Abstract
Recent changes in the British Army mean part-time reservists and full-time regulars need to become better integrated. However, there has been a long history of workplace tensions between the full-time and part-time elements in the British Army. This mirrors those found in many civilian workplaces. Focus group data with 105 full-time regular British Army soldiers confirmed that time and emotional commitment are strongly linked in a full-time professional workplace that has strong, definite, and enduring boundaries. This, alongside demands for conformity and stratification by rank explained the high risk of marginalization of part-time reservists. The legitimacy of part-time reservists, especially in the combat arms, was often challenged. Using this explanatory framework, some implications and practical ways that tensions may be reduced between full-time and part-time members of the British Army, and other armed forces facing similar tensions, were highlighted.
The British Army has had a full-time regular and a part-time reserve element for over 300 years and there have been many attempts to more closely integrate the two (Connelly, 2018). The United Kingdom (UK) Armed Forces, in line with other Western nations, are being restructured to create a more flexible and cost-effective force. Central to this modernization is the adoption of the “Whole Force” concept (total force) where the regular full-time armed forces are required to integrate more fully with defense civilians, external contractors, and part-time reservists under the Army 2020 program (Ministry of Defence [MOD], 2018a).
The Whole Force concept differs from previous initiatives by more radically imposing organizational change based on financial targets and explicitly mandating the diversity of labor-use in order to optimize costs (Bury & Catignani, 2019).Thus, the part-time army reserve in the UK is required to grow and integrate more effectively under the Army 2020 change program and some argue this may be difficult to achieve (Bury, 2019; Edmunds et al., 2016). This underlines a major challenge of the Whole Force concept; the mere existence of diverse labor types can reinforce and institutionalize separateness among employees and lead to difficulties in successful integration (Goldenberg et al., 2016; Heinecken, 2009; Kelty & Bierman, 2013). Individualized reservists, who have a “transmigrant” identity, moving between civilian and military identities, may be seen to breach the implicit contracts between the individual, military, and state and threaten the group norms held by regular soldiers (Gazit et al., 2018; Jenkings et al., 2018). The British Army, like many Western armies, has found it difficult to accommodate diversity and difference into the uniformed workplace regarding women and minorities (Dandeker, 2015; King, 2013). Reservists are also different and diverse and may challenge the workplace norms of the full-time regular soldier. Recent work claims that reservists in the British Army have a marginalized status (Cunningham-Burley et al., 2018). It is important to understand any factors that may potentially impede integration between the full-time and part-time element of the British Army and may be applicable to any army with part-time soldiers. Therefore, this study examines regular army perceptions of part-time army reservists. The framework used to analyze these perceptions (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003) will give an insight into how regular army perceptions of part-time reservists are influenced by regular army norms of time, commitment and conformity to a profession with strong workplace boundaries, and pressures for internal conformity and high stratification.
The British Army Reserve
The British army reserve is a regionally based organization with about 350 local training centers (drill halls) spread across the UK, consisting of up to 30,000 part-time reservists, split among 70 major units. The units’ roles span all combat, combat support, and combat service support military roles (see MOD, 2017, p. 40, for a definition) but with a predominance of combat support and combat service support. Both ex-regular soldiers and individuals with no prior military experience can join the British army reserve between the ages of 18 and 50. Educational, medical, and fitness standards are uniform across both regular and reserve new entrants. Most army reservists work in a civilian-based full-time job, or study full time, while also being a part-time army reservist. Those reservists whose civilian role is also their military role are a small minority (MOD, 2019c).
Training is provided for the part-time reservists in their units for training once a week in the evening and up to two weekends a month, with an annual continuous training (ACT) period of up to 2 weeks a year. Recruit and specialist training is also carried out on a part-time basis but is centralized in schools. Once trained, individuals are asked to voluntarily attend a minimum of 27 days a year. While many individuals attend a lot more (Cunningham-Burley et al., 2018), there is no legal force to mandate reservists to attend any specific events. Army reservists can be compulsorily mobilized for full-time service and accept this obligation. However, since the end of 2003, the army policy has been to ask individuals to “volunteer” for compulsory mobilization through “intelligent selection” (Connelly, 2018).
The Professional Soldier
The challenge in the UK of integrating full-time and part-time forces has, it is argued, been exacerbated by a trend in Western Armed Forces toward smaller and more overtly “professionalized” armies with a “concentration” of combat forces where the proportion of “elite” combat troops have become powerful internal shapers of institutional culture (Edmunds, 2010; King, 2009, 2011, 2013; Shamir & Ben-Ari, 2018). These forces are defined as “highly unified; they display dense professional solidarity, demanding greater commitment from their members” (King, 2011, p. 203). Thus, a new model of the professional “combat soldier” has become central to the workplace identity of the full-time regular soldier, especially the infantry, based on training, drills, and perceived competence (King, 2009, 2013, 2015). These smaller armies have been accommodated through the acceptance of a discourse that all personnel are now required to be more “professional” and this, it has been argued, has led to a stronger occupational military identity, more self-regulation, and a firmer occupational control of military work (Evetts, 2003). This claimed change in professional identity and the perceived contract between the individual, state, and the full-time regular soldier goes beyond a simple vernacular labeling of all soldiers as “professional” and has implications for those parts of the army that are not regular—chief among these being part-time reservists—where differences may now be amplified (Edmunds et al., 2016; Gazit et al., 2018; Soeters, 2018).
Integration Between Regulars and Reserves in Recent History
There have always been internal tensions reported between the full-time regular army and the part-time reserves in the British Army during their shared 300-year history (Beckett, 1991; Dennis, 1987). In fact, a large-scale study of the British army reserve of the 1980s concluded, rather negatively, that full-time regular army professional identity was always going to be a barrier to accepting and integrating with the reserves and was a major contributor to reservist marginalization (Walker, 1990). However, since Walker’s cautioning findings, legislation in the UK has changed to allow army reservists to be mobilized more easily for overseas operations, potentially increasing the interactions between components and perhaps altering previous negative perceptions. Between 2003 and 2013, there were 30,000 mobilizations of army reserves in support of British military commitments (Connelly, 2018). Reservists mobilized and interviewed in 2003 reported being marginalized by their regular colleagues but, in contrast, those interviewed in 2006 reported being more integrated and accepted (Dandeker et al., 2010). However, it was not clear whether this reported change marked a fundamental or more temporary shift in attitudes of regulars or whether it was something that the reservists wanted to believe had changed. Furthermore, those reservists mobilized in 2003 were in large numbers with little predeployment mixing with regulars. Those interviewed in 2006 would have been in much smaller, trickle numbers with predeployment familiarization more common (Public Accounts Committee [PAC], 2007).
