The Relationship between Job Stress, Job Performance and Job Motivation among Police Officers at the Federal Territory Police Headquarters

Job performance is an important aspect of employees which ensures the efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. Job performance is influenced by job stress, while job stress affects job motivation. Hence, this paper is intended to identify the relationship between these three variables among Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) officers at the Federal Territory Police Headquarters. This is a quantitative study for which data has been collected from 341 police officers through a survey. Data was analyzed statistically using PLS-SEM. Findings showed that there was a significant, negative relationship between job performance and job stress; and between job stress and job motivation.


Research Background
Studies on job performance have been extensively conducted before (Noermijati & Primasari, 2015;Vijayan, 2017;Jamal, 2016).Job performance encompasses all activities performed in the execution of a particular job including the efficiency and outcomes of each behaviour (Chen, 2009).Employees who do not perform well in their job portray a negative image of an organization which in turn, affect its overall effectiveness.As such, job performance is an important aspect that employers need to pay attention to.
Employees' job performance is greatly affected by their job stress level.This is because job stress has a direct impact on the quality of job performed by an employee.It is widely accepted that job stress has become a universal problem for employers and employees all around the world (Lambert et al., 2003).There are many job stressors that may affect employees' job performance, including the amount of work, job security, autonomy, role conflict, salary, lack of recognition and 'shift' work (Vijayan, 2017).
Job stress may also reduce employee motivation (Wani, 2013).This could be detrimental as only employees with high level of motivation show good performance in their workplace.Motivation has a significant impact on job performance because it serves as an important driving force for a person to perform a task (Noermijati & Primasari, 2015).Employees' motivation level also determines the quality of their participation in their respective organizations (Barling et al, 2003).Hence, it is essential that employers provide appropriate motivation for their employees in order for them to show good job performance and ensure the success of the organization.

Problem Statement
The Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) is responsible for law enforcement, order management and maintaining public safety to ensure district development and reduce crime rates (Cheah et al., 2018).The police force is one of the most stressed professions in public sector organizations around the world.It is a challenging career as police officers take great amount risks in their daily jobs and these can be detrimental to their health.
Law enforcement is one of the occupations where its employees work with various individuals from all walks of life (Kula & Guler, 2014).According to Ivie and Garland (2011), law enforcers are often surrounded by burdens.Indeed, policing has been regarded as one of the most stressful professions due to nature of their job such as long working hours, organizational hierarchy and security issues (Aytac, 2015).
Nevertheless, prolonged exposure to high job stress will not only affect police officers' physical and psychological health, but will also affect their job performance in terms of productivity and commitment.On the other hand, job performance of police officers is also influenced by their motivation.Motivated police officers will be happier to work and show good performance (Susan et al, 2012).Therefore, this study is intended to study the relationship between job performance, job stress and motivation of police officers Identify the influence of job stress on job performance of police officers ii.
Identify the influence of job stress on motivation of police officers

Research Hypothesis i.
H1 : There is no significant effect of work stress on job performance.ii.
H2 : There is no significant effect of work stress on job motivation.

Importance of Research
From the organizational perspective, the undertaken research implies improvement of police officers' job performance by enhancement of work motivation with job stress as a moderating factor.
1.6 Literature Review

Job Performance
Job performance is the assessment of how a person is performing in his work.Job performance describes what is done, how it is done and what results are achieved in a job.Thus, job performance can be used to review, examine and evaluate employee behaviour and performance in line with organizational goals and objectives.As mentioned earlier, the main criteria for the success of an organization are based on the performance of their employees.
Employees with a high level of performance will have a high sense of competence, achievement and effectiveness in completing their tasks, thus ensuring the success of an organization.

Job Stress
Considerable amount of stress can motivate people to achieve their life goals.However, it becomes a challenge when they no longer be able to cope with overwhelming stress.Failure to address and manage stress in the early stages may lead to chronic health problems such as hypertension, heart disease, depression and anxiety.Job stress is a common issue at workplace.Job stress is defined as the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of employee (NIOSH, 1999).In general, many employees want to achieve self-and job satisfaction by performing well in their job.However, their occupation itself can place significant job stress and burden on the employee in the presence of factors such as large amount of work, deadlines and pressure from management which may be quite challenging.Thus, work and its related factors can cause a person to experience stress and eventually become less productive in workplace.

Job Motivation
Motivation is the state of mind of people which drives them to act in a particular way.
Motivation is a capable of triggering and reinforcing a behaviour or action (Dobre, 2013).In terms of work, job performance is closely related to motivation level.Motivated employees are aligned with organizational goals and efforts can be easily focused towards achievement of those goals (Elangovan et al., 2010).Moreover, organizations with motivated employees are often more successful because employees will always perform tasks efficiently and find ways to improve their job performance (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2007).

Job Satisfaction
Job satisfaction is the positive emotions and pleasurable feeling of employees due to their job experiences (Ćulibrk et al., 2018).It is a key element of work motivation, which determines employees' general behaviour in the organization.Job satisfaction has a direct impact on employees' effectiveness, efficiency, commitment and productivity.It is highly dependent on employees' working environment (Raziq & Maulabakhsh, 2015).A good working environment including low work stress may contribute positively towards job satisfaction.This is because work stress has been found to have an adverse effect on employees' job satisfaction and job performance (Chao et al., 2015).

Motivation Theory
Herzberg's Motivation Theory model or Two Factor Theory states that there are two factors that can influence motivation in the workplace.In this regard, motivators are factors which can encourage employees to work harder while hygiene factors often make employees unmotivated if they are not present.Motivators such as money, achievements, recognition, responsibility, and work advancement are great source of job satisfaction (Sobaih & Hasanein, 2020) and positively affects job satisfaction.On the other hand, hygiene factors negatively affect job satisfaction as they often be the source of dissatisfaction.These include working conditions such as salaries, relationships with colleagues, administrative policies, and supervision.Herzberg used this model to explain that an individual at work can be satisfied and dissatisfied at the same time as these two sets of factors work in separate sequences.Motivators need to be harmonized with hygiene factors to achieve job satisfaction at work (Al-Rahawi et al., 2020).

