If you are the Chief of Police for Afghanistan, what solution would you develop to pay the cops that are actually working, reduce corruption, and boost their morale?

• • To first compose a solution, facts should be identified within the police department in Afghanistan to analyze the problem and create an effective solution:
    • Low salary
      • Commanders get a cut from their salaries
    • Poor working conditions, there are not enough police officers for the population present
      • 35 million people are in Afghanistan and there are only 250,000 policemen
      • Extreme corruption
    • Unfair and unreliable selection of policemen
      • There is hierarchical corruption
    • There is a low literacy rate among police officers
      • 27% literacy rate
    • In crises, there is little trust from the public for the police officers
  • The problem: There is poor morale, law and order crises, and little public trust.
  • To achieve such a solution with multiple goals, there needs to be numerous different components to see reform among all current and newly employed police officers. These components include:
    • Boosting morale: Reestablish salaries, incentives, and the budget at the police station
      • Have offerings such as bonuses or extra days off for working cops
        • Salaries should be reestablished to fairly compensate police officers, which will also motivate police officers to continue working at their establishment.
      • Money the police station has should be used to improve working conditions to make the officers have a higher morale and appreciation for where they work
    • Reduce corruption: Increase monitoring and regulation of policemen
      • Monitor policemen and their progress. If they don’t meet expectations, tell them you will lower their salaries until they meet expectations. If after this they still do not meet expectations, terminate them from their position.
    • Education: Have the chief of police supervise training to ensure police officers are aware of their responsibilities and rights as police officers
      • The new police officers should be trained to be aware of the policies enforced to ensure that there is no corruption among themselves or the cases they are working with to ensure that all laws are followed.
        • Their duty and role in Kazakhstan as a police officer must be clear.
      • The chief of police should lead or supervise this training to make sure that the new police officers are aware of how they deal with law enforcement, which could also increase their relationship and trust with the public.
    • Public trust: There should be a system in place to allow the public to build a relationship and communicate with the police station
      • The public should also be educated about what actions by the police officers are allowed and what is not allowed to know what they should report to the police station.
        • There should be formal publications or documents stating these terms, which would also decrease corruption.
      • There should be a system in place to allow the public to give anonymous tips or comments to the police station so they can report any corrupt activity.
      • The police should increase their interactions with the public during different events or festivals to build a friendly reputation and relationship with them.
  • Systems thinking analysis:

• Differentiation

• • • • The police station should have a different office or sector in their station in which people do not work as officers, but those who handle claims of corruption among officers and who are involved in training newly employed officers.
      • Having a different sector in the police department separate from officers who work there is important to ensure there is an unbiased and different set of employees that can enforce these rules.

• Interdependence

• • • • In this solution, the police officers would have to take responsibility for each other when it comes to reports regarding corruption. They should be able to report each other if there is any suspicious activity involved
        • The chief of police should also delegate punishments or consequences for corrupt behavior if present

• Holism

• • • • In this solution, the police officers, department working with regulating officer, and chief of police should be in charge of working together to make a system with less corruption

• Multifinality

• • • • By the police officers being better trained and meeting expectations, they are meeting the goals for their department. The system as a whole is the community, which will have increased safety, public trust, and less corruption.

• Equifinality

• • • • To achieve the ultimate goal of less corruption within the police, which also consists of the underlying goals of boosting morale and creating public trust, officers are going to be better trained and monitored. With corruption being reported, the cases will go down since officers know they are being watched and will be compensated based on their performance. Officers will also be offered incentives based on their performance. Through training, monitoring, and incentivization (different inputs), we achieve the same desired output of less corruption.

• Regulation

• • • • The department of employees that is in charge of dealing with claims from the public of police corruption and overseeing such issues within officers will be an unbiased figure of regulation to make sure corruption is not present.

• Abstraction

• • • • Narrowing it down to the root of the problem: corrupt officers. They are what lead to many of the other issues – poor morale, defection to the taliban, law and order crises, and a lack of public trust.

• Leverage 

• • • Since police officers will know that they are being paid fairly and know that they are being compensated with their hard work, they will not use tactics to earn money in any bad manner since they are content, and enforce the elimination of corrupt actions more too. Bonuses, days off, or any other incentives will lead to better performance from the officers, impacting community safety since the police force is stronger. The threat of losing their jobs if they do not cooperate also adds to leverage.

If you are the entrepreneur, what multi-final solution will you develop so that you succeed, your venture succeeds (takes water hyacinth off the lake), and the people living along the lakeshore also walk away happy. Please be specific on how your solution might function and precisely whom you would work with. For example, refrain from including vague stakeholders like entire communities.

