Proposed CHAPTER 1-Introduction

Introduction
Leadership is very critical to the attainment of set goals by any
organisation. It is the fulcrum upon which the survival of any organisation
hinges. Thus, the success or failure of any police operations or its
management is dependent on the leadership styles in which leaders use.
Leaders who strategically manage or respond to a situation must be able
to combine the skills of command and control, communication,
cooperation, and coordination to maximise the effectiveness and
efficiency of their response (Carlson, 1999). Besides, the success or failure
of any police operations will depend on the decision-making process used
by police leaders. Leaders must make decisions, especially commanders
handling critical incidents at strategic, tactical and operational levels.
Sometimes these decisions will require the use of force. Such must be
objectively reasonable.

There is a strong relationship between making important decisions and

the success of crisis management. First, decisions in crises are
consequential, meaning the influences of any right or wrong decision are
vital to society, politics, economics, and human life. Second, in
emergencies, almost every option entails distinct losses and requires
trade-offs or tragic choices for leaders. Third, the potential influence and
future developments of any options are ambiguous, which creates
uncertainties for leaders. Finally, crises require a comparatively, quick
decision-making process. Therefore leaders make decisions under time
pressure (Boin, 2005).

This research aims to critically examine the leadership and decision-

making styles of Commissioners of Police (CP) in managing critical
national incidents. The leadership and decision-making styles and process
of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) have created a space for questioning in
the light of how critical national issues have been handled. The Nigeria
Police forms and remains a formidable institution of governance with
massive responsibility for the maintenance of law and order, public safety
and security.
This chapter will discuss leadership and decision-making in the Nigeria
Police Force and the challenges it faces in managing critical national
incidents. As an introductory chapter, the discussion will also cover the
significant problem being researched, and the place of leadership and
decision making in the context of the Police’s Joint Operations Center
(JOC).

The Nigeria Police has undergone various reforms over the years, and
with the ushering in of democracy in 1999 it became imperative that the
institution must adopt democratic principles in the management of safety
and security and restore confidence in its public perception. However, in
the past 18 years, there have been variations in the performance of police
leadership and the quality of decisions taken in managing critical national
issues, despite reforms undertaken. In some instances, the force has
performed creditably well, while in other situations its performance has
left much to be desired. The management of elections, for example, has
revealed quite several operational flaws and failures in some instances.

Since this research is about examining leadership and decision-making

styles in managing critical national incidents in Nigeria, it should be made
clear that the Nigeria Police does not have a leadership doctrine nor a
decision-making framework. There are also no deliberate leadership-
training programmes that expose police officers to different leadership
style or focus police officers to skills about select leadership style. Officers
managing any operation have to rely on their perception and appreciation
of the situation to provide leadership. Because of the complex
environment, police officers find themselves, it is challenging to develop
a taxonomy of police leadership in Nigeria.

As a strategic and sometimes tactical commander, the CP operates from

the police Joint Operations Centre (JOC). The JOC is a multi-agency
framework to support the Police in managing crime and critical national
incidents. This functional framework describes how partnership and
collaboration, technology and human resources can be leveraged and
implemented to support the response and recovery capability of the
Commissioner of Police in critical emergency and crime prevention
situations through a coordinated strategy. The framework enables an
integrated, coordinated and unified approach to the management of
crime, emergencies and critical national incidents. It aligns with the
National Emergency Management Agency's (NEMA) emergency response
strategy.

By using the mixed-method approach, the study will look at the leadership
and decision-making styles of Commissioners of Police (CP) in managing
critical national issues and evaluate the impact of these styles on the
Police.

Background of the Study

The Nigerian constitution makes the Nigeria Police Force the lead agency
in internal security management and the first respondent to any critical
national incident. These threats could involve strikes, uprisings, riots and
demonstrations, communal/ethnic clashes, religious conflicts, major
national emergencies, terrorism and other critical domestic incidents
threats that do not require the presence of the military. However, it is
essential to have a clear research definition of incidents. In the context of
this research, critical incidents will mean,
“any incident where the effectiveness of the police response is likely
to have a significant impact on the confidence of the victim, their
family and/or the community” (College of Policing).
Accordingly, critical incident management is intended to provide
responses, which satisfy the needs of the victim, their family and the
community, but also to provide an effective and proportionate outcome
to an incident.
Thus, the Nigeria Police has tried to provide leadership in the governance
of critical national incidents. However, the capacity of the Nigeria Police
to provide credible leadership in internal security issues or the
management of critical domestic incidents has always been questioned.

