Integrated defence workforces: Challenges and enablers of military–civilian personnel collaboration

The MCPS was designed to examine unique issues central to the partnership between military and civilian personnel in the defence organizations of the participating nations. In addition to a broad range of closed-ended scales and items examining various aspects of military–civilian work culture and relations such as intergroup perceptions, quality of communication, and effects on professional development, respondents were also asked to describe in their own words: (1) the challenges of working in a military–civilian environment, (2) the main advantages of working in a military–civilian environment, and (3) the most important factors for establishing and maintaining positive military–civilian personnel work culture and relations. Analysis of the responses to these open-ended questions is the focus of this paper.

The results of five nations, including Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, which administered the open-ended MCPS questions were included in this analysis.

The open-ended MCPS questions were also administered in Estonia but are not included here due to small sample sizes of 63 military and 82 civilian respondents.

The sampling approaches and modes of administration were tailored to suit the population characteristics and organizational practices and requirements of the participating national defence organizations. A comprehensive review of best practices in cross-national research indicated that international survey processes are generally more complex than surveys conducted within a single nation and that different modes of administration may be more appropriate, or indeed more feasible, in different organizations (Goldenberg 2014). Due to the heterogeneity of target populations and organizations, no single approach is likely to be best suited across all nations and flexibility in data collection methods is warranted (Pennell et al. 2011). As such, sampling and administration varied depending on the specifics of the nation and the population surveyed as described below.

As shown in Table 1, most of the military respondents in the samples were 35 years of age or older, whereas civilian respondents tended to be older than the military respondents (the largest proportion was 45 years and above). With respect to sex, the military samples were predominantly male, whereas the civilian samples were more evenly distributed across the sexes, with some exceptions (i.e. the Netherlands). Years of service varied across organizations, but they tended to be longer for military as compared with civilian respondents.

For each of the three open-ended questions, the responses were coded into categories using pre-established coding schemes (Bremner et al. 2013; Goldenberg 2013). The coding scheme for each question had 12–14 themes or categories. Complex responses, which pertained to multiple themes, were coded under all pertinent categories.

All responses deemed to be unrelated to the initial question were coded as “not applicable.” Comments that were unique and could not be aggregated into a single category were coded as “other.” Participants’ responses to each question were complex and often contained multiple themes; thus the number of theme categorizations for each question exceeded the number of survey respondents.

The percentage of military and civilian personnel which cited each theme, across all nations combined, are presented in the results section. Following this, the five most prevalent themes that captured the majority of open-ended responses are discussed and example quotes representing each of these themes are provided. Given that the top five themes identified as being important for maintaining military and civilian relations were similar for military and civilian respondents, these themes are discussed for military and civilian respondents together so as to avoid repetition.

The first open-ended question asked respondents: “What are the main challenges you experience working in a mixed military–civilian work environment?” A total of 1,505 military respondents and 2,095 civilian respondents provided answers to this question after accounting for responses that were deemed “not applicable.” Figure 1 provides the percentages of military and civilian personnel that mentioned each respective theme in response to this question.

Fig. 1

As shown in Figure 1, the top six challenges

The top six themes were discussed for the first question because of the relatively high frequency with which the sixth theme was mentioned, particularly by civilian personnel.

3.1.7

Challenges of working in a mixed military–civilian environment: cross-national comparison

Responses between the nations were compared, as shown in Figure 2. Given the degree of overlap between the military and civilian responses, and for the sake of parsimony, cross-national analyses on the combined responses of military and civilian personnel are presented. An overall pattern can be observed in that the top six themes are largely similar across the nations (and the six least common themes being least commonly cited for all nations), with some cross-national variability. For example, a fair proportion of respondents in the Netherlands indicated that there are “no challenges” with respect to a mixed military–civilian work environment (16.7%), and relatedly, were less likely to indicate that poor intergroup attitudes was an issue (5.4%). Respondents from New Zealand were also somewhat more likely than other nations to indicate that there were no challenges (11.7%). Although lack of understanding was an oft-cited challenge across the nations, this factor was identified more frequently by Swedish military personnel (33.5%) as compared with military personnel in the other nations. Similarly, although a frequent theme across all nations, respondents in the United Kingdom were particularly likely to cite poor attitudes towards others (23.6%) and differences in work style and ethic (20.3%) as key issues. Further, contrary to the overall trend, Sweden was the only nation in which problems with work style or ethic were not considered a notable challenge. Another outlier, Canada was the only nation where union policies/collective agreement issues were reported with any notable frequency (6.4%). In general, the top six themes were most different for the Swedish responses, accounting for a fair degree of the cross-national variability.

