Problems of an assessment of loyalty of governmental employees to formal groups of membership

Abstract

The article suggests a solution to the previously raised problem of contradictions of administrative-legal and phenomenological approaches to assessing loyalty of law enforcing governmental employees. It is shown that the application of the phenomenological approach in combination with the administrative-legal approach is not just expedient, but necessary. Argued that loyalty to the formal social group «governmental employees» can not be estimated directly from the point of view of socio-psychological criteria, since it is not a group subject with a formed psycho-behavioral pattern shared by group members. It is suggested that the term «loyalty» is conditionally applicable for assessing loyalty to the group «governmental employees» and similar formal groups. The authors propose an indirect way of assessing loyalty to formal groups of governmental employees, created and tested by S.V. Gornostaev in researching the official loyalties of the staff of the Russian penitentiary system. This method involves the identification of groups operating in the professional and service environment, which the employee has formed loyalty and comparison of key norms of these groups with formal norms.