Identity, Motivation and Memory

The Role of History in the British and German Forces

Sarah Kayss, Sarah Katharina Kayss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429959141
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the connection between British and German officer cadets' perceptions of the past and their motivations for enlisting in the military forces in the United Kingdom and Germany. Drawing upon qualitative interviews and survey data conducted at officers' academies in the UK and Germany, the author offers a comparative analysis using differing approaches towards history and memory in Britain and Germany, while considering the roles of individual goals and societal orientations in the decision to enlist. Employing the notion of pragmatic professionalism, which reflects the fact that occupational and institutional reasons for enlisting are not opposite points on a single scale, Professionalism, Memory and Identity examines history-orientated reasons for enlistment by shedding light on officer cadets' values, beliefs and wider cultural understandings of the past. With attention to differences in motivation as a result of differing national backgrounds and former military training, as well as the extent to which these divergences contribute to the emergence of different types of soldiers in the two countries, this comparative, international study will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics and war studies with interests in the military profession and the role of history in contemporary Britain and Germany.

1
Introduction

History as a part of professional identity

This book deals with the impact of perceptions of history¹ on British and German army officer cadets’² professional identity in general and their motivation to enlist in particular. Quantitative surveys and qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted in order to theorise how the cadets and the officer training systems in Britain and Germany were shaped by a different style of dealing with historical experiences.

Modern-day Britain and Germany are Western liberal democracies whose armed forces, which are both NATO members and under civilian control, recruit professional soldiers and officers for territorial defence and foreign deployment. Despite many cultural similarities, British and German societal perceptions of their military pasts seem to differ substantially. This book aims to deconstruct the relationship between officer cadets and their country’s history, and the impact of this relationship upon the cadets’ occupational decision. While inherently comparative, this study does not intend to generalise. Instead it seeks to open up a new research area by linking the fields of military sociology with military history to afford an analysis of value-related incentives in the field of recruitment studies and motivational research.

The analysis undertaken intends to make three major contributions to the existing literature on identity and recruitment.

First, it explores the professional identity of British and German cadets at the beginning of their military career with a focus on their impetus to enlist and the role that their understanding of history played in their occupational decision-making.

Second, it confirms David R. Segal’s Pragmatic Professionalism approach, which claims that occupational and institutional reasons for enlistment, as defined by Charles C. Moskos in 1977 (Segal 1986; Moskos 1977), can merge together.

Finally, it challenges and theorises recruitment studies by identifying history-oriented reasons for enlistment as a new incentive in recruitment research.

In order to add empirical weight to those theoretical contributions, the analysis in this book draws upon a study of British and German army officer cadets who stem from two nations with an arguably quite different way of dealing with their military pasts an assertion that will attract repeated attention throughout this book. Consequently, this study is exemplary, and the sample of British and German cadets only serves as a contrasting model of two societies and how each deals with lessons learned from the past differently.

The formation of identity, particularly in the field of work identity, has generated a great deal of interest in the areas of organisational behaviour and organisational psychology, yet still very little is known about the professional identity formation of army personnel in general and that of officer cadets in particular. Drawing upon a study of British and German cadets and their (1) professional identity, (2) service motivation, and (3) understanding of history, this study will extend previous research by exploring the professional identity of officer cadets. Moreover, the study at hand will investigate anthropological and socio-cultural aspects relating to the norms and values of British and German societies, and explain which of those values and norms was adapted or rejected by the cadets, and why.

The author of this book argues that officers have a strong relationship with the history of their country because the history of their country is identical to the history of their employer. Consequently, soldiers are inevitably more connected to the history of their country than other professional groups. Examining the impact of perceptions of history upon the professional identity of British and German cadets as well as their public service motivation is essential, since both analyses give insights into the cadets’ wider perceptions of their future profession and provide direction for contemporary career research in the armed forces.

Given the suggestion by researchers that individuals adjust to and adapt their professional identity over the course of their career (Slay and Smith 2011: 87), this book will provide an in-depth analysis on how British and German cadets perceived their future profession at the very outset of their military career. The examination of the cadets’ motivation to enlist focuses in particular on their perceptions of history and how cadets have aligned their knowledge of the past with their occupational decision-making. This procedure underlies the belief that the professional identity of British and German cadets is heavily influenced by a contemporary understanding of history and an individualised interpretation of lessons learned from the past.

