The growing shortage of staff globally confronts the armed forces with the challenge of recruiting and retaining skilled personnel. The article examines the structure of motivation for choosing and ...pursuing the military profession. On the basis of the results of the study of military motivation in the international environment and a comparative analysis with the previous research, the main motives for joining and serving in the armed forces are deduced. The results of the study could be used to improve the image of the military profession and retain qualified personnel.
•In probable PTSD, negative alterations in cognition and mood positively correlated with suicidal and death ideation.•In probable PTSD, avoidance was negatively correlated with suicidal ideation.•In ...sub-syndromal PTSD, re-experiencing positively correlated with death ideation.•These findings occurred while controlling for depressive symptom clusters.
Veterans with PTSD are at higher risk for suicide. This study examined the specific associations of PTSD symptom clusters with suicidal ideation (SI) and death ideation (DI), independently from depressive symptom clusters. Participants included 695 Israeli male outpatient military veterans (M = 25.35 years, SD = 5.65), divided into subsamples of probable PTSD (PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 PCL-5 ≥ 33) and subthreshold PTSD scores (PCL-5 < 33). Data were extracted from medical chartsand self-report questionnaires. The main analyses included logistic regression to evaluate the associations between SI and DI (Brief Symptom Inventory, items 9 and 39) and PTSD symptom clusters (PCL-5), controlling for depressive symptom clusters (Beck Depression Inventory; cognitive-affective and somatization) in each subsample. The results showed that, for veterans with probable PTSD, the negative alterations in cognition and mood symptom cluster was positively correlated with SI and DI, while avoidance was negatively correlated with SI, independently from depressive symptoms clusters. In those with sub-syndromal PTSD, the re-experiencing cluster was positively correlated with DI, independently from the depressive symptom clusters. These findings highlight the importance of targeting PTSD components, such as negative alterations in cognition and mood symptoms experienced by veterans with PTSD, as part of suicide prevention efforts.
Throughout history, military officers’ standing in society has been maintained through the establishment and reforming of military academies. Gradually infusing officer education with academic ...standards and scholarly ideals has helped secure the corps’ status as a legitimate profession. Drawing on Norbert Elias and Pierre Bourdieu, this article explores the “academization” of officer education in Sweden over 200 years. It finds that academization processes have been prominent in the military officer field, first, during 19th-century struggles to establish a state-organized educational system and war science discipline for the emerging profession, and second, during post-Cold War struggles to reinstate the military’s legitimacy and status by integrating officer education in the university sector. It argues that academic capital has been drawn on instrumentally in the officer field, as a means to endow the corps with a wider credibility and, more broadly, justify the existence of violent professions in peaceful societies.
In recent years, governments have progressively expanded the military’s role in internal security, often utilizing military policing to enhance their consensus. However, extending the armed forces’ ...participation in internal security gives rise to problems within the military. This article introduces a framework to analyze these problems and applies it to the explorative case study of “Strade Sicure,” an internal security operation of the Italian Army. The framework is used to develop the working hypothesis that Italian soldiers deployed in the operation are transformed into subordinates of the police: They are relegated to routine constabulary duties and work under the strict supervision of police officers. The article tests the hypothesis with qualitative data, including interviews with retired military personnel. The research contributes to the debate on military role expansion by offering a framework to study its effects on the military. Moreover, the article provides empirical evidence that holds practical policy implications.
While noncommissioned officers (NCOs) are hailed as the “backbone” of the world’s armed forces, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to them compared with the officer corps. NCOs have ...been at the margins of social scientific literature, largely because of Huntington’s officer-centric concept of the military profession, which was based on a sharp division of roles and which excluded NCOs as well as reservists and soldiers. This article holds that the officer–NCO relationship is not a functional, timeless universal in military organizations and thus merits scholarly attention. The (re)introduction of NCO-style “Specialist Officers” in the Swedish Armed Forces is used to highlight how organizational and technological factors affect the division of labor between officers and NCOs and the text ends with a call for comparative research efforts on the category of NCOs.
Romania’s security interests and objectives, the army missions in the current geopolitical context and Romania’s obligations as a member of NATO have imposed the continuation of the process of ...quantitative and qualitative restructuring of the human resources and determined the decision to renounce compulsory military service in favor of the one based on volunteering, starting with the first of January of 2007. The transition from the army based on compulsory military service to the one based on voluntary service imposed the repositioning of the military profession on the Romanian labor market, especially in relation to the competition represented by other similar institutions.
Osobe koje su uključene u akademsku djelatnost tijekom razvoja karijere preuzimaju više profesionalnih uloga: nastavničku, upravljačku, istraživačku te pridonositelja društvu i zajednici. Za ...realizaciju svake navedene uloge osoba mora ovladati odgovarajućim skupom profesionalnih kompetencija koje čine kompetencijski profil te osobe. Profesionalna kompetencija određuje se kao dinamički sklop konceptualnih, proceduralnih i činjeničnih znanja, kognitivnih i praktičnih vještina te uvjerenja i vrijednosti, čija primjena u odgovarajućem akademskom kontekstu omogućuje učinkovito djelovanje. Odgovarajući skup profesionalnih kompetencija čini kompetencijski profil profesionalne uloge. Trenutačno su u profesionalnom (vojnom) obrazovanju u Republici Hrvatskoj prisutne tri profesije: vojna, civilno-vojna i civilna profesija. Cilj i svrha ovoga rada jest dokazati potrebu za kreiranjem kompetencijskog profila civilno-vojne profesije u Republici Hrvatskoj. Autori će u radu predložiti model kompetencijskog profila civilno-vojne profesije koji će poslužiti za razvoj kvalitete Sveučilišta obrane i sigurnosti „Dr. Franjo Tuđman“.
In a recent issue of this journal, we published an article titled “Fault Lines of the American Military Profession”. Donald S. Travis subsequently wrote a Dipustatio Sine Fine rejoinder that raised a ...number of criticisms of our piece and suggested several ways forward. For our part, we detect three serious problems in Travis’s analysis and offer a single syncretic response. Our solution builds on the insights of Travis’s critique while avoiding the pitfalls of his specific line of reasoning. We conclude by urging others to continue to debate and research these very consequential and timely issues.
As armies across Europe are currently developing capabilities to fight a high-intensity conventional war against a peer adversary, these armies will have to develop units that can fight independently ...in a complex environment, with limited direction from higher levels of command. Integral to this process is the need for a competent practice of mission command, viewed as a key component of maneuver warfare. The article identifies a set of enablers that need to be present in a military organization in order to practice mission command efficiently, including shared understanding and trust; initiative; a tolerant approach to failure, success, and learning; and the acceptance of mission command as an all-encompassing practice. The article then presents data from interviews with Swedish army officers focusing on the presence and significance of these enablers in their professional context. The article concludes that the increasing complexity of the peacetime tasks performed by military officers give rise to conflicting leadership demands. Consequently, exercising mission command and socializing younger colleagues into the practice is a far from straightforward process, which frequently competes with other demands placed on officers by their colleagues, the organization that they are part of, or the broader societal context.
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