Sheriff Jim Jones Has a Propensity to Essay

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Sheriff Jim Jones has a propensity to denigrate minorities. He has a team of investigating officers that all belong to the Caucasian race. It implies that Sheriff Jones has recruited his team on a racial basis rather than on professional grounds. The impact of Sheriff Jones leadership is negative, and he was a highly relationship-oriented leader. Cooperation with the FBI team regarding the recent murder has also jeopardized due to Sheriff's non-cooperation with members of the FBI team. Community relations, the objectives of investigation, and the departmental reputation are put at stake due to the immoral behavior of Sheriff Jones.

What effect would this have on his leadership role with his officers? Explain.

The dominant perspective in the contemporary world is that team diversity is an appropriate team management approach to avoid discrimination. This also leads to add variety and organizational effectiveness (Thomas and Ely, 1996) to the company. Diversity is necessary for achieving the bottom-line of any team or organization. The case description indicates that Sheriff Jim Jones denigrates the minorities. He is publicly known for discrimination against racial minorities of the Deep South region. Sheriff's own team of officers is an all-Caucasian team whereas his team will have to work along a racially diverse detectives' team of FBI.

The scenario implies that the whole team of Sheriff Jim Jones is composed of Caucasian officers. Further, the Sheriff is himself biased towards the minority groups in the state. This will have a negative impact on his leadership role. The sheriff's bias will impact the whole team of officers as the officers will be inclined to discriminate against suspects belonging from minority races. The sheriff will lead his team by having selective perception and stereotypical thinking (Dreachslin, Hunt & Sprainer, 2000) towards the potential offender. As a team leader, when the sheriff will investigate this murder case with an inherent bias towards minority communities, his team will also be led to investigate the case on the same lines. The leadership also requires that cooperation is sought from different groups. The police team will need cooperation from the non-Caucasian community members. The sheriff's leadership role will become ineffective in leading his team towards success in investigating the case. Fiedler described the two types of leaders, the first having high task orientation and the other having high relationship orientation with the followers (Northouse, 2012). It seems that Sheriff Jones leadership may be skewed towards relationship-orientation. He will be related to his team members only on the basis of having a common Caucasian race.

What effect would this have on his interaction with another agency? Explain.

One of the purposes of developing teams is to utilize the diverse skills set of team members. A diverse mix of personalities allows us to achieve complex goals. Teams having members from diverse backgrounds, race, culture, and experience results in improved results and productivity. Teams that have a culture of a strong emphasis on results are able to undermine the information faultiness (Bezrukova, Thatcher, Jehn & Spell, 2012). It is evident that the case is related to a serial murderer that has committed a new murder. It is likely that both teams (metropolitan police led by Jim Jones and the FBI team led by an officer of Asian descent) will have fragmented information regarding the murder. Both teams will need to share information with each other to conduct timely probe into the murder. Given the case description and the tendency of Jim Jones to discriminate against the officers of minority race, it is unlikely that a positive environment of cooperation can develop between FBI and the Sheriff's team of investigators.

The interaction of both teams will be constricted due to inherent bias that the sheriff has towards minority races. The FBI team is composed of members from diverse backgrounds such as Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and Caucasians. The Sheriff will not share his part of the investigations with the FBI team so as to monopolize information. The sheriff will try to discredit the FBI team by trying to investigate the case single-handed through his team. This may result in a conflict permanent state of conflict between the two investigative teams.

Would this have an effect on community relations and cooperation with the community with the FBI? Explain.

The situation might prove to be difficult for the FBI team as the location of murder is in the Deep South area. The area is already with a Caucasian-dominated population.

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The perception about the FBI team will become negative given the discriminatory behavior of the sheriff towards minority race members of the FBI team. Sheriff's own team is composed of all-Caucasian investigative officers. There is a tendency that the community members might become prejudicial towards the FBI team by only cooperating with the metropolitan police team.

The sheriff has already displayed a prejudicial attitude while composing his own team of investigators. His team is an all-Caucasian team and the composition displays the lack of procedural justice. The FBI team is based on procedural justice, and the team is assumingly bias-free and respectful (Brooke & Tyler, 2010; p. 715) towards the other team members. Jim Jones can also influence the perception of community members towards the leader of FBI team who is an Asian-American. This will render the community cooperation in jeopardy. Another aspect of the situation might be that minority races of the community end up cooperating with the FBI team. On the other hand, the minority members may not fully cooperate with the sheriff's team. Vice versa, the Caucasian members of the community might withhold potentially useful information from sharing it with the FBI team. They may share such information with Jim Jones or his team officers. The situation can leave the community relations fractured and distrustful of each other.

If this attitude continued and Sheriff Jones held pertinent information from the FBI that caused the perpetrator to flee the area, would this behavior cause moral problems within Sheriff Jones department? Why?

Dal Bo and Tervio (2013) argue that bad actions are responsible for destroying the moral capital of an individual. Information withholding creates a lock-in situation where a person who is knowledgeable of the facts is responsible for advancing the wrongdoing. Shu and Gino (2012) conducted a series of scientific experiments exposing the research subjects to opportunities of behaving dishonestly. The authors conclude that individuals forget the normative moral rules while engaging in dishonest behaviors.

The department of Sheriff Jones will be facing a moral dilemma. He may also face a criminal investigation for withholding the information regarding the killer. Under certain state laws, information manipulation is considered as a criminal offence. Nonetheless, the department of Sherriff Jones will also be facing a moral dilemma that their chief's act of information manipulation has caused a serial killer to flee. The department officers will lament having a leader who was utterly biased. Their leader was also alleged for disregarding the FBI team members who did not belong to the Caucasian race. The whole department can be legally penalized for withholding the information based on racial discrimination. An investigation might lead to implication of other officers of the department who were aware of the case facts but concealed the pertinent information under the pressure exerted by Sheriff Jones.

How would it have an effect on the officers?

The affect of Sheriff Jones act of concealing pertinent information will be negative, and the officers may become witness to Sheriff Jones racially discriminating practices. An obvious impact of the outcome of Sheriff's malpractice will be demoralizing of departmental officers directly related to the case investigation. The whole situation of a serial killer running away due to moral and criminal negligence of Sheriff Jones can be called 'leadership derailment' (Inyang, 2013; p. 78). The situation can also result in low productivity of case officers and a compromise on organizational reputation of metropolitan police. There will adverse aftereffects on the professional integrity of case officers working with Sheriff Jones on this case. The incident will also affect the psychological well-being of officers.

All of the case officers at the department may be disengaged and demoralize with their work. The stigma of practicing racial discrimination and professional dishonesty can harm the self-esteem of the officers. The team cohesiveness will be lost, and the department may experience a higher employee turnover rate after this incident. The department will have to replace the officers who decide to quit their jobs as lead investigators at the department. In conclusion, the impact of Sheriff Jones act of racial discrimination may result in personal and professional consequences for the departmental officers. If any of the officers of the department are directly involved in withholding the information, he will have to face a criminal inquiry for their wrongdoing. The officers could also be tried for criminal negligence. On a personal level, the departmental officers will.....

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