Each chapter contributes to a better appreciation of the links between past and present in the two countries that are not only apparent in the two officer training systems but also in the way in which the cadets perceived their future profession. To develop a better understanding of those links, Chapter 1 introduces the development of the British and German armed forces up until 2014 as well as the officer training courses in both countries. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that most differences between the British and German militaries can be traced back to (1) the different lengths of service commitment in the two countries, and, (2) how each country presently deals with its military’s past differently. Subsequently, Chapter 2 discusses the cadets’ different reasons for an initial interest in a military career and provides the reader with in-depth knowledge about the British and German cadets’ social and educational backgrounds. The parts on British and German cadets are discussed separately, thus enabling the identification of the different factors which shaped adolescent opinions of the military in Britain and Germany, and determined the likelihood of enlistment. Chapter 3 deals with the cadets’ perceptions of history and the place that the cadets granted the history of their country in their lives and self-perceptions. General enlistment motivations are discussed with a focus on value-related incentives to show that the empirical data analysis of the motivations contributing to the cadets’ decision to enlist in 2014 conform to Segal’s Pragmatic Professionalism theory (Segal 1986). In addition, history-oriented reasons are introduced as a new incentive for enlistment in recruitment research. The aim of Chapter 3 is therefore to offer detailed insight into the cadets’ understanding, internalisation and receptivity of history. This procedure is undertaken in order to explain just how far history-oriented reasons have affected the cadets’ career choice and why British cadets admitted more willingly than German cadets that those reasons have played a role in their occupational decision-making. The chapter closes with an all-encompassing interpretation of the British and German officer cadets’ historical awareness before the final chapter of this book sums up the results, discusses unexpected outcomes and proposes recommendations for possible future research directions.

Theoretical and methodological considerations: problem statement and research objective

The disciplinary boundaries of this book are blurred across the fields of sociology, psychology and cultural anthropology, which merge herein through a general interest in the professional identity of British and German army officer cadets and the impact that perceptions of the past (in the form of different cultural memory³ approaches) have upon their occupational decision-making. This study makes use of sociological research methods while also employing an interdisciplinary approach, since the connections between culture⁴ and memory⁵ and past and present cannot be approached solely within the purview of a single discipline (Caforio 2007; Erll 2011: 2–3; Mylle 2007: 123; Williams 2007: 89). While this study is encompassed within military sociology, the methodological approach combines military sociological, cultural and memory research with an anthropological interest in the officer profession in general and the officer cadets’ professional identity in particular.

The objective of this book is to provide an empirically rich analytical framework that enables a rigorous understanding of the preconditions for officer enlistment in Britain and Germany. The following sections discuss the theoretical contribution of this study and explain why history has been identified as an important element of leverage in motivating the cadets to enlist. Overall, this book aims to add a new dimension to the existing literature by exploring the impact of history upon the cadets’ professional identity, their decision to enlist and their culturally influenced understanding of the world in which they lived in 2014.

Using identity constructions, with a focus on the understanding and dealing with history in this book, goes back to the assumption that each discourse on identity is also a discourse on a network of historically, socially and institutionally specific categories, beliefs, statements and terms that offer a wide range of possible ways of giving meaning to the world (Aitken 2010: 57; Friese 2002: 2). Consequently, dealing with the cadets’ professional identity gives insights into (1) different facets of their perceptions about reality, and (2) how far those perceptions were influenced by cultural differences in the two countries which serve as research samples. Accordingly, this study can also be trialled and put into practice with research samples other than the ones used in this book. The theoretical focus of this book is therefore consistent with Robert Merton’s request for theories of the middle range, which are specific enough to be directly tested by empirical research, yet sufficiently general to also cover a wide range of different phenomena (Merton 1957, quoted in Giddens 1997: 575).

In 2015 Darja Miscenko and David V. Day asserted that although the study of identity (in the field of work studies) has developed into an increasingly vast and heterogeneous body of literature in recent years, scholars would all too often consider only one available theoretical lens to study professional identity (Miscenko and Day 2015: 216). This study tries to obviate similar criticism by approaching the study of the British and German cadets’ professional identity from two directions: first, through a focus on the cadets’ initial interest in a military career (Chapter 2); and second, by examining reasons for enlistment which were directly informed by their culturally influenced understanding of history, particularly with regard to different lessons learned from the past (Chapter 3). Despite a growing interest in identity studies, researchers know relatively little about the content and construction of the professional identities of young people (Pratt, Rockmann and Kaufmann 2006), a gap that this study starts to bridge.

Defining professional identity

The field of professional identity research is huge and this study refrains from providing an overview of the entire field. Identity theory proposes that a professional identity is a construction of an entity which stems from multiple social roles within the context of relationships with other people (Miscenko and Day 2015). Accordingly, identity is a complexly interrelated conception of the self, and the professional identity of British and German army officer cadets is most likely only one of many concepts that the cadets have about their selves.