The Dandeker et al. (2010) findings contrasted with interviews with British regular army Majors over the same time period who held negative perceptions of reservists. They were very mistrustful of reservists of higher ranks, were inclined to break up formed reservist units, and showed a negative attitude to reservists serving as infantry (Kirke, 2008). The cultural discourse in the UK for part-time soldiers is also influenced by satirical perceptions of nonregular service drawn from popular culture (Summerfield & Peniston-Bird, 2007), so that reserve service is very often characterized as the amateur part-timer to the professional full-timer (e.g., the “Dad’s Army” negative reference in Farmer & Perry, 2014). In a recent representative survey of British Army Reservists, less than half perceived that wider society valued them as reservists and barely a third of army reservists perceived that their regular army colleagues valued them and this has not changed substantially for many years (MOD, 2019c). Annual quantitative survey data between 2005 and 2019 showed that, on average, regulars’ views of army reserves as well as integrated, professional, or making a valuable contribution was often around 50%–60% agreement for most of the time, though it did peak at 80% agreement around 2010 (Connelly, 2016; MOD, 2019b). Since 2010, the mobilizations of reservists to support the regular army dropped as the UK contribution to Iraq and Afghanistan scaled down. The downsizing of the regular army under Army 2020 was politically contrasted to the investment in the army reserve at the same time and may have contributed to a demise of any temporary increase in regard for the reserves (Bury, 2019; Connelly, 2016). Therefore, it seems more likely that an enduring historical tension between regulars and reserves remains, as hypothesized by Walker (1990) and detailed by Kirke (2008), and that this is based on the challenge of part-time reserves to regular army professional identity.
“Part Time” Versus “Full Time” in Civilian Professions
There is a rich literature in civilian professions on how the occupational values and discourses of professionalism can provide a normative influence on professional practitioners, which may explain cultural resistance to change and explain conflict in the integration of part-time reservists and full-time regulars (Freidson, 2001). A pressure to change may challenge any dominant and shared sense of professional values within an organization. There is evidence that professionals under pressure to change may perceive, consciously or unconsciously, other elements of the organization as threats to their power and status and they will attempt to marginalize this threat (Currie et al., 2012; Dick & Hyde, 2006; Edwards & Robinson, 2001).
Lawrence and Corwin (2003) produced an explanatory framework that demonstrated that organizations with workplace interaction rituals 1 characterized by ritual density, uniformity of attention, structural homogeneity, emotional intensity, and with highly frequent order giving are more prone to marginalize part-time workers. They asserted that only those individuals fully conforming to the full-time norms and ritual characteristics of the organization will be fully accepted. Furthermore, organizations with these ritual characteristics will be more likely to enact a workplace culture that has strong, definite, and enduring workgroup boundaries that marginalize outsiders, where there will be pressures for internal conformity and where the level of stratification will also be high. In these organizations, the legitimacy of part-time workers will be challenged since part-time employees will not conform to the typical template of the workplace and will be judged harshly against the group norms of time, productivity, commitment, and conformity to the profession.
It is well reported that the social construction of time, productivity, and commitment are key barriers to integration between full-time and part-time professionals (Lewis, 1997). Full-time professionals tend to dismiss the professionalism of members who violate workplace norms of long hours, blurred boundaries between work and home, and who seem to put themselves before the task in hand by choosing to be part time. Professionals are “expected to be involved in their work at all times, such that ‘ever-availability’ acts as a symbolic expression of professional commitment” (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003, p. 928). Thus, individuals who do not show they work long hours (i.e., are part time) will be seen as less committed and, by default, as less professional. “The behavioral norms associated with commitment are conflated with the notion of affective commitment—failure to demonstrate the former is evidence of failure of the latter” (Dick & Hyde, 2006, p. 545). The less time committed to the organization then the less workplace experience that individual will be credited with that is relevant to their professional role. This also means that time spent and the experience gained at work is in itself a key criterion for being seen to be professional. The notion of a strong commitment to the profession arises partly from the social construction of time co-linked with productivity.
It has been claimed that distinctions between work attributes across employees were more influenced by the mode of employment and violation of full-time norms than other attributes such as gender (N. Smith & McDonald, 2016). More full-time British Army Regulars rated Defence Civil Servants, who are primarily full-time employees sharing the workplace, as professional, integrated, and making a contribution than their equivalent ratings of part-time army reservists (MOD, 2019b). Part-time employees such as reservists do not conform to the dominant full-time employer norms and so there will be a greater risk of a lack of trust toward them (Goffman, 1968). Perceptions of trust within organizations influence communication among workers with different employment status and perceptions of trust constitute a central characteristic of building workplace relationships (Yang, 2012). Civilian organizations that do not trust or poorly integrate part-time employees have a higher risk of losing their most productive part-time employees (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003; N. Smith & McDonald, 2016). Both British and American army reserve soldiers on deployment commented that negative experiences with regulars had a direct impact on their intention to stay in the reserves (Dandeker et al., 2010; Howard, 2006; Moskos, 2005).
This Study
Therefore, a need was identified to report on the attitudes of regulars to reservists given the increased importance of part-time reservists to the British Army, the aspiration to improve integration between regulars and reservists, and the mixed evidence on current prevailing attitudes between regulars and reservists. Exhortations for the British Army to utilize more reservists often express surprise that they are not used more widely but do not often take into account the potential barriers to integration (Phillips, 2012).
