The term „crisis situation‟ is used to refer to a variety of policing incidents that can range from hostage barricades, kidnappings, and suicide interventions to other potentially critical incidents (Vecchi, Van Hasselt, & Romano, 2005). One factor they all have in common is that threat is posed to the lives and wellbeing of members of the public. It is the responsibility of police to try to reach as peaceful a resolution as possible with minimal harm to all. Due to level of risk posed, these incidents can attract attention from numerous sources internal and external to the service which may leave those responsible for managing incidents open to potential scrutiny. Management of these incidents follows a command and control (C2) structure based on three levels of command: „Gold‟ (strategic), „Silver‟ (operational) and „Bronze‟ (implementation) (Punch, 2009). The Silver Commander, referred to as the Incident Commander, is responsible for managing the crisis situation as a whole, designing and implementing strategies, requesting and allocating resources, and delegating tasks. This individual is therefore inundated with information and numerous tasks including developing strategies. Successfully managing crisis incidents requires specialized knowledge across a
variety of areas that it would be infeasible for one individual to possess; therefore Incident Commanders have access to specially trained police advisors.
The least lethal method available for achieving the goal of peacefully diffusing the situation is crisis negotiation as this method seeks to encourage subjects to alter behaviour using persuasive communication techniques such as rapport-building rather than use of force. Incident Commanders will therefore often request the assistance of a specialist negotiation advisor referred to as a Negotiator Coordinator to develop negotiation strategy. The advice provided by this specially trained police officer is comprised of identifying negotiation strategy options, formulating judgments about these options and providing information to assist with understanding subjects‟ (hostage takers or suicidal individuals) motives or behaviours. This advisor possesses a wealth of negotiation knowledge and experience that far surpasses that of the Incident Commander and so their advice can be integral to developing negotiation strategy.
Accountability research to date has largely focused on the decision maker, ignoring the impact of accountability on judgments and advice quality in advisors. This is despite the increasing trend within organisations to seek advice from „knowledge specialists‟ that provide unique perspectives and information not already possessed by the decision maker (Phillips, Mannix, Neale, & Gruenfeld, 2004) that can improve decision accuracy (Yaniv, 2004). Advisors possess a wealth of unique knowledge and experience within a specific field that far exceeds other members of the organisation. Given the tendency to defer to the opinions of another when viewed to possess greater knowledge and expertise (Steginga, Pinnock, Gardner, Dunn, & Gardner, 2002), knowledge possessed by advisors places them in a position of authority to influence decisions (Van Swol & Ludutsky, 2007). Based on the belief that accountability improves performance, many organisations adopt a system where advisors can be held accountable both formally and informally for advice that contributes toward decisions. Despite the use of advisors for making important decisions within organisations, there is still an absence of research examining whether advisors produce better quality advice when held accountable compared to when exempt from these pressures.
The issue of how accountability may influence advice quality is a particularly pertinent topic within UK policing at present given the high profile IPCC investigation into events leading up to the death of Raoul Moat. At 1.15am on Saturday 10th July 2010, after 6 hours of police negotiations in Rothbury in Northumberland, 37 year old Moat killed himself with a sawn-off
shotgun. This was at the end of an 8 day police manhunt, during which time he had shot his ex-girlfriend, her current partner and a police officer, killing the partner. The IPCC are investigating many aspects of events leading up to Moat‟s death, including use of police Tasers and complaints from his family that police prevented them from assisting negotiators to persuade Moat to give himself up. The outcome of this investigation may have wide- ranging consequences for Northumberland Police, not least as it is being resolved within the public forum of the media. As part of this process, the IPCC are evaluating command decisions made and the rationale behind these. Advice contributing toward the decision to reject offers from family members to assist with the negotiation process is also likely to be considered. This is a very real example of how advisors in field settings can find themselves having to account for advice even though they were not responsible for making decisions. Understanding whether accountability impacts on judgments and advice formation within such high stakes environments is an increasingly important issue given the catastrophic impact these events can have on public safety and perceptions of policing.
The remainder of this chapter now focuses on detailing methodologies utilised to investigate these issues rather than discussing studies per se (as in Lyle, 2003). For readers to evaluate both the credibility and generalizability of research findings in an informed manner (Mishler, 1990), it is important to provide a thick, detailed description of the context in which research was developed, methodologies used, procedures and participants along with a rationale (Ponterotto, 2006). This chapter therefore focuses on discussing the development of methodologies and explaining why they were selected. First, an overview is provided of research issues chapters seek to address to allow readers to evaluate the value of methods in relation to research goals.
Chapter 6 examines Negotiator Coordinators‟ attitudes toward accountability and policy by asking them how they believe both impact on judgments and decisions. Examining accountability using practitioners‟ beliefs provides clearer understanding of their experiences with this mechanism. Whilst Chapter 3 provided an overview of the general accountability environment policing is conducted in, Chapter 6 solely focuses on Negotiator Coordinators‟ beliefs, highlighting individual differences that occur across these advisors. Chapter 7 examines relationships between accountability perceptions, anticipated regret, advice importance, and the potential influence of risk on these relationships. This focus stems from discussions in Chapter 3 which indicated that lack of organisational support may influence
emotions such as regret. Finally, Chapter 8 examines the impact of changing accountability perceptions on motivational goals for saving lives and self-preservation and whether this influences advice quality. The remainder of this chapter provides a rationale for the use and development of a simulation to address research goals, research procedure, developing a measure of advice quality, and an overview of data analysis methods.