Sampling
This quantitative study was conducted using survey methodology to collect data.A total of 341 samples were obtained using purposive sampling from the population of PDRM officers at the Federal Territory Police Headquarters.

Instrumentation and Data Analysis
A questionnaire with Likert-scales items was employed as instrument to collect data.For job performance', 18 items on a 5-point Likert scale were used to record respondents' scores ranging from 1-Rarely/Never to 5-Always/Often.For job stress, 'Occupational Stress Index' containing 46 items on a 5-point Likert scale was used with responses ranging from 1-Strongly Disagree to 5-Strongly Agree.For motivation, 'Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motives Work Scale' with 18 items on a 7-point Likert scale was used to obtain respondents' scores ranging from 1-Not Appropriate at All to 7-Appropriate and Accurate.Data from the completed questionnaire was then analyzed statistically with PLS-SEM software.Majority of the study respondents were male (81.2%), indicating that career as police officers is dominated by men over women.This could be because police officer is a job of choice for men following the need for physical fitness and high mental intelligence.Most of the respondents were aged between 31 to 40 years (49.9%),followed by 41 to 50 years (22.6%) and 51 years and above (21.7%).Majority (89.1%) of respondents were married and a total of 39.3% had served as a police officer for 11 to 20 years.In terms of education level, 47.8% respondents had a Bachelor's Degree, followed by Master's degree (29.0%) and STPM / Certificate (22.3%).Majority of the respondents held the rank of INSP to ASP (76.8%), with monthly salary between RM 4501 to RM 6500.On overall, these findings indicate a high socio-economic level among the police officers.3.76 0.62 High Job stress of police officers was found to be at a moderate level.Nevertheless, past studies have noted that even a moderately high work stress may cause police officers to be unable to control their emotions and associate it with unpleasant attitudes.Path coefficient analysis was conducted to measures the direct and indirect relationship among variables.There was a negative relationship between job stress and job performance with β = 0.458, 95% CI= 0.540, 0.358, t-value = 8.152, while job stress also showed a negative relationship with job motivation with β = 0.311, 95% CI= 0.455, 0.208, t -value = 3.846.Therefore, hypothesis H1 which states that there is no significant effect of job stress on job performance was rejected.Additionally, hypothesis H2 which states that there is no significant effect of job stress on job motivation was also rejected.

Discussion
There had been incidences of suicide, murder and mental health problems among police officers with reported job stress.This could be due to the fact that job stress is a complex problem involving workload, job security and work environment (Yozgat et al., 2013).In this regard, policing is a profession full of stress and the failure to deal with the pressure may adversely affect the job performance of police officers (Prysmakova & Vandenabeele, 2020).
Study also shown a high level of job performance among the police officers.This could be an impact of the various strategic plans implemented by PDRM to achieve optimum resilience and work performance (Razali et al., 2021), such as the Police Strategic Plan 2015-2020 and Police Integrity Plan 2016-2020.Police officers who are more resilient would have better morale, strength and dedication in improving their work performance (Giessing et al., 2019).Moreover, it is crucial to ensure high job performance of police officers because of its huge impact on organizational image and effectiveness.(Stoyanova & Iiiev, 2017).
In this study, the level of job motivation was found to be high among police officers.Job motivation is an important indicator of emotional and psychological health of employees (Hünefeld et al., 2020).Job motivation is considered key for organizations, in understanding employee well-being, commitment, productivity, and job performance (Abdullah et al., 2020;DiPietro et al., 2020).
The results of this study are in line with Mohd Shah Rizan (2015) which showed that high levels of work stress affect police officers' work performance.It has been suggested that three important aspects of stress, namely role ambiguity, role conflict and job control in organizations significantly affects job performance of police officers.Previous researchers have also highlighted other factors which are commonly associated to job stress including insufficient job-related knowledge (Rahim et al., 2018), overly high work demands and workload, and unsafe work environment (Sandrin et al., 2019;Knight et al., 2019;Patterson et al., 2018).Furthermore, problems in organizations and operations may also contribute towards job stress among police officers (Queiros et al., 2020;Li et al., 2019).
This study shows that there is a significant and negative relationship between job stress and job motivation.Motivation towards job is a personal factor which may affect the way an employee deals with job related stress.Apparently, motivation factors within organizational context may also influence the extent to which police officers experience stress and stress-related symptoms (Sandrin et al., 2019;Baljoon et al., 2018;Prysmakova & Vandenabeele, 2020).This explains why some police officers may experience more stress at work and physical symptoms than the others.Police officers 'experience of chronic stress makes them particularly vulnerable to high blood pressure, stomach ulcers, respiratory problems, skin problems, and migraines (Li et al., 2019;Queiros et al., 2020;Sherwood et al., 2019).Police stress is also associated with adverse consequences for police organizations, including intention to leave employment for another career, absenteeism, early retirement, and psychological burnout that are highly correlated with their level of motivation (Porumbescu et al., 2019;Queirós et al., 2020).
The study found that there is significant effect of job stress on job performance; and job stress on job motivation.A negative relationship between job stress and job performance indicates that high job stress may reduce job performance of police officers.Similarly, the negative relationship between job stress and job motivation indicates that high job stress may lower job motivation among the police officers.Nevertheless, the higher is the job motivation, the better the police officers may deal with their job stress.

Table 1 .
Sociodemographic profile of respondents

Table 3 .
Relationship between variables