In order to understand the potential barriers to integration between regulars and reserves, an explanatory framework from the civilian professions was used in this study to explore how reservists are perceived against the time and commitment norms of the regular army with their strongly bounded workplace identity, pressures for conformity, and workplace stratification (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003). Thus, there was a particular focus on regulars’ perceptions of reservists’, commitment, professionalism, competence in rank, and conformity to a profession.
Method
Focus Groups and Question Schedule
Twelve focus groups were held with full-time British Army regular officers and soldiers over a period of 2 months as part of a workplace audit 2 of regular/reserve beliefs. Each focus group followed a semistructured question schedule developed a priori. The schedule was developed in conjunction with MOD occupational psychologists and the author. The schedule was revised a number of times so the final question protocol was clear and the topics for discussion were deemed sufficient for exploring attitudes toward the army reserve.
A trained facilitator guided the groups, followed the interview schedule, and provided structure to the discussions during the interview. Each group was introduced to the topic by the facilitator who provided a brief standardized introduction to the topic of the army reserves and asked them to introduce themselves. The facilitator stressed they were not there to endorse or support any particular point of view and all participants were encouraged to express their personally held views. The varied experience of members of the group of working with army reserves in their careers to date was then ascertained. The group members were asked whether they had served with army reserves on operations, in training, or any other sphere of their experience. The facilitator then proceeded to go through the interview schedule.
The schedule of questions began by eliciting views about the perceived need for reserves, the perceived professionalism of the army reserves, how the regular army views the army reserves, the levels of training perceived of the army reserve, what motivates the army reserves to serve, and what they bring to the army. The facilitator concluded the focus groups by asking individuals which points were most important to note, presented the groups with a summary of the main points raised, asked whether this was adequate, and finally asked whether anything had been missed or not spoken that needed to be raised. The focus groups typically lasted between 60 min and 120 min. Participants were informed that, with their consent, the discussions would be recorded and transcribed in order to facilitate analysis but that no names or other identifying information would be used and all quotes for future publication would be anonymous.
Participants
Twelve focus groups were held involving 105 individuals (98 male) in 2013. The groups were selected based on a theoretical or “purposive” sampling strategy (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Guba & Lincoln, 1994). Attitudes in organizations flow through professional and personal networks influenced by institutional structures (Currie et al., 2012). In the armed forces, personal rank is a key factor in organizational stratification that can often reflect the autonomy of professional levels in organizations and where indicators of change can sometimes be located (Powell, 1991).
Each focus group was based on rank in the army (see rank designations; North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO], 2017, p. 48 for Officer (OF) ranks and Other Ranks (OR) and typically comprised between 7 and 10 individuals drawn from across combat, combat support, and combat service support branches (MOD, 2017) of the regular army. There were three focus groups of officer ranks (n = 27), one with junior officers (Lieutenants OF1 and junior Captains OF2), one with middle ranking officers (senior Captains, OF2 to Major OF3) and one with more senior officers (Lieutenant Colonel OF4 to Colonel OF5). There were four focus groups (n = 37) with senior noncommissioned officers (SNCOs; Sergeant OR4 to Warrant Officer Class 2 OR7). There were five groups (n = 41) consisting of junior soldiers (private soldiers OR2 and junior noncommissioned officers OR3).
Participants included individuals drawn from combat (44%), combat support (32%), and combat service support (24%) branches of the regular army and included many from the infantry. The focus groups were drawn from groups of individuals who were briefly together on short educational or trade-related courses of a few weeks long that crossed all branches of the regular army.
Analytic Approach
Audio recording of the focus group discussions was transcribed verbatim 3 and was the primary data source. Transcripts were checked against the audio recordings for accuracy and rated as accurate. Deductive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to classify the key themes within the data. The thematic categories were determined from the review of the literature and focused on the professional identity of the full-time soldier based on King (2013, 2015) and the explanatory framework of the characteristics of local work contexts that lead to the acceptance or marginalization of part-time professionals (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003). The deductive themes were, namely, “work time/commitment and professional identity,” “perceptions of workplace boundaries,” “demands for conformity,” and “perception and acceptance of stratification.” Details of these are provided in the Analysis section. Multiple readings were made of the transcripts using an iterative approach where initial coding based on these deductive themes was identified on each reading. Each focus group transcript was given equal attention in the coding process. The relevant extracts for themes were collated, checked against each other, and back to the original data set. This deductive approach did not prevent inductive subthemes and a new theme also emerging from the data set “relative worth.” The analytic approach continued until theme saturation occurred and no new information was gained from further readings. Themes were rated as internally coherent, consistent, and distinctive by an external rater.
Analysis
The participants reported their prior experience with the army reserve, with 83% reporting they had served with a member of the army reserve on recent operations and with 10% reporting they been part of an army reserve unit at some point (of these, most of them having served as a regular army instructor for 2 years with an army reserve unit). When asked, 46% of participants reported they had trained recently (within the last 2 years) with army reserve personnel. As a comparison, recent survey data on a representative sample stated that about 50% of regular army respondents had worked with the members of the army reserve over the last 2 years (MOD, 2019b). Therefore, many participants in each of the focus groups were very familiar with the army reserves.
Work Time/Commitment and Professional Identity
The inclusion of work time as a central tenet of interaction rituals, by default, often rejects or marginalizes the part-time professional (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003). How work time was linked to being a perceived genuine member of the army was brought up in all focus groups as an important factor. For example, a key interaction ritual in the regular army that emerged in all the focus groups was the expected requirement to subordinate private/personal time to public/professional time and be ever available as a key marker of being a committed military professional. This was identified across all ranks and across all branches in the focus groups but was especially marked in the combat arms and the junior soldiers and junior officers.
Many of the regular soldiers talked about the all-enveloping aspect of being in the army, such that they “live and breathe army life” and that regulars “work and are committed 24 hr a day” with an explicit requirement for a regular soldier to be ever available for duty and to be prepared to work long hours with little reward. While there was an indication that sometimes this commitment was not positive, such as the “having to get up at seven, to stand out in the cold for someone to call their name out,” nonetheless there was a very coherent sense that time spent working, being ever available and professional status were very strongly related. “Ever-availability” is not merely symbolic but a solid part of professional identity among regular soldiers at all ranks and branches.
