Understanding motivation in large public organisations is essential to managing them successfully. Phil Davies is a senior officer in Greater Manchester Police and is investigating motivation in Police Constable Support Officers (PCSOs). PCSOs undertake many tasks that enable warranted police officers to focus on tasks that require their higher levels of training and capabilities. The tasks for PCSOs include patrolling urban streets and shopping centres, visiting victims of crime, and dealing with antisocial behaviour. Davies has undertaken a major study of PCSO motivation by methods including interviews and focus groups. From these data some of the main demotivating factors have been abstracted. These include patrolling areas where there is a risk to their safety, and being required to undertake tasks outside their core role or outside their normal patrol area. Motivating factors include patrolling with another PCSO but this is not normal. Feedback from colleagues, superiors, and the public is also motivating or demotivating. Sometimes the sergeant supervising PCSOs is absent or called away, and PCSOs can find this demotivating. We are using these data in a computer simulation of individual and group motivation over short and long periods. This simulation uses hypernetworks to represent relational structure between combinations of motivating factors. Hypernetworks are also used to represent management structures between many agents. In this paper we present the main conclusions from Davies' empirical study, show how this is used in our simulation program, explain the use of hypernetworks to model the PCSO systems, and present the results of our experiments to date. We will discuss how such simulations could provide operational support for the management of staff at all levels in the police and other public services.
