Air University Review, January-February 1982

Professionalism from Lieutenant to Colonel

In recent years much has been said about the subject of professionalism. Comments from U.S. Air Force leadership indicate a drifting away from traditional values such as sacrifice, dedication, duty, and unity. Even use of the term occupationalist, which infers that self-interest comes first, has become a common and negative word in our military vocabulary. While such comments and words might be based on accurate observation, it is important to note that there has never been a baseline by which a level of professionalism could be set for Air Force officers. Even Samuel P. Huntington’s classic treatise on professionalism is Army in its orientation and is not based on data collections. Most of what has been said, then, has obviously been based on observation, experience, and assumptions. Only during the last two years have attempts been made to measure professionalism among Air Force line officers.

In 1980, Majors Joseph R. Daskevich and Paul A. Nafziger, while attending Air Command and Staff College (ACSC), created a 75-question survey to assess attitudes on professionalism among their fellow classmates. In addition to research in available literature and discussions with members of the ACSC faculty and student body, Daskevich and Nafziger used the four indicators of professsionalism developed by Professor Charles C. Moskos, Jr.

Professor Moskos theorized that a high level of corporateness (a sense of unity within the officer corps), a high sense of duty, an institutional outlook (as opposed to an occupational or civilian job outlook), and a specialist (instead of a generalist) orientation were measurements of professionalism. The 1980 ACSC student researchers developed a number of statements by which to measure each of these professional indicators. They developed a 5-point scale to measure the indicators, with scores of 1.0 indicating low corporateness and sense of duty and an occupational and generalist outlook. Scores of 3.0 represented the midpoint. A high feeling of corporateness and sense of duty and an institutional and specialist orientation were indicated by scores of 5.0. These were "relative positions" on the scale since the Air Force did not have a standard.

Daskevich and Nafziger administered the survey to 368 Air Force officers attending the ACSC Class of 1980. The results, reported in ACSC research report, "The Pulse of Professionalism" (0520-AY80), established a standard of professionalism, at least for Air Force majors.

The following year, three more ACSC student researchers using the same survey, collected and analyzed data on professionalism. Captain James R. Slagle collected and analyzed professionalism attitudes of 603 Squadron Officer School (SOS) student officers. He reported on how the junior officer views professionalism in his article "The Junior Officer of the 1980s — The Situational Professional," which was published in the November-December 1981 Air University Review. Major Hubert A. Jenneskens analyzed attitudes among 106 Air War College (AWC) officers. I compared the SOS and AWC survey findings with 373 ACSC student responses to determine if a "professionalism gap" existed among the junior-level, mid-career, and senior-level officers. This article, then, reports the results of a professionalism survey among 1082 Air Force line officers attending Air University during 1981.

Professionalism is important in the Air Force today — according to at least 94 percent of each officer group of respondents. This opinion is reinforced by frequent comments from the Air Force leadership. When asked to respond to the statement "I consider myself to be a professional military officer," almