INFLUENCE OF ORGANISATIONAL SPIRITUALITY ON WORKPLACE DEVIANT BEHAVIOURS AMONG POLICE OFFICERS IN KWARA STATE POLICE COMMAND

Abstract

Police deviant behaviour remains a major challenge to effective policing and public trust in Nigeria, with persistent cases of extortion, abuse of authority, unlawful arrests, and professional misconduct. Although organisational spirituality has been widely acknowledged as a potential ethical resource for improving workplace behaviour, its empirical relevance in Nigerian policing remains underexplored. This study therefore examined the effect of organisational spirituality on deviant work behaviours among police officers in the Kwara State Police Command, with the objective of filling this observable empirical and contextual gap. The study was anchored in Person–Organisation Fit (P–O Fit) Theory and social control theory. A quantitative, cross-sectional survey research design was adopted. Data were collected using a structured, self-administered questionnaire administered to 815 police officers, of whom 807 provided valid responses. Organisational spirituality and deviant work behaviours were measured using Likert-scaled items. Descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis were employed to analyse the data at the 0.05 level of significance. Findings showed that officers reported moderate levels of personal and group-based meaning in work, but low levels of leadership-driven organisational spirituality. High prevalence of deviant behaviours such as extortion, verbal abuse, unlawful arrests, intimidation, and misuse of official identity was recorded. Regression results revealed that organisational spirituality had a negative but statistically insignificant effect on deviant work behaviour (β = –0.128, p = 0.100), accounting for only 1.6% of the variance (R² = 0.016). This indicates that organisational spirituality, in its current form, is a weak predictor of police deviance in the study area. The study concludes that although organisational spirituality holds ethical potential, it remains insufficiently institutionalised to significantly influence police behaviour. It recommends a leadership-driven ethical environment, strengthened accountability mechanisms, and the formal integration of spirituality into police organisational culture.