3. Shaping Police Officer Mindsets and Behaviors: Experimental Evidence from a Procedural Justice Training, with Rodrigo Canales, Alexis Cherem and Marina Gonzalez (2022)

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Revise and Resubmit, Management Science

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Research on organizational justice shows that perceptions of justice by internal and external agents are robust predictors of key organizational outcomes. But how can we promote the enactment of fair behavior by those with decision-making authority within organizations? This is particularly important for complex situations, where individual discretion is required and "necessary evils" are unavoidable. Few organizations face this challenge as intensely as police forces, where misconduct and bad decisions by their street-level bureaucrats can have large negative consequences. This paper treats justice as a dependent variable to investigate whether police officers can incorporate procedurally just perceptions and behaviors in their policing. We provide evidence from a randomized controlled trial with 1,854 Mexico City police officers that procedural justice training significantly changes perceptions and actual behavior in the streets (e.g. decreasing the likelihood of engaging in negative behavior with citizens). We find treatment effects in the range of 0.4 standard deviations for perceptions and 0.2 for behavior. Our research yields insights into critical moderators to consider in organizational training programs, including managerial alignment with the objectives of the training and consideration of employees’ views toward their clients and work environment.