Identifying Barriers to Chief Fire Officers' Professional Development: A Qualitative Case Study

The duty of a chief fire officer is to manage a department whose mission is to mitigate a changing variety of emergencies. The knowledge and skills required of a chief fire officer must keep pace with constant change in the fire service. In addition to those skills, cultural challenges may create barriers to officer development and leadership skills. The problem to be addressed is that there are organizational and cultural influences that inhibit the development of chief fire officers.. To assess the organizational and cultural barriers to professional development, a qualitative case study was conducted using an open-ended survey instrument. The participants for this study were chief fire officers randomly selected from the 7 regional divisions of the Metro Chiefs section of the International Association of Fire Chiefs.