Dealing with austerity measures within armed forces: The Dutch case

Abstract

This article studies how Dutch military personnel respond to austerity-related discontent. Based on the online survey (N = 579) conducted among military personnel we investigate 4 response strategies to austerity measures applied in the Dutch armed forces: voice (collective protest), exit (leaving the organization), silence (deliberately deciding not to protest), and neglect (engaging in anti-organizational behavior). We focus on how personnel combine these strategies and apply cluster analysis to identify 6 typical response patterns that we label as protesters, escapers, quiescents, conformers, obstructionists and combaters. We investigate how personal characteristics and perception of unique military environment influence the response of military personnel. We conclude that clusters we described are not only distinct in their behavior-their personal characteristics and perceptions differ as well. ARTICLE HISTORY

A quasi-experimental study to explore the impact of PAR on becoming an Agile Warrior

“…At the same time, as highlighted in earlier studies (Hattie, 2009;Orvis et al, 2009;Overdale & Gardner, 2012;Petrovic et al, 2018;van Merriënboer & Kirschner, 2007) individual differences in terms of pre-dispositions (e.g., physical ability), motivational climate (e.g., instructor) and learning factors (e.g., self-regulation) played a role in terms of whether recruits reacted positively or negatively to the instructional method, irrespective whether it was delivered in a PAR or Non-PAR manner.…”

“…A soldier could be deployed to a variety of countries, conducting different tasks such as helping with the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, or peace-keeping in Cyprus. Similar developments have been identified in the Australian (Liddy, 2004), Dutch (Petrovic, van Stekelenburg, & Klandermans, 2018), New Zealand (Overdale & Gardner, 2012), and US army (Conway, 2008;Landsberg et al, 2012;Spain, Priest, & Murphy, 2012). This means that army training worldwide can no longer be focused on producing personnel that simply follow orders and instead must focus on developing soldiers who can make the right decisions in an agile way under challenging circumstances.…”

“…A range of studies the organisation culture and disciplinary context of organisations illustrates the influence of systemic forms of culture on the ways instructors design and teach in practice (Author B, 2013a(Author B, , 2015aDaly & Finnigan, 2010;Ebert-May et al, 2011;Petrovic et al, 2018). If the prevailing culture at the respective ATC was to primarily teach using a instructivist way, even if the intentions of the PAR instructors might be to adopt a student-centred approach to their teaching, it might be difficult to change practice in the short-term.…”