As a result, policing in the country had been characterised by a culture of

impunity, corruption, incivility, brutality, lack of accountability. The lesson,
therefore, from this history and dynamics is that Nigeria Police presently
face a three-fold crisis and challenge of performance, integrity and
legitimacy all tied-up to the style of leadership inherited. (Alemika, 2003:
26-29; Ibidapo-Obe, 2003: iii). Thus, police leaders have failed to satisfy
the three components of managing critical national incidents. Their
"effectiveness" in terms of professionalism, competence and integrity to
respond to incidents falls below standards. Equally, the "significant
impact" they have made on communities has led to suspicion and lack of
trust on the Police. With regards to "confidence," communities and victims
have lost confidence in the police ability to sustain safety and security;
and "likely" loss of confidence amongst communities and victims of crime.
This chapter will also discuss some of the critical national incidents the
Nigeria Police have managed.
Decision-making is at the heart of leadership. There is a correlation
between ethical decision-making and successful leadership and enhanced
organisational performance. As the responsibility for the development and
execution of practical decisions, leaders have to be able to acquire,
develop and deploy resources in such a way that it brings the best out of
followers.

How can an organisation with no leadership philosophy or doctrine, has

no formal leadership training system or process, has no leadership
framework or guidance, and does not have a legal decision-making
system, does not train its officers in decision making achieve anything
regarding the management of critical national incidents? And yet there
have been areas of achievements and dismay failures. Officers are thrust
into operational leadership with no prior known skills and competences to
function in that position.

Problem Statement
Leadership and decision-making are very critical to the successful
management of any organisation. Of recent, between 2007 and 2015,
Nigeria witnessed a considerable rise in violence across the country. The
emergence of the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND),
Movement for the Sovereign State of Biafra (MOSSOB), increasing spate
of kidnapping in the South-East geo-political zone, incessant bombings in
the northern parts of Nigeria by Boko Haran group, mayhem by the
Islamic assailants in Jos crisis, politically motivated killings by
unscrupulous groups, among others (Ameh, 2008:9).

The inability and capacity of the Police and other security agencies to
manage these challenges has always been a problem and usually
associated with issues such as inadequate preparedness, poor training,
orientation, equipment, strategy and tactics, mode of operation, excessive
use of force, extrajudicial killings, degrading treatment of citizens – rape,
torture and arbitrary arrests (Chris Nwagboso (2012), Epiphany Azinge
(2013).

Police officers are regularly involved in critical incidents that require

effective leadership to resolve. The problem to be addressed by this
research is to use the mix-method methodology to examine the leadership
style and decision-making styles used by Police Commissioners to manage
critical national incidents. The focus will be elections, which has become
a yearly national event that requires constant planning.

Purpose of the Study

This research examines the leadership style and decision-making model
used by Commissioners of Police to manage major critical incidents, such
as elections. The researcher will use the mixed-method methodology to
find out whether there is a particular style of leadership and decision-
making process used by Police Commissioners. In doing this, the
researcher will use the mixed-method approach to examine the
prevalence of the transformational, transactional and laissez-faire styles
amongst the police officers during national elections. The research will
also investigate factors affecting decision-making by leaders.
The research design for studying the leadership styles in this project will
be qualitative, quantitative, descriptive and correlational design. The
mixed methodology study will look at Police officers as both Strategic,
tactical and operational Commanders and as first responders to incidents.
For this study, only election incidents requiring both strategic and tactical
responses will be researched.
The mixed-method research will be used to examine the prevalence of
transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles
amongst the Police during critical national incidents, guided by the police
incident management system usually referred to as "Joint Operations
Centre (JOC)". One of the benefits of the JOC is the availability of an
Operations Commander (strategic Commander). The Ops Commander is
usually a Commissioner of Police with clearly defined responsibilities. He
or she has the legal or functional obligation to provide leadership and
decision making in the management of the incident. Using a mixed
methodology, the researcher will examine and uncover the leadership
style used by the Commissioners of Police to manage election incidents.
The researcher will utilise research methods from both the quantitative
and qualitative methodologies, such as MLQ5X-short self-completion
questionnaire surveys, semi-structured interviews, and secondary data
analysis to address the research questions, aims and objectives. The
research design will also use semi-structured interviews of selected
Commissioners of Police from 19 State Commands in the northern part of
the country and other police personnel that take part in managing election
incidents. In addition to interviews, the research will use previous election
reports and document analysis as methods of gathering and triangulating
data regarding the leadership styles used by the officers.