• Problem
  • Lake Victoria is infested with water hyacinth, which blocks fishermen from accessing the lake as well as spreading disease.
• Proposed Solution
  • Entrepreneur uses the water hyacinth to create compost and briquettes with the help of employees responsible for removing and processing the hyacinth
    • This is effective for two weeks until the supply of hyacinth detracts from satisfying the demand for compost and briquettes.
    • The profits from the venture are all for one, leading to employees being blocked from accessing the lake by the community against the exploitation of their natural resources.
    • The community’s desire for a hyacinth-less lake for health and economic reasons contradicts the entrepreneur’s need for hyacinth to maintain her business. 
  • To remedy the entrepreneur’s problem, we must look at how to satisfy the demands met by both the business and community in question. This lies in the fault of interdependence.
    • The community or system in question must be identified fully. In the scope of this problem, we have an environmental hazard that is causing social and economic distress within the system. The environmental hazard is the water hyacinth, while the social and economic distress is reflected in the confluence between venture success and community health. Water hyacinths and their profitability are a leverage point which can be used to argue for either outcome.
      • For the entrepreneur to save their business, the hyacinth value chain must be more inclusive and mindful of the surrounding community. The profits made by the venture do not directly benefit the community aside from its removal. The dependency in the business’ need for sourcing hyacinth implies that some hyacinth present is acceptable as long as some of it is removed. This notion undermines the community’s concern for hyacinth infestation and equates their struggles with one’s success. Redirecting how funds benefit hyacinth workers, fisherman, lakeshore residents, and the community as a whole can help reframe the approach as something that is more considerate of local needs and desires. An example of this can be reinvesting profits into provide fisherman and lakeshore residents tools to participate in the removal of hyacinth; the current employees can be promoted to a position that is more managerial and oriented around teaching while new workers are commissioned for their work, such as one boat full of hyacinth equating 30% of profits paid out to the worker. Additionally, by expanding the workforce, the entrepreneur can invest more in marketing the products made from the hyacinth to increase interest both in the removal and processing.
    • The ownership over the lake and local land must be reinforced by community members. The entrepreneur’s current business model does not identify any legal obstacles that contributed toward approving the establishment of the venture; considering the reaction by the community, it is likely that the entrepreneur does not have the legal and/or social permissions to manage their hyacinth intervention appropriately. To understand the local sentiments, surveying the people who blocked the employees from accessing the lake could be a starting point to understand their frustrations further. After hearing directly from them, the entrepreneur may have to take more administrative actions to further understand and discuss the problem at hand. Meeting with local town and district councils to discuss their business proposal and seek whether they are aware of potential partnerships that the Ministry of Health or Agriculture would be interested in. Through this, the venture can be regulated to reduce overexploitation and has the potential to regain the trust of the local community. This can be in the form of issuing a permit which allots the entrepreneur permission to remove hyacinth within a certain area or time period. To be able to satisfy the long term goals of the community and venture, it may be more appropriate for the entrepreneur to be contracted by the government to remove hyacinth in Lake Victoria and other bodies of water given Victoria’s success; this may refocus the venture towards hyacinth removal over processing, however it addresses the community’s needs while giving the venture an opportunity to scale. By tapping into the political groups that can validate and provide relevant resources for the venture, the community can rest easier knowing that this business has the approvals from positions of power responsible for the safety and livelihoods of lakeshore residents.
    • While the proliferation of water hyacinth has negative implications such as complicating boat travel, its absence may have environmental impacts that have yet to be identified. For example, some of the fish that are consumed by fisherman may be part of a bigger food chain that depends on the consumption of hyacinth. Communicating these concerns to the Ministry of Health, Environment, or Commerce can allow for planning and allocating resources to monitor the presence of fish and other life in the Lake over time to observe the impacts regulated hyacinth removal has on the fish supply available for fishermen. If the entrepreneur can coordinate removing the hyacinth at a rate faster than its current growth rate, they can moderate the amount they remove to control its proliferation. Once the control of hyacinth proliferation is in the hands of the venture, they can coordinate with the government on the decision whether to remove all of the hyacinth, or to remove enough to maintain optimal fish supplies and allow for smooth boating.
    • In summary, concentrating on fulfilling the venture’s legality and reaffirming standings with the community and government alike will allow for the venture to shift in accordance with the needs that concern their neighbors over their consumers. Recognizing the strength and benefits that is brought by the venture can lead to refocusing the goal surrounding profits towards improved social well-being. By refocusing their goal, they can also change their approach; instead of maintaining full-time employees, offering independent contracts to lakeshore residents and fishermen can allow them to profit off the same natural resource that disincentivizes fishing. By coordinating with the Ministry of Environment and local universities, the effects of hyacinth removal and fishing can be studied to ensure there are minimal adverse effects that accompany the steady decrease in hyacinth infestation. This can allow for the venture and the government to decide upon whether the permanent removal would ultimately benefit community members, or if contracting the venture for hyacinth control annually may prove to be a more beneficial, sustainable option for all stakeholders. Ideally, by the end of this process, fisherman will be able to fish more due to decreased hyacinth presence or can recoup lost fishing profits by working for the venture to remove hyacinth. Autonomy over the lake’s resources can be restored through concrete discussion and planning, which should ease the community relative to the organization that has been put in place to allow for safe, sustainable hyacinth removal. The venture will be able to expand their scope if they refocus on hyacinth removal over processing, or are contracted to pursue maintenance / control in the event hyacinth is crucial to the surrounding ecosystem. The system, as a whole, will have increased inputs that contribute towards the output of hyacinths removed from the lake and profits generated by the venture and fisherman alike; by decreasing the presence of the environmental hazard, the social and economic distress felt by the community should decrease as well.