Fig. 2

The second open-ended question asked respondents: “What are the most positive aspects of working in a mixed military–civilian work environment?” A total of 1,472 military respondents and 2,010 civilian respondents provided answers to this question after accounting for responses that were deemed “not applicable.” Figure 3 provides the percentages of military and civilian personnel which mentioned each respective theme in response to this question.

Fig. 3

As shown in Figure 3, although the five most frequently cited themes (which represent 70.2% of all theme categorizations for this question) were generally common to both military and civilian personnel (with the exception of stability/continuity), there were some notable differences in the frequencies with which these were mentioned by respondents in the two respective groups. In particular, although military and civilians both identified diverse perspectives as the main benefit of a mixed military–civilian work environment, military personnel were much more likely to mention this factor as compared with civilians (26.0% of civilians and 38.5% of military respondents mentioned this theme). Relatedly, additional knowledge and skills were more likely to be mentioned by military than by civilian respondents, although this theme was relatively common for both (13.5% of civilians and 20.1% of military respondents mentioned this theme). Further, military were much more likely than civilians to indicate stability and continuity as a key benefit, with over a quarter of military respondents mentioning this factor but only a negligible percentage of civilian respondents mentioning it (5.2% of civilians and 26.9% of military respondents mentioned this theme).

Examining the general pattern of responses, military tended to highlight fewer main positive aspects (i.e. almost all their responses centred on four themes, including diverse perspectives, additional knowledge and skills, stability and continuity, and learning opportunities), whereas civilians tended to discuss a greater range of factors, and their responses were more distributed across these dimensions (e.g. civilians were more likely than military to mention that working in a mixed military–civilian environment contributed to a positive organizational culture, more effective and efficient performance, greater opportunities for collaboration, and contributed to organizational identification). Each of these themes is elaborated below and examples are provided.

3.2.6

Positive aspects of working in a mixed military–civilian environment: cross-national comparison

Examining the responses cross-nationally, there was a great degree of agreement across nations regarding the positive aspects of working in a mixed military–civilian environment, as illustrated in Figure 4. Most notably, the benefit of diverse perspectives was the most commonly cited theme for all the nations. There were also some prominent cross-national differences. In particular, Swedish respondents were most likely to discuss the benefit of additional knowledge and skills (31.3%), although this was a common response for all the nations. In contrast, Swedes were least likely to mention the benefit of stability and continuity (in fact none mentioned this theme), which is not surprising as they were the only nation that rarely mentioned unstable work environment as a challenge to working in a military–civilian context, while respondents from New Zealand were somewhat more likely than others to mention this theme (21.7%). Respondents from the Netherlands were somewhat more likely than those from other nations to mention learning opportunities as a benefit (20.2%), and those from the United Kingdom were somewhat more likely than others to mention positive culture (13.8%) and more efficient/effective performance (11.2%) as benefits of working in a mixed military–civilian environment.

Fig. 4

The third open-ended question asked respondents: “What do you consider to be the most important factors in establishing and maintaining positive military–civilian personnel work culture and relations?” A total of 1,521 military respondents and 2,099 civilian respondents provided answers to this question after accounting for responses that were deemed “not applicable.” Figure 5 provides the percentages of military and civilian personnel that mentioned each respective theme in response to this question.

Fig. 5

As shown in Figure 5, both military and civilian respondents most commonly indicated that respect, intergroup understanding and familiarity, ensuring fair and equitable treatment, effective communication, and opportunities for intergroup collaboration and integration were the most important factors for establishing and maintaining positive military–civilian relations (these top five themes represent 75.9% of all theme categorizations for this question). Civilians were more likely than military personnel to indicate respect (28.4% of civilians and 18.3% of military respondents mentioned this theme) and fairness/equality (24.4% of civilians and 18.1% of military respondents mentioned this theme), whereas military personnel were more likely than civilians to mention intergroup understanding and familiarity (19.0% of civilians and 28.9% of military respondents mentioned this theme). Effective communication and opportunities for intergroup interaction and collaboration were mentioned with approximately equal frequency by both groups. Each of these themes is elaborated below and illustrative examples are provided.