This study has three independent variables representing Commissioners'

of Police leadership styles: transformational, transactional, and laissez-
faire. Besides these, there are two dependent variables: police officers'
knowledge sharing and their willingness to exert extra effort. The
demographic variables are the respondents' age, education, service years
in the NPF, and gender. The exogenous (independent) variable of
Commissioners of Police's perception of their leaders' leadership styles in
decision making will be measured by using Bass and Avolio's (2000)
Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ, Form 5X) with modifications
to suit the study.

The primary objective of the study is to examine the impact of leadership

and decision-making styles of the Commissioners of Police in managing
critical national incidents in Nigeria. In this case, elections incidents.
Specific objectives of the study include:
1) Determine the impact of transformational leadership style and
knowledge sharing on police officers’ willingness to exert extra effort
to provide better security in Nigeria
2) Ascertain the effect of transactional leadership style and knowledge
sharing on police officers' willingness to use extra effort to provide
better protection in Nigeria
3) Determine the impact of laissez-faire leadership style and
knowledge sharing on police officers' willingness to exert extra effort
to provide better security in Nigeria

Research Question (s) and Hypotheses

This research aims to use the mix methods research to explore the
leadership and decision-making styles used by senior police officers in
managing critical national incidents. The following research questions will
guide the mixed-method dissertation:
RQ1: How has a transformational leadership style impact on decision
making of senior police officers in managing national incidents in
Nigeria?
RQ2: How has a transactional leadership style impact on decision
making of senior police officers in managing national incidents in
Nigeria?
RQ3: How has a laissez-faire leadership style impact on decision
making of senior police officers in managing national incidents in
Nigeria?

Based on the research questions, the following null hypotheses would be

tested:
H01: There is no significant relation between Transformational leadership
style and decision making by commissioners of Police in managing
national incidents in Nigeria.
H02: There is no significant relation between Transactional leadership
style and decision making by commissioners of Police in managing
national incidents in Nigeria.
H03: There is no significant relation between Laissez fair leadership style
and decision making by commissioners of Police in managing
national incidents in Nigeria.

Theoretical and Conceptual Framework

Theoretical Foundation
Theoretically, the leader motive profile is predictive of managerial
effectiveness under conditions where leaders need to exercise social
influence in the process of making decisions and motivating others to
accept and implement decisions. In formal organisations, these conditions
are found at higher levels and in non-technical functions. Theories that
are necessary for this research work are the trait approach, the
behavioural approach and the situational/contingency approach. Each of
these leadership approaches describes different dimensions of leadership
and affects the association between the leader and his followers (Senior,
2007).

Trait Theory
The earliest research conducted on the concept of leadership focused on
identifying the unique qualities or traits that appeared common to
effective leaders – the idea that leaders are born and not made
(Swanepoel, 2000). The leadership trait model was developed in the early
1900s, with its associated theories and perspectives. In essence, this was
the first attempt at the theoretical understanding of the nature of
leadership. Most leadership research before 1945 suggested that certain
traits were inherent in all leaders and were transferable from one situation
to another (Hersey and Blanchard, 2008). This research led to the
identification of some traits that are inherent in most leaders.

The fact that leaders were naturally born and developed meant that
selection would be the key to effective leadership within an organisation,
rather than other factors such as training and development (Robbins,
2006). The trait approach, however, focuses almost entirely on the
physical and personality characteristics. More recently, researchers moved
away from assessing individuals in terms of traits, and towards
determining how leader behaviour contributes to the success or failure of
leadership (Draft, 1999).

Behavioural Theory
Alternative approaches to leadership began to develop after the decline
in popularity of trait theories (Swanepoel, 2000). Researchers moved
away from assessing individuals in terms of traits and focused on
determining how leaders' behaviour contributes to the success or failure
of leadership (Draft, 1999). But the move away from the trait approach
led to leaders studied either by observing their behaviour in laboratory
settings, or by asking individuals in field settings to describe the action of
persons in positions of authority, and then applying different criteria of
leader-effectiveness to these descriptions. This approach resulted in the
development of a leadership-behaviour model which led to the
establishment of the "behavioural school of leadership".