Thus, many focus group respondents questioned the professionalism and commitment of part-time army reserve soldiers to the army. The perceived poor time availability and thus poor affective commitment of army reservists to the army as an institution was contrasted with the “100% commitment” of the regular. Reservists have chosen to not be regulars and so have, by default, put themselves before the needs of the army. The other thing, it’s almost their second priority. It’s their second priority, for those in the regular army that is their profession, that’s their livelihood, that’s what they want to do, you know, in the army reserve you’ve got your main job, the army reserve is a second priority so they’re never going to be at the same level of professionalism necessarily as you would in the regular. (OR2 5)
Very few participants remarked upon the army reservist having a full-time civilian job and sacrificing time to serve from family time (Basham & Catignani, 2018). When this was remarked upon in a minority of focus groups, there were comments that they themselves could not maintain such a lifestyle and they struggled to understand how such a lifestyle could be maintained. A minority did comment on the different kind of commitment shown by army reservists. I have a lot of respect for some of these guys and I simply, potential officers for example, the stuff they have to go through is quite incredible. Facilitator: In what way? Officer 1: The commitment is phenomenal, you know, the sort of 12 weekends they do before they go to their two week piece at, well they do all the recruit training and then they’ve got 12 weekends to do…eight or 12 weekends, sort of common syllabus, sort of first part of the officer training and then they do a two week exercise and then three week Sandhurst and they’ve got to do all those 12 weekends sequentially so if they miss one they have to start all over again. (OF2 4) Because they’re not, if they’re only part-time they’re not doing whatever they’re doing all the time the same as the real professionals, so obviously they’re not going to be as good are they, which means they’re not as professional. (OR4 1)
Many regulars, mainly at senior ranks, did claim they knew individual army reservists who were thoroughly professional and who contributed professionally to the workplace and on deployments. Some admitted there may be an inherent bias in their response to army reservists and commented that it was sometimes difficult to know who the reservists were in their workplace as they tended only to be pointed out when they were not performing well. Some army reserve units were identified as being more likely to provide professional individuals for deployments such as parachute or commando infantry units. Some commented that this was because these units have large amounts of ex-regulars in the ranks. A small number of individuals expressed the view they would never see any reservists or their training as professional, unless they were ex-regular. There was a common view that specialists from civilian life were exceptional to this rule. Those who could offer their own professional knowledge from being a civilian professional were especially welcome. “Yeah, they’re so valuable. I mean having seen a few guys from the army reserve who are just amazing at what they do” (OF2 6).
A minority of regulars held a nuanced view that judging reservists as poorly trained or poorly committed was not the fault of the reservists per se but the fault of the system to fail to train them adequately. I think what really pisses them [A Reservist] off is the fact that whether it be banter or more malicious, we judge them as being at a lower standard than us when they are not, they simply don’t have the opportunity to reach that stage, none of us likes to be put in that position, none of us likes to be put in a position where we’re judged knowing that we’ve not been able to prepare properly. (OF4 2)
The importance of social time in the army to workplace integration and developing trust was occasionally mentioned and could be positive for part-time reservists. But I can honestly say that the Reservists I work with have been quality, and we’re even inviting them down to our mess bar at mess do’s because they’re like, even though they’re one on one, now they’ve been with us for that year and a half, they’re sort of like a second sort of battery if you like, and they’re always welcome. (OR3 2)
Perceptions of Workplace Boundaries
Professional culture is often defined by being part of an exclusive group with a strong and enduring membership boundary (Dick & Hyde, 2006; Lawrence & Corwin, 2003). The density of interactions developed through intensive training and operational tours, the demanding nature of collective action requiring sustained attention, and the emotional intensity of hierarchical, sometimes coercive, relationships between individuals can be thought to produce a highly bounded regular army work context. Boundaries created by professionals can be strong where members perceive a real, material difference between them and nonmembers (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003).
A number of comments were made in the focus groups that implied that army reservists were not soldiers but were really civilians in uniform. A key aspect of this was that civilians were not perceived to be inculcated in the discipline and ethos of the regular army. I would rather take a day 1 Jock {Regular Army Scottish soldier} straight out of training than somebody that’s been in the army reserve for 5 years. (OR4 1) Facilitator: Why? He’s a civilian. Because he’s {the Jock, the Regular} got more discipline installed into him. (OR4 1)
Army reservists being accepted to complete the same jobs and roles as regulars were not seen in a positive light by many and implied a threat to their status “its almost devaluing our jobs and the training that we’ve done” (OR6 3). One consequence of this is that many of the hidden civilian skills in the ranks of the army reserve may be passed over or not exploited due to a negative reaction to them just being perceived as civilian. However, some regulars did not always see being a civilian as a disadvantage. Reservists could be seen as very useful when offering a specialist skill that was not available to the regular army (such as medical, dental, or legal specialists). Taking a civilian approach within the military context could be an advantage at times. No. I think they bring something to the party, they can bring an excellent non-military attitude to things where. (OF4 2) Why it that useful? [Facilitator] Because they’re open, we’re trained in the army, especially as officers to think outside the box, but usually only if it’s inside the ever so slightly larger box which is just outside that box, whereas actually civvy view they actually go, “It’s a shit way of doing this, let’s do it like this.” (OF4 2)
The combat arms are more tightly cohesive and more focused on collective action than other arms. The infantry, in particular, see themselves as the epitome of professional soldiers (King, 2011, 2013). More army reserve infantry have deployed in the past 20 years than any other arm of the service, less the medical services (Connelly, 2018) and the army reserve infantry is the most well recruited part of the British army reserve. However, what came across very clearly in the focus groups was a very negative reaction to reservists serving as infantry—from the infantry. “Six months’ mandatory training essential—especially if infantry” (OR6 4). “If they want to be an infantry soldier, join the Regs, because we value their specialist roles” (OR2 3).
