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Does Being a HERO Really Make a Positive Difference to Police Officer Street Level Bureaucrats’ Well-Being?
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Does Being a HERO Really Make a Positive Difference to Police Officer Street Level Bureaucrats’ Well-Being?

Matthew J. Xerri, Yvonne Brunetto, Chiara Saccon and Paresh Wankhade
Public administration quarterly, Vol.49(3), pp.145-163
09/2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/07349149241268571
Appears in  Recent Faculty of Business, Law and Arts Publications

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Abstract

Street-level bureaucrats Psychological capital Operational stress Organizational stress Employee well-being
This study examines the extent to which being a HERO (i.e., Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism) impacts police officer Street Level Bureaucrats (SLBs) operational and organizational stress, and their subsequent perceived well-being. The sample comprised 220 Italian and 228 English SLBs, and hypotheses were tested using the Analysis for Moment Structures (AMOS) v.27 Structural Equation Modeling software. The findings depict that HERO explains approximately a fifth of SLBs’ organizational stress, and together, their variance accounted for approximately two-thirds of SLBs’ well-being. Finally, as one personal psychological resource for helping police officers cope with stress in the workplace, the findings indicate a need to upskill SLBs in HERO to better negotiate bureaucratic processes without becoming more susceptible to negative stress-related outcomes.

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