The restrictions of these behavioural theories are their omission of

situational factors on the level of leader effectiveness. One concern is
whether one particular method of leading is appropriate for all situations,
regardless of the development stage of the organisation, the business
environment in which it operates, or the type of people employed by the
organisation. The perception of leadership progressed past the view that
there is one best way to lead, and the theorists began to focus on how a
leader ought to behave to be effective.

Situational/Contingency Theory
Dissatisfaction with the trait and behavioural theories gave rise to the
situational /contingency theory to leadership. This approach to leadership
examined how command changes from situation to situation. According
to this model, effective leaders diagnose the condition, identify the
leadership style that will be most effective, and then determine whether
they can implement the required style (Mullins, 2009; Swanepoel, 2000).
Prominent among these theories are Fielder's Contingency Theory of
leadership, the Path-Goal Theory of leader effectiveness which embodies
transactional leadership, Hersey and Blanchard's Life-Cycle Theory, the
Cognitive Resource Theory, and the Decision-Process Theory (Bass,
1998). Situational approaches to leadership have come about as a result
of attempts to build upon and improve the trait and behavioural
approaches to leadership. The situational approaches emphasise the
importance of the situation as a particular feature for effective leadership,
together with the leader and the followers. Situational leadership does not
promote an ideal leadership style, but instead considers the ability of a
leader to adapt to the environment. Situational leadership studies the
behaviour of leaders and their followers in varying situations.

Conceptual Framework
Since leadership is a broad and complex concept, there is no consensus
on its definition. According to Burns (1978), leadership is "one of the most
observed and least understood phenomena on earth" (p. 4). However,
leadership is defined as the process of influencing task strategies, group
identification, and organisational culture (Yukl, 1989). Furthermore, Jago
(1982) asserts that leadership is "the use of no coercive influence to direct
and coordinate the activities of the members of an organised group
toward the accomplishment of group objectives".

Yukl (2006) made a comprehensive leadership definition as "influencing

task objectives and strategies, influencing commitment and compliance in
task behaviour to achieve these objectives, influencing group
maintenance and identification, and influencing the culture of an
organisation".

Bass and Avolio (1997), a single specific definition of leadership is a very

complex task as literature and studies on this topic are varied, and there
is no definition which is widely and universally accepted. Some definitions
describe leadership as an act of influence, some as a process and yet
others have looked at a person's trait qualities. Nel (2004) defines
leadership as the process whereby one individual influence others to
willingly and enthusiastically direct their efforts and abilities towards
attaining defined group or organisational goals.

Nature of the Study

The study will apply quantitative approach by using a questionnaire to
investigate the relationship between the attributes of transformational,
transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles are associated with
Commissioners of Police's decision making in managing national incidents.
The technique will utilise the stratified simple random sampling. While the
research population is the entire senior police force officers in the 19
Northern state with FCT inclusive, a total of 61 respondents will be
selected within the police force in the 19 northern states. The zones will
be selected because they experience the highest rate of national crises in
the country. The zone is a heterogeneous as it consists of members of
almost every ethnic group in Nigeria.

The independent variable for this study is the attributes of leadership

styles which are transformational, transactional and laissez-faire
leadership. By using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ), a
total of 30 items will be used to assess the independent variable. These
sets of instruments have been used by previous leadership researchers to
measure the attributes of the leader, and its scales have consistently
shown satisfactory reliability and validity. Various items on the
questionnaire were grouped based on how the leader used his/her
leadership approach while being considerate. At the same time, how the
leader intellectually stimulates his followers.

The dependent variable for the study is police decision making in

managing national incidents. The selected dimensions or facets of
domestic conflicts for examination in this study are post-election violence,
in the 19 northern states and FCT.

The questionnaire on police leadership style will be based on the

perception of the participating police officers in the study. Altogether,
there will be 30 questions geared towards assessing the perceived level
of leadership style within the Nigeria Police Force and how its impact on
their decision making towards managing a national crisis. The questions
will be categorised under the different forms of leadership. Similar to the
independent variable, all the items on the questionnaire will be ranked on
a five-point Likert scale to assess the perceived level of leadership within
the police force that supports decision making in managing national
incidents.