There was though a minority view that army reservists could be trusted to be infantry if certain preconditions were met. I’d found if they had a strong basis in the basics, i.e. they were fit, resilient, keen, you know, could shoot straight, could look after themselves, could hold their own, then adapting them to whatever role they were going to fill would be extremely easy, as long as they had a good foundation in the basics, anything on top of that was fairly straightforward. (OF4 5)
Demands for Conformity
Organizations that have a tendency to marginalize part-time staff often demonstrate much pressure to conform to the norms of the full-time staff (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003). In the British Army, there is a strong shared ideal of the value of selfless commitment and a key way of demonstrating this is to subordinate the individual needs through the acceptance of compulsion. Reservists were often described as not understanding that the needs of the army must come first. Expressing choice was seen as the reservist putting themselves before the army. There was a general opinion, among the officers in particular, that the army reserve “cannot be relied upon to turn up” when required for operations, even though the last time there was a high level of compulsory mobilization almost all did turn up (PAC, 2007). It was frequently commented that there needed to be more compulsion to attend key training events for army reserve training to be seen as credible. There were comments that the regular staff should have control over reservist attendance for training and that the reserve should be more like the regular army with part-time compulsion, and this was directly associated with professionalism. Yeah, while our structure remains optional and occasional like it is now you couldn’t do it, you’d need more compulsion, more professionalism. (OF4 1) So army reserve is too optional. (Facilitator) Too voluntary. And I know people are trying to protect the volunteer thing, well quite frankly I think if you do that you’re never going to get to where you want to go, this is regular army part-time now, yeah. (OF4 3) they {Reservists} get the part, they turn up, they go on tour, “Yeah, I’ve been to Afghanistan and Iraq,” good for you mate, what about the rest of the Army, the rest of the people, it’s alright sorting yourself out. (OF2 1)
Conformity over matters of uniform and dress are also important to the British Army, like in most armies. There was much reference to how army reservists wore their uniform and negative comments on this. “You see it time and time again with the army reserve in various states of undress and unprofessionalism in their appearance and bearing and that’s where it comes from” (OR4 10).
There was a perception that the regular army were there to uphold the standards and that while this may not make regulars popular with reservists, this was because the reservists did not actually understand the requirement for conformity. As one junior soldier stated: “The regular army is its own society,” and so there was an inherent expectation that army reservists needed to strongly conform to the norms of that society to integrate effectively.
Perception and Acceptance of Stratification
Stratification involves the assignment of authority to some members over others, creating legitimate “order-givers” and “order-takers” (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003). In the British Army, hierarchy expressed through rank gives legal and legitimate status to some workers over others. It also now serves to differentiate recognized levels of professionalism (King, 2013). Emotional intensity around authority is high in the military with order giving, and order taking, associated with success or failure of the mission and risk of personal injury or death. Emotional intensity leads to compliance with superiors being highly valued. However, this compliance is legitimized by the perceived professional competence associated with rank. If the individual holding the rank is perceived as not being competent then the legitimacy to hold the rank will be questioned. If rank is defined by the legitimacy of professional competence, and competence is judged by time served, then the more senior the part-time reservist’s rank then the higher the risk that they will be judged as less professional.
Indeed, there was a strong sense across all the focus groups that rank in the army reserve was certainly not equivalent in status to the same rank in the regular army as was also found in Kirke (2008). There was a broad agreement that more doubt was thrown on the competence of army reservists, the more senior rank they held. Individual participants generally did not see an army reservist as being competent at the personal rank they themselves held but rather one or more ranks below where they sat. This was especially so for command appointments. The regular middle ranking officers were especially negative about the competence of army reserve officers. “Why do we need, you know, overqualified [Army Reservists]…or officers of any kind…” (OF3 9). I mean why are we training an army reserve company commander or squadron commander for years and years and years when he’s not going to be as good as a regular officer, why not just have a regular officer in charge? (OF3 8)
Relative Worth
A key aspect of being a professional is the vocational nature of service and not being solely motivated by material rewards. The majority of focus groups when asked what motivated army reserve soldiers to serve mentioned pay and money and many of the junior ranks thought that army reservists earned more than they themselves did. British Army Reservists when they are mobilized to serve full time can receive a top up of their army reserve pay to equal their most recent civilian pay (i.e., “The reservist award”), so that they are not losing money while mobilized against their civil employment (MOD, 2015a). Many participants in the focus groups commented on the army reserve top up pay as an example of double unfairness. Army reservists were thought to earn more pay when deployed than a regular, despite the regular doing the perceived same job, and since they were army reservists, they would, by default, be worse at the job than the equivalent regular soldier. Reservists were less worthy but paid more. “they’re getting paid three times more, you know, some of these guys are being paid more than our COs’ [Commanding Officers] to be a standard infantryman and again it’s a cause for concern” (OF3 12). he was a driver in civvy street, driving HGVs [Heavy Goods Vehicles], he did a conversion course and came out and was useless…but he was still getting paid more money than, he was a private soldier getting paid more money than me.” (OR4 1).
Discussion
This study has confirmed that the risk of marginalization of British Army Reservists is high, despite recent shared operational experiences. Some of the negative findings may be explained by the drop in reservist mobilizations since the end of the large-scale Iraq and Afghanistan contributions in 2011 and the competition for resource between regular and reserve from 2012 onward. However, these findings are not new and reflect a strong continuity with historical and contemporary reports (Dennis, 1987; Kirke, 2008; Walker, 1990) and attitude surveys since the data here were collected (Connelly, 2016; MOD, 2019b). They also reflect descriptions from other nations with full-time regulars and part-time reservists (Griffith, 2005, 2008; Mahon, 1983; Pratt, 2011; Ryan, 1999; Stewart & Fisher, 2007). This continuity of attitude to reservists, despite operational experience, reorganizations, and turnover of personnel, demonstrates the enduring nature of the perceptions described. The use of the Lawrence and Corwin (2003) framework from the civilian professions literature, however, explains these enduring attitudes to part-time army reservists and demonstrates that they are based on the workplace identity and norms of the full-time regular, much as in the civilian workplace. While the views of reservists presented may seem overly negative in nature, many positive points were stated about reservists and their utility, but it was clear that part-time reservists represent a puzzling social category that can be challenging for the full-time soldier.
