample t-test showed that the CID significantly made less errors than

the NCID in their organizational leadership (Mean difference= t= -4.84, df=373, p=0.10) Therefore,

the findings answer the Research Question that there is significance difference between the

transformational leadership of heads of department leadership styles as perceived by the royal

Malaysia police in Malaysia

Table 4.3 Comparison of the transactional leadership between CID and NCID

Level of significance is at p<0.05

Table 4.3 shows that Comparison of the

transactional leadership between CID and NCID

Total number of errors for the NCID is higher

(Mean=3.75, SD=) than the CID (Mean=3.73,

SD=) Findings from the independent sample

t-test showed that the CID significantly made less

errors than the NCID in their transformational

leadership (Mean difference= t=-.308, df=329, p=0.51) Therefore, the findings answer the Research Question that there is significance difference between the transactional leadership

of heads of department leadership styles as perceived by the l the royal Malaysia police in Malaysia

Table 4.4 Comparison of the Laissez- Faire Style leadership between Government and Private

Institutions

Level of significance is at p<0.05 Table 4.4 shows that Comparison of the Laissez-

Faire Style leadership between CID and NCID

Total number of errors for the CID is higher

(Mean=3.59, SD=) than the NCID (Mean=2.90,

SD=) Findings from the independent sample

t-test showed that the NCID significantly made

less errors than the CID in their the Laissez-

Faire Style (Mean difference= t=-.308,

df=11.88, p=0.574) Therefore, the findings

answer the Research Question that there is

significance difference between the Laissez-

Faire Style leadership of heads of department

leadership styles as perceived by the royal

Malaysia police in Malaysia

Conclusion

Police officers would be the most mature field,

which is now transitioning to civil servant

service The position of police officers in each

division is primarily determined by the type of

crime that occurs within the division's area of

expertise and the number of people covered by

police officers to carry out their obligatory

obligations in terms of the observance and

preservation of law and order, the preservation

of public property, and the elimination of crimes

within a joint department Although the current

study discovered that Malaysian organisations

use a combination of three leadership styles, the

low mean score attained by department heads

demonstrated a lack of prerequisites for

becoming an excellent transformational leader

As a result, more developmental training

programmes are required to increase the

necessary knowledge and capacity to lead transformatively

The police officers who took part in this survey were generally pleased with their jobs They were, however, dissatisfied with practises such

as satisfying their requirements through department rules, adhering to administrative norms and procedures, selecting department heads, and participating in decision-making As

a result of these findings, it is suggested that targeted interventions aimed at analysing policy and administrative procedures be developed in order to address the necessary changes

Transformational leadership best described the most gratifying aspects of police officer job satisfaction According to the findings of this study, department heads who exhibit transformational leadership behaviours on a regular basis are more effective at pleasing police officers Finally, the findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge about administrators' leadership styles, particularly in developing countries, by revealing how leadership styles influenced police officer job satisfaction

Acknowledgement

Writing this paper was a great pleasure with many wonderful individuals helped me through

to the completion First and foremost, the author

is very grateful to God Almighty for without His graces and blessings this research would not be possible I wish to express my gratitude to my

superior, Azari Bin Abd Rahman, Senior

Assistant Commissioner, Head Assistant

Director D10, for his support and patience to

allow me to complete this research while on my

busy work schedule I also would like to thank

my fellow police officers who have participated

in the survey that contributed towards the

finding My sincere appreciation also goes to the

City Graduate School of City University

Malaysia for the assistance rendered while I

completed my research years here A special

mentioned to my friend, Muhammad Bin

Abdullah for his time and effort to read through

the manuscript for grammar and writing style I

am highly indebted, my supportive and lovely

supervisor, Assistant Professor Dr Masri Bin

Abdul Lasi, Head of School, City Graduate

School for his unending guidance and

supervision to make this study a reality Last and

not least I wish to express sincere gratitude to

my family for the encouragement and specially

for the night tea’s while scourge articles for this

study

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