Many scholars have used the term professional identity without defining it, simply to write in more general terms about the professional development of employees who work in a specific sector (e.g. Bocock 1994; Curle 1969; Glas 2013; Goldberg 2007; Schlegel 1995). Some scholars have tried to explore the philosophical roots of professional identity (e.g. Bierema 2010: 135–136), challenged theoretical conceptualisations of professional identity or analysed concepts which mirrored the relationship between professional identity, skills and abilities (Sommerlad 2006; Wager 1994; Walkowitz 1999) to the formation of identity in the field of justice (Southworth 2008; Levinson 2003) or educational studies (Nagatomo 2012; Rodgers and Scott 2008; Curle 1969; Glas 2013; Bocock 1994).

With a focus on the vast literature on identity, most professional identity studies in the sociology and psychology sectors either focused on (1) the development or change of identity in certain professions, or (2) specific aspects such as how role models influence professional identities (e.g. Pratt et al. 2006: 237–238). The approach towards a definition of professional identity in most studies was, however, quite different.

For the purpose of this book, professional identity is defined as a self-concept based on attitudes, beliefs, values and experiences as well as on perceptions and concepts that individuals bring to their professional role. The study at hand also rests on Carol R. Rodgers and Katherine H. Scott’s (2008: 733) premise that professional identity is dependent upon and formed within multiple contexts, which bring cultural, political, social and historical forces to bear upon that formation. Professional identity is therefore shifting and unstable and formed in relationships with, or demarcation to, others (Rodgers and Scott 2008: 733–734). Most importantly though (at least theoretically) for the definition of professional identity within this study is that the cadets’ professional identity at their time of enlistment was a concept about their future profession which in large parts consisted of perceptions and expectations about the officer profession more than a collection of experiences.

As the armed forces, and societies that they serve, are both constantly changing and developing, the professional identity of their military personnel is most likely to alter accordingly (Johansen, Laberg and Martinussen 2013: 523). Many studies stressed that professional identity is the result of a professional socialisation (Bier-ema 2010: 138) and therefore constantly evolving (Wiik 2010) throughout a career. Other than those studies, the analysis in this book does not deal with the progression of professional identity, but with a snapshot of the professional identity of British and German cadets at the very outset of their military careers. This study therefore defines professional identity first and foremost as a phenomenon of perceptions, since identity is always constructed (Wiik 2010: 59). This approach is based on the Personal Construct Psychology of George A. Kelly, who stated that individuals completely construct themselves and the world in which they live (Kelly 1955).

In summary, this book defines professional identity as an individualised concept about a particular profession – the concept that the British and German cadets had about being officers. Although, professional identity plays a central role in how career paths are chosen and how people make sense of their work environment (Zikic and Richardson 2015), there are not many studies dealing with professional identity in the military and none which concern themselves with the professional identity of aspiring officers.

Professional identity in the armed forces

Most identity studies have been conducted in the sector of organisational and managerial studies, and very few scholars (Vest 2012; Ben-Shalom and Benbenisty 2016: 669) have dealt with the role of professional identity in the armed forces. Volker C. Franke, for instance, detected that identity images, norms, values and attitudes of West Point cadets most likely also guide their operational decision-making and general behaviour (Franke 2000: 177–178). Another study also came to the conclusion that the role identity of soldiers will always guide their behaviour (Broesder, Op den Buijs, Vogelaar and Euwema 2014: 521). It has been criticised that little research has been done on how members of an organisation actively use identity-related information about their organisation to construct their own identity (Pratt et al. 2006: 236–237). This book aims to fill this gap by analysing the cadets` perceptions of the past as an integral part of their professional identity.

Michael G. Pratt and colleagues (2006: 236) argued that organisational membership is an indicator of where one works, whereas professionals are defined by what they do. Officers are, however, defined by both the armed forces for which they work as well as their specialised roles therein. A central argument of the identity theory is that individuals act in ways that are consistent with the perceptions they bring to their professional role (Schott, van Kleef and Steen 2016). Accordingly, analysing patterns of identity gives insights into culturally shaped attitudes and opens up the possibility of making presumptions with regard to particular forms of behaviour. This is particularly important, since scholars from different disciplines have identified the construct of identity as an influential factor behind work-related behavi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Abbreviations and German words used
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The origins of initial interest in a military career
• 3 Perceptions of history and reasons for enlistment with a special focus on history-oriented reasons for enlistment
• 4 Concluding remarks
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index