Professional Identity
Much of the detail within the analysis confirms recent work that the professional identity of regular soldiers is highly unified with dense professional solidarity and a great sense of vocational commitment (King, 2013). Time served in the profession and professional competence is closely interlinked, and with their strong and enduring workplace boundaries, regulars see themselves as set apart and different from civilians. As with many professions, workplace status, as well as institutional and individual power, is well guarded, especially in the infantry, and acceptance of difference can be perceived as threat to these (Currie et al., 2012). This reflects tensions evident in many professions who also struggle to value and identify part-time members (Dick & Hyde, 2006; Edwards & Robinson, 2001).
The Binding of Time, Commitment, and Professional Identity
Much of the regular army perceptions of reservists’ professionalism were influenced by their own shared regular army understanding of commitment that reflects a vocational profession underwritten by the workplace norms of long hours, “ever-availability” and putting the army first. Reservists, being part time, not seeming to work long hours, not always being available, and choosing when to serve, violate these time-based norms of professional service. Reservist commitment is therefore in doubt and so then is professionalism. A minority of regular participants recognized reservist commitment as differently valid given the demands of reservist’s full-time civilian careers. However, reservist commitment to a civilian job, rather than the military, is itself a marker of difference and so may be easily dismissed rather than admired.
The emphasis on time committed to the organization means there will likely be pressure on reservists to feel more accepted through attending more training. A trend for this has been recently noted where some British Army Reservists were almost full time in their training commitment (Bury, 2019). This is not sustainable for most reservists and may be detrimental to their civilian jobs and family relations with impacts on retention (Cunningham-Burley et al., 2018). It also risks undermining the cost efficiency argument for reserve forces (MOD, 2011; Mooney & Crackett, 2018).
While reservists’ lesser time commitment was a key concern highlighted by many regular army participants, others commented that the temporal pace of a full-time army is not always in tune with the most efficient use of time itself. Some British Army Reservists claim that the regular army does not appreciate the value of time (Cunningham-Burley et al., 2018). In fact, only 27% of British Army Regulars were satisfied with their opportunity to work more flexibly with variable start/finish times and compressed hours (MOD, 2019b). Some thought to temporal restructuring (Orlikowski & Yates, 2002) to refashion commitment to the profession as seeking value from time may perhaps both sharpen regular army training and allow better integration with reserves (Bury, 2019) though any unintended consequences of this proposal would have to be carefully considered.
Workplace Boundaries and the Perception of Relevant Experience
Workplace boundaries were strong with reservists often seen as civilians in uniform and not true military professionals in similar ways that other professionals also reject part-time workers (N. Smith & McDonald, 2016). Many reservists claim that their civilian experience has a positive impact on the military (MOD, 2019c). However, the data here demonstrate that many full-time regulars do not see civilian experience as relevant to their understanding of being a professional soldier, unless it is from a recognized specialist profession such as a medical doctor or lawyer. Some regulars did believe that reserves could make real contributions to the military workplace by offering divergent thinking and providing valuable insights from their civilian experience. Rejecting outside experience as not relevant where professional identity is tied to being an authoritative expert is a way of retaining autonomy and guarding professional privilege (Currie et al., 2012).
The data reported here, and previous research (Kirke, 2008), have demonstrated that the relatively small amount of military experience that a reservist is assumed to have accrued leads to a lack of “professional respect.” Military experience is a major qualification for the gaining of “professional respect” in the British Army (Kirke, 2015). Reservists, due to their part-time nature, will always have a difficulty with this point compared to a full-time colleague. However, reservists tend to serve in the same unit and role for longer than their regular colleagues who are often posted between units with different roles and so reservists can develop more focused role experience over the longer term. Those reservists who are promoted up the ranks, by default, often do much more than the minimum of part-time days required, spend longer time at each rank, and are accruing civilian experience in their other work life, often in management and leadership, in parallel. Yet this experience is not seen or perceived as relevant by their regular colleagues.
The maintenance of a strong workplace boundary and a rejection of civilian experience may help explain seemingly fratricidal organizational behavior regarding reservists reported by other armed forces beyond the UK, for example, the rejection of U.S. Navy Reservists for promotion for not having enough “U.S. Navy” service time but who had previously worked as full-time civilian contractors in the same jobs and on the same type ships as U.S. Navy Regular sailors (Golfin & Grefer, 2006). In Sweden, despite being recruited for civilian experience, over 400 reservist officers in Sweden reported that their wide-ranging civilian experience was never asked for by the armed forces (Danielsson & Carlstedt, 2011). Strongly bounded workplace identity may also explain resistance to change that involves recognition of civilian experience, such as lateral entry to the full-time military (Crosbie & Kleykamp, 2018).
Demands for Conformity
Aside from the demands for conformity to the norms of time and commitment above, the issue of subordinating individual needs through the acceptance of compulsion was a key norm that reservists were seen to violate. Part-time voluntary service was not seen as acceptable, too discretionary and being subject to more compulsion was seen as being more professional. Discussions about the value of reservists often maintain that deploying on operations will demonstrate their value to regulars (MOD, 2011). While this may indeed be the case, the discretionary nature of the reservist who chooses when to deploy did cause some antagonism. For example, choosing the most rewarding aspects of military service, deploying on operations, avoids the mundane and routine hard work in barracks.
The military attach great store by appearance, and the embodied nature of military culture is a key part of military identity in both regulars and reserves (Vest, 2013). Comments in this study were common about reservist wearing of uniforms or not having the correct deportment. Uniforms serve a symbolic purpose creating institutional social cohesion and army recruits quickly learn to wear uniform correctly and perform their military bearing (Lande, 2007), and this fits well with concepts of “habitus” and “bodily hexis” (Bourdieu, 1991). Beyond basic training, the symbolic importance of uniform to military identity continues, King (2013, p. 415) details how the elite combat arms in the British Army invest the “appropriate” wearing of uniform and deportment to the exclusion of those who do not fit their shared concept of professionalism and the reaffirmation of their own elite identity.