Scope and Delimitations

This research is aimed at examining the particular leadership and
decision-making styles used by Commissioners of Police to manage major
critical incidents in elections from 2011 to 2018. The period is chosen
because it experiences the highest number of national crisis in the
country, leading to several deaths of civilians and police officers in the
country.

The study scope will focus on the Commissioners of Police in the 19

Northern state with FCT inclusive, a total of 61 respondents will be
selected within the police force in the 19 northern states.

The study is delimited to the permanent full-time senior police officers

from the rank of AIG, CP, DCP and ACP of support functions and
operations, northern states in Nigeria who are exposed to the
management of a national crisis. The study could also be extended to the
non-senior office category of the Nigerian police force at the lower grades,
where they could judge the leadership styles of supervisors managing
them in times of national crisis. It could also be extended to other states
in the southern part of the country.

Limitations
The goal of this study was to examine the particular leadership and
decision-making styles used by Police officers to manage major critical
incidents from 2011 to 2018. Although this study has many valuable
findings, as in the other research studies, this study naturally has some
limitations.

This research has a cross-sectional design, which is a time saving and

efficient technique to examine research hypotheses. However, this
creates the first limitation of this study since cross-sectional research
gathers the data at one point in time. Cross-sectional analysis is
questionable for lack of a sequential timeline; in other words, a time-order
sequence is not available to infer causation. The utilisation of multiple
methods and sources, such as agency records, interviews, and first-line
managers' evaluations, could help researchers to collect and analyse more
valid data about the effects of leadership traits, skills, and behaviours on
the perceived effectiveness of crisis leadership and decision making.

The data collection method is another limitation of this study. This study
uses a self-report survey as the primary data source, which makes it
subject to the method variance problem to some extent because
respondents might tend not to indicate their actual behaviours and views.
Additionally, the questions in the survey will be answered based on
respondents' perceptions. This situation may result in selection bias in
answering the survey. In other words, survey participants may select
more a popular response for themselves rather than the true one.

Construct validity is another important limitation since the primary goal of

this study is to elicit the relationships between abstract concepts:
leadership traits, skills, and behaviours and the perceived effectiveness of
crisis leadership in the Nigerian Police Force. Construct validity refers to
the extent to which the developed scales measure the theoretically-driven
constructs. However, there may be other applicable items that will not be
involved in the measurement model, though several indicators will
measure the latent constructs of the study to encompass all scopes of the
constructs.

The researcher will distribute this survey study to frontline police officers
working in one of the most significant crisis zones in the country to
investigate the effect of leadership styles and decision making used by
Commissioners of Police in managing national incidents. However, each
operations unit has a different number of officers (size), structure type
(Force, group, and team), and characteristics which may affect the
results. Besides, each operation unit is in a different region or city; this
diversity of situations might change the perception of police officers about
their managers` leadership. For example, police officers working in the
northeast face more terrorist activities than police officers working in the
south-west part of Nigeria. Because of this reason, perceptions of police
officers about their managers` leadership might be different according to
different regions. Future studies should pay attention to these factors and
might conduct the same survey to different operation units in different
zones to analyse more deeply the leadership styles of Commissioners of
Police in managing national incidents.

Significance of the study

This research has some important significance in terms of the literature
and law enforcement agencies. The NPF does not have any leadership
doctrine or philosophy; neither does it have a clearly defined decision-
making model to support the management of national incidents. An
examination of the leadership and decision making of commissioners of
Police in managing critical domestic incidents may provide guidance and
standards for the NPF, improve performance and professionalism during
national crisis management.

This research will provide valuable knowledge for scholars and policy
practitioners to understand how essential leadership competencies are to
accomplish effective crisis administration in the public sector, especially
during the response phase of a national crisis.

Summary
This chapter briefly presents the introduction, background to the study,
the purpose of the current study, the problem statement, the importance
of the study, and the research questions and hypotheses. Before
establishing the theoretical framework of this research, the following
section focuses on the context of leadership styles and decision making
by senior police officers in managing national incidents. A detailed review
of the literature on leadership styles and decision making in managing
national crisis follows in chapter two.