Police operate around the world. Police organizations are tasked with a wide variety of duties, and successful police organizations need committed officers. The three main forms of organizational commitment are affective, normative, and continuance commitment. This study examined the relationship of overall job satisfaction and facet job satisfaction (transfers, pay, promotions, and supervision) on affective, normative, and continuance commitment among 550 officers working in the operations and investigation wings of the Lahore Police Stations in Punjab, Pakistan. Based on multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression results, overall job satisfaction and facet satisfaction with transfers, pay, and supervision had significant positive effects on affective and normative commitment and negative associations with continuance commitment. Satisfaction with promotions, however, had a negative relationship with affective and normative commitment and a positive association with continuance commitment.

PurposePolice organizations work better when officers feel satisfied with their jobs. High job satisfaction has been linked to positive outcomes for both officers and police organizations. Perceived fairness of transfers should be positively associated with job satisfaction. There has been little research in this area, and none of the limited past studies have studied this association among Pakistani police officers.Design/methodology/approachData for the study comes from a survey of 550 officers working in the Lahore police stations in Punjab, Pakistan.FindingsAfter controlling for location, work assignment, rank, length of service, marital status, age and educational level, the strongest predictor of job satisfaction was perceived fairness in transfers, an important aspect of policing in Pakistan.Research limitations/implicationsThis was a single exploratory study that only measured perceived fairness of transfers. There is a need for additional studies. Further, broader measures of organizational fairness should be used in future studies.Practical implicationsPolice administrators should ask staff why they perceive transfers as fair or not and what can be done to improve their perceptions.Originality/valueThere has been little research on police in Pakistan and the current study examined perceptions of fairness in terms of transfers with the job satisfaction among police officers in Pakistan.