3.3.6

Establishing and maintaining positive military–civilian work relations: cross-national comparisons

As shown in Figure 6, respondents across the nations generally identified the same five factors as being important for establishing and maintaining positive military–civilian personnel relations. Swedish responses were the most divergent overall, though still more similar than different in comparison with the other nations. Dutch respondents were most likely to mention respect as a key factor (33.9%), whereas Swedish respondents (11.6%), followed by those from New Zealand (16.8%), were comparatively less likely to highlight respect. Understanding/familiarity and fairness/equality were mentioned with similar frequency across the nations, with the exception of Swedes who were somewhat less likely to discuss understanding/familiarity compared with the other nations (14.2%). Effective communication was a common theme across all nations except Sweden, although Canadians (22.8%), followed by those from the United Kingdom (19.7%) were most likely to evince this theme. Opportunities for collaboration and integration were most likely to be evinced in Canada (20.4%) and New Zealand (18.3%), but relatively a common theme across the nations. Dutch respondents were comparatively more likely to indicate the importance of trust and transparency (though only 10.3% indicated this theme), and those from the United Kingdom were comparatively more likely to indicate the importance of intergroup recognition and appreciation (though only 12.6% indicated this theme).

Fig. 6

Personnel in the five nations examined described in their own words the challenges, benefits, and enablers of working in a mixed military–civilian work environment. Military and civilian personnel identified the same 5–6 themes across each question, although there were some differences between military members and civilians in the order of importance or frequency with which these were evinced, as noted below. The top six challenges identified overall (representing 70.6% of theme categorizations) were lack of understanding, poor attitude about others, cultural differences, lack of fairness or unequal treatment, perceived issues with work style or work ethic of one of the groups by the other group, and unstable work environment. The top five benefits (representing 70.2% of theme categorizations) were diverse perspectives, additional knowledge and skills, stability and continuity, learning opportunities, and benefits to organizational culture. Overall, military tended to highlight fewer main positive aspects (almost all of their responses centred on the four themes of diverse perspectives: additional knowledge and skills, stability and continuity, and learning opportunities), whereas civilians tended to discuss a greater range of factors. With respect to the most important factors for establishing and maintaining positive military–civilian work relations, both military and civilian respondents emphasized the importance of intergroup understanding and familiarity, respect, fairness and equitable treatment, opportunities for interaction and collaboration, and effective communication (these themes represented 75.9% of theme categorizations).

Given that some themes consistently emerged across nations and in the responses of both military and civilian personnel across the questions, these themes likely represent some of the most important defining characteristics of working in an integrated military–civilian work environment and are discussed in greater detail below.

Although military and civilian personnel identified common challenges, some notable differences also emerged. In particular, military personnel identified lack of understanding and issues with work style and work ethic as the key challenges, whereas these factors were endorsed less frequently by civilians. Conversely, civilians highlighted unstable work environment and poor attitudes about others as the key challenges, whereas these themes were indicated much less frequently by military personnel. Both groups identified unfairness and inequality as well as cultural differences with moderate frequency. With respect to benefits, although both military and civilian personnel identified diverse perspectives as the main benefit, military personnel were much more likely to endorse this theme as compared with civilians. Further, military were much more likely than civilians to indicate stability and continuity as being a key benefit. This pattern is not particularly surprising given that civilians were much more likely than military to indicate that one of their main challenges is unstable work environment. The two groups also identified very similar factors as being important for establishing and maintaining positive military–civilian work relations, with the same five factors emerging as being most important between these two groups of personnel. However, civilians were somewhat more likely than military personnel to indicate respect as a key factor and were also slightly more likely to identify fairness and equality as important, whereas military personnel were much more likely to indicate that understanding and familiarity with the other group is a key factor. These differences likely stem from the different personnel management systems (e.g. rotations of military personnel) and culture differences between the two groups (e.g. military being seen as the “teeth” while civilians are generally the “tail” whose main role is to support the military).

Despite a fair amount of cross-national variability in the responses, particularly in the case of Sweden, an overall pattern across nations emerged, with the most frequent themes being endorsed most often across the majority of the nations and with the least frequent themes being endorsed least often across the nations for the most part. The cross-national differences did not appear to follow a systematic pattern, and thus the reasons for these observed differences were not clear. Some of the variability may stem from differences in the level of importance attributed to the different themes based on different cultural and/or organizational factors, while some may be related to differences in research design and language. Follow-on research will focus on the prospective and explicit measurement of national organizational factors to enable the optimal analysis of their influence in predicting military–civilian collaboration.

Although this analysis was an exploratory empirical one, aimed at identifying factors related to military–civilian personnel integration in the first place, the results point to a number of theoretical frameworks that can be applied in future research to enhance our understanding in this domain. For example, according to social identity theory, an individual’s identity is created when individuals place themselves and others into social categories, which is then followed by comparison among the groups (Tajfel and Turner 1986). In general, individuals hold favourable attitudes toward their own group and categorize other groups or “outgroups” as inferior (Hogg and Abrams 1988). Social attraction theory suggests that individuals are more attracted to and positively influenced by those who are similar to them with respect to attitudes, values, as well as more overt biode-mographic characteristics such as sex and race, or as in our study, the presence of a uniform (Bryne 1971; Jackson et al. 1991; Lefkowitz 1994; Newcomb 1961). These theories can be instructive in understanding some of the challenges expressed, particularly negative attitudes towards those in the outgroup, critique of others’ work styles, and lack of understanding or positive appreciation of cultural differences.

By contrast, the information-processing theory of organizational/team diversity speaks to the benefits of diverse teams, noting that the informational, educational, and functional background and expertise of diverse team members enhance performance by allowing members to draw on a variety of perspectives and approaches, as well as different sources of information and diverse perspectives (Phillips et al. 2004; Pitcher and Smith 2000). In a similar vein, the symbolic-interactionist perspective emphasizes the complementarity of roles in diverse teams, positing that the different strengths and weaknesses of different individuals or subgroups complement each other when combined with the strengths and weaknesses of other individuals or subgroups. For example, given that military personnel move in and out of positions more frequently than civilians do due to operational requirements related to postings and deployments, unstable work environment was a commonly cited challenge of military–civilian integration, particularly by civilian respondents. However, this rotational cycle might bring a greater breadth of experience to the team, while civilian personnel who tend to remain in the same positions for more extended periods might bring a greater depth of experience in a given domain (e.g. corporate knowledge). Indeed, stability and continuity offered by civilian personnel was one of the main benefits of military–civilian integration identified by military respondents. Taken together, these frameworks clearly reflect the diverse perspectives and additional knowledge and skills themes which were the two most prominent benefits identified by our respondents, as well as the instrumental benefit of added stability and knowledge management provided by civilians in light of the military rotational cycle, while military are seen to bring with them not only military expertise but also a greater breadth of experience that can benefit the work of the group.

Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis, which has been widely researched and validated (Patchen 1999; Pettigrew 1998; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006), contends that bringing people together and exposing them to each other’s positive qualities will reduce prejudices and facilitate more positive attitudes and interactions. Moreover, as Allport proposed, follow-on research demonstrated that although positive intergroup contact effects were strongest when certain ideal preconditions were met (e.g. equal status, common goals, support of authorities/customs), these conditions were not critical to reduce negative attitudes and that intergroup contact has the ability to reduce prejudice even in the absence of these conditions, although interaction under these facilitating conditions typically leads to the greatest benefits (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006). Indeed, increased opportunities for integration and collaboration, as well as increased opportunities to interact socially, was one of the most commonly suggested mechanisms for establishing and maintaining positive intergroup relations. Greater contact can also help to reduce some of the identified challenges by correcting inaccurate information and increasing understanding of one another’s roles, cultures, and work styles or regulations.

Fairness and equal or respectful treatment were also identified as key enablers of military–civilian collaboration, highlighting the potential for application of a number of interrelated theories in this domain. For example, social comparison theory (Buunk and Gibbons 2007; Festinger 1954) postulates that people naturally compare themselves and their circumstances to those of others as a way of understanding the world, and that downward social comparisons (i.e. comparing oneself to someone who is “worse off”) generally makes people feel better, whereas upward comparisons (i.e. comparing oneself to someone who is “better off”) generally makes people feel worse (Baumeister and Bushman 2013; Wheeler and Miyake 1992). Research on organizational justice theory, defined as the degree to which individuals believe they are treated fairly within their organizations and the degree to which outcomes they receive are allocated in a fair manner (Cropanzano et al. 2007), indicates that perceptions of organizational justice affect employee well-being, behaviour, and retention (Ambrose and Schminke 2009; Kim and Leung 2007; Masterson et al. 2000). Equity theory (Adams 1963, 1965), which evolved, in part, out of social comparison theory, and also drew on exchange and dissonance theories, focuses on aspects of exchange and on comparison of what is contributed in relation to what is received, disparity in which it can lead to perceptions of inequality, and in turn, other negative feelings (Huserman et al. 1987). Since military and civilians work closely together, yet under different personnel management systems with distinct conditions of service or employment, observing these differences and thus the potential for perceiving inequality or unfairness are likely. By the same token, factors such as increasing intergroup understanding and familiarity and effective communication can help to mitigate misperceptions and provide insight into the reasons behind intergroup differences in benefits, privileges, or working conditions. These, in turn, can help to reduce perceptions such as the commonly cited challenge of unfairness and inequality, as well as lack of understanding of operating requirements, cultural misperceptions, and negative attitudes. Equitable treatment, to the degree possible, in light of the different roles and management systems of personnel in the two workforces, is of course paramount as well.