Stratification
As with Kirke (2008), reservist officers and SNCOs were perceived as less competent and lacked legitimacy compared to equivalent ranked regular personnel, though many participants could identify very capable reservists they knew. It will be hard for part-time officers and SNCOs’ to prove themselves and gain trust from their regular colleagues as time served, competence, and legitimacy in rank are tightly entwined. Indeed, previous research evidence confirms that regular counterparts will often not present army reserve officers with the opportunity for command appointments on operations (Dandeker et al., 2010; Kirke, 2008). However, part-time officers and SNCOs will often be older than their regular counterparts and may have wider civilian technical and management skills to draw upon in their rank, but this civilian experience may not often be seen as relevant.
Part-time employees’ access to key organizational resources, such as representation at the senior levels of the business and the opportunity to aspire to high-level positions, impacts on the extent to which part-time professionals are accepted and integrated into the civilian workplace (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003). While there is growing representation at the senior levels of the British Army of serving reservists who also have successful civilian careers, the regular forces overwhelmingly dominate the senior ranks (Connelly, 2016; MOD, 2011). To increase rank representation will require more army reserve officers and SNCOs to continue to climb the ranks. This is likely to be met with some degree of resistance due to the perceived lack of legitimacy of reservist rank. The civilian literature on part-time employees demonstrates that until equality of opportunity is maximized then the full potential of part-time employees will neither be fully realized (Lawrence & Corwin, 2003).
Implications for Integration
The legitimacy of reservist units regarding collective training competence to deploy on operations in formed reservist units was severely questioned in the focus groups and perceived as a great risk. That any reservist unit would be expected to carry out predeployment collective training as a matter of course and generally have narrower missions and tasks was not seen as a way of enabling a cost-effective reserve capability, even when contrasted to other nations who do deploy formed reservist units. The institutional memory of previous successful formed unit reserve deployments in the British Army is sparse and sometimes denied (Connelly, 2013, 2018).
Other Western armies do routinely deploy formed reservist units, including the United States and Australia, and this indicates internal organizational factors may be driving the British Army reluctance. Denial of legitimacy through a discourse of risk and myth can be used to resist integration that may threaten the identity and resources of a dominant professional group (Currie et al., 2012). This may help explain why formed reservist unit deployments have been very rare for the British Army. In fact, routine British Army formed reservist unit deployments were proposed in 2011 by senior politicians, assisted by “renegade” ex-regular officers and the proposals gained political traction (Bury, 2019). However, by 2015, the proposals had been successfully resisted (Bury & Catignani, 2019). Research on resistance to the integration of health professionals has demonstrated successful change can be led by senior managers and “renegade” insiders but that it is takes sustained effort over a long period (Reay et al., 2017).
Rather, smaller deployments of British Army Reservists placed within regular units continue to be preferred and so increase the chances that reservists can be assimilated into the tightly bound regular army on deployments (Bury, 2019). Assimilation does not present a challenge to the professional identity of the full-time soldier and established routines and practices can be enacted. Trust can be built slowly in a way that conforms to the dominant workplace representation. Integration, rather than assimilation, involves effort to learn to work with the new subculture, the legitimatization of difference in the workplace, the granting of reciprocal trust, and can be difficult to get right in strongly bounded institutions. An example of failed integration from U.S. Army Reservists in Iraq clearly illustrated how the subculture of a reserve unit led to different interpretations of “fairness” held by both reservists and regulars that then impacted negatively on operations. Reserves integration takes practice, trust, and acceptance of difference (Howard, 2006).
Improving Integration With Reservists
Given reservists are part time and train less than their regular counterparts, then there will always be a high risk of a true experience gap between regulars and part-time reservists where their civilian role and experience do not align with their part-time military role. This will lead to difficulties with trust as professional competence will be doubted from the start (Kirke, 2008). As a number of the participants acknowledged, those army reserve soldiers who work to earn trust and try to conform to the ideals of the professional soldier will more likely be accepted, especially if they are specialists or have expert skills to offer the regular army. Part-time reservists’ ability to participate in key rituals that affirm their membership status and commitment to the army may be able to overcome some socially constructed mistrust. Ensuring reservists “look” like regulars in uniform and their deportment and can show they have done well in valued military skills such as fitness, shooting, and navigation will help. Joining teams through establishing trust in the manner of the “Swift Trust” observations from the Israeli Defence Forces may also help (Ben-Ari et al., 2010).
Goldenberg et al. (2015) pushes for more internal education regarding the different subgroup identities across Whole Force teams while embracing a superordinate “Defense” identity. Echoing this call, education about diversity could be widened to include diversity of labor type (Connelly, 2016; Morrison, 2012). Education about how commitment to the army is understood in regulars and in part-time reservists may be a way to reduce barriers to integration. A study of Australian regular–reserve relationships illustrated that many regular personnel were surprised at how much reservists sacrifice employment, leisure time, and personal leave with family and friends to serve the military (H. Smith & Jans, 2011). The discretion of the British Army Reservist to “pick and choose” when to be on duty clashes with the professional identity of the regular soldier. However, for the reservist, attending training and when to mobilize depends on successful negotiation with family and employers (Basham & Catignani, 2018). The British Army has chosen to rely on voluntary mobilizations, despite compulsory mobilization being very successfully used in 2003, and so could possibly introduce more compulsion. The U.S. Army Reservist by contrast is under more compulsion but even here negotiation about attendance with family and employer often takes place at the local level (Musheno & Ross, 2008). Thus, education about the reality of juggling civilian work, family, and the army reserve may prove beneficial to some regular personnel, especially if they are encouraged to join the reserves after the completion of their active service.
Not Just Operations But Joint Training and Socialization May Be Key
While mobilization and deploying on operations abroad is often described as the best way to build relations with regulars (MOD, 2011), it was notable that negative views of reserves persisted in the focus groups despite much experience of working with reserves on operations. Most regulars could identify very strong individual reservists, but instances of poor performing reservists on operation were common. Strong negative stereotypes encourage confirmation bias in participants and there was some recognition that good reservists were often mistaken for regulars. Individuals reservists who repeatedly volunteer for mobilizations abroad will build up much experience but may tend to be from narrower strata than the average reservist with a steady civilian career (Bury, 2019) and risk confirmation bias if a few of them lack competence. There was a perception that deploying with individual reservists denied other more competent regulars the high-value professional experience of operations. However, most comments about reservists and integrating them on operations related to a mistrust of their level of training with little time to bring them up to speed and fear they would let the team down at a critical moment of crisis.
