2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

760
MEASURING MILITARY PROFESSIONALISM
Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Bradley, Dr Danielle Charbonneau,
Lieutenant (Navy) Sarah Campbell
Military Psychology and Leadership Department, Royal Military College of Canada,
P.O. Box 17000 Station Forces, Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7K 7B4
Email: charbonneau-d@rmc.ca
This paper reports our progress in developing a measure of military professionalism. We
begin with the Huntington (1957) model, the traditionally accepted model of military
professionalism in North America. The essence of Huntington’s model is that the military
officer corps is a profession like the medical or legal profession because it embodies the three
professional criteria of expertise, responsibility and corporateness. Where Huntington focuses
on the organizational level, “analyzing the character of the modern officer corps” (p. 24), we
investigate professionalism at the individual level of analysis, by examining the professional
attitudes of individual officers, noncommissioned officers and soldiers.
Expertise. Huntington viewed expertise as specialized knowledge held by the
professional practitioner and gained through extensive study of the profession. We expand on
the Huntington definition of expertise in the present study to also include the continuous
upgrading of this specialized knowledge.
Responsibility. Huntington conceptualized responsibility as social responsibility,
reflecting the extent to which the professional organization provides a service essential to
society. Also included in Huntington’s definition of responsibility is the requirement for the
profession to regulate its members by enforcing professional codes of ethics and the need for the
individual professional to be intrinsically motivated by “love of his craft” and committed to the
state by a “sense of social obligation to utilize this craft for the benefit of society” (p. 31).
Corporateness. Central to Huntington’s definition of corporateness is the “sense of
organic unity and consciousness of themselves [i.e., the professionals] as a group apart from
laymen” (p. 26). Huntington refers to corporate structures like schools, associations and journals
which serve to develop and regulate the conduct of military professionals. Here it seems that
Huntington permits conceptual overlap between responsibility and corporateness, as his
definition of each concept makes reference to professional standards and ethics.
The Canadian Forces doctrinal manual on military professionalism (entitled Duty with
Honour) emphasizes the pride of the military professional in serving Canada’s citizens and
institutions. A central element of professionalism outlined in Canadian Army doctrine on
professionalism is the obligation of soldiers “to carry out duties and tasks without regard to fear
or danger, and ultimately, to be willing to risk their lives” (Canada’s Army, p. 33). For these
reasons, we included measures of national pride and risk acceptance in our professional measure.
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The opinions in this paper are those of the authors and not the Department of National Defence.
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003