The British Army currently encourages the “pairing” of regular and reserve units to foster integration (Bury, 2019). This is thought to encourage routine training familiarity, cross pollination of staff and resources, and contact on social occasions, all leading to increased mutual trust (Connelly, 2013; Kirke, 2008). There was evidence in the data that social occasions, in particular, between regulars and reserves were important for building trust as has been highlighted previously (Kirke, 2008). However, the data presented here and annual survey data (MOD, 2019b) show that only half of regulars have recent experience training in their unit alongside reservists. Given research showing that workplace contexts and “lived experience” in UK military unit contexts are fundamental for developing perceptions of other military workers then this would seem an obvious area to push integration (Kirke, 2012, 2015). Reservists training at weekends and regulars in the week may subvert this, but the reserves 2-week ACT period offers scope and has historically been used for this (Connelly, 2018). Recent research seems to show “pairing” is improving the professional reputation of British army reserve training with mutual reliance with regulars on achieving objectives (Bury, 2019).
Study Limitations
This was a study on British Army Regular perceptions of British Army Reservists. As such, the lessons for other armies may be limited by local context and their differing national policies regarding reserves. However, the usefulness of the framework from civilian contexts to explain reservist marginalization points to more general lessons for all supported by evidence demonstrating similar workplace tensions in other armies.
The participants tended to discuss the army reserve as a separate organization despite both the regular and the army reserve being part of the British Army. The question set used may have encouraged this separation and it may be useful in the future to elicit further views on what makes up the British Army from the participants. The view from the participants would seem to indicate that “the regular army” is de facto “the British Army” and the army reserve is separate, as Walker (1990) argued, but this was not explicitly tested.
The British regular army participant comments may have been skewed by a lack of knowledge of the roles carried out by reserve soldiers. Many of the regular army participants were drawn from combat units while the army reserve has proportionately less combat units and includes specialist units that have no equivalent in the regular army. However, medical professionals and other professionally qualified army reservists were viewed very positively by participants. It was those army reserve roles that reflected similar equivalent roles in the regular army that most raised issues for regular participants and this still represents about two thirds of army reserve units.
The particular details of the “Reservists Award” (MOD, 2015a) that raised contention about the worth and motivations of reservists are local to the British context. The U.S. Reserve forces, for example, have a very different financial package for their reservists. It has been commented that much research on U.S. Reservist recruitment assumes an underlying “moonlighting” motivation that may rely on stereotypical assumptions (Moskos, 2005).
A key issue raised by participants was the poor training level of British Army Reservists and this was often used to justify their views. This study has collected no comparative data on the actual training levels of army reserve units versus regular army units. However, it is very likely that given the time and resource constraints of the army reserve that the level of training is poorer than their regular army counterparts (Bury, 2019). However, the development of training standards, allocation of training resources, and the training assurance regime that the army reserve operate under is largely in the power of the hierarchy of the regular army (Bury & Catignani, 2019; Council of Reserve Forces and Cadets Associations, 2017). Thus, while poor army reserve training is a legitimate concern, it is likely that the workplace identities of the regular army may influence the prioritization and modernization of army reserve training that has often been called for (Mooney & Crackett, 2018; Walker, 1990).
Conclusions and Future Directions
While there can be much respect for individual British Army Reservists, they represent a challenge to the dominant professional beliefs and identity of the British regular army. It may not be a surprise that less progress has been made toward Whole Force than expected in both the UK and the U.S. equivalent (Edmunds et al., 2016; Kinsey & Erbel, 2011). To move forward, regular discourses around identity, competence, and time need to be both accepted and challenged. Ideas about commitment need to be clarified and different ways of expressing commitment recognized. More integrated working together to create social bonds during training in “paired” units to develop “respect” (Kirke, 2008) needs to continue as well as working on deployed operations. While there has been recent work on comparing reserves cohesion with regular army cohesion (Bury, 2019), more work is needed on understanding where difference and similarity lie between regulars and reserve components of the armed forces, not just in the UK but in other armies. The themes of “workplace time and commitment,” “workplace boundaries,” “demands for conformity,” and “workplace stratification” provide a useful conceptual framework to understand how British Regular soldiers perceive and judge part-time reservist colleagues. The framework could be used to examine other armies with reservists or attitudes to others who are required to work with the regular army, such as military contractors, where negative attitudes have been reported (Heinecken, 2009).
This study examined the views of regulars personnel but how do these contrast with those of reservists? Are they a mirror opposite, do they understand how they are perceived, and are they also influenced by the dominant professional workplace norms, as research on civilian part-time workers would suggest (Dick & Hyde, 2006)? Understanding reservist attitudes to the perceived beliefs of regular personnel could provide direction for future interventions in the integration of regulars and reserves in the UK and other armies.
This work here has shown how professional identity and workplace norms of full-time personnel continue to shape the perception of reservists and risk marginalization despite recent policy efforts to improve integration. The British Army, like a number of Western armies, is now offering limited numbers of full-time personnel more flexible part-time service options (MOD, 2018a). It will be interesting to consider if these potential changes will impact on workplace norms and workplace attitudes, if at all, and what implications this may have for reservists or other components of the Whole Force.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental_material_for_understanding_and_explaining_the_marginalisation_of_part_time_british_army_reservists_in_Armed_Forces_and_Society - Understanding and Explaining the Marginalization of Part-Time British Army Reservists
Supplemental_material_for_understanding_and_explaining_the_marginalisation_of_part_time_british_army_reservists_in_Armed_Forces_and_Society for Understanding and Explaining the Marginalization of Part-Time British Army Reservists by Vincent Connelly in Armed Forces & Society
Footnotes
Author’s Note
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the UK Ministry of Defence. The data described in this article was part of a workplace audit requested by Ministry of Defence employees and was conducted as an independent academic piece of work.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author is a British Army Reservist employed on an occasional part-time basis by the UK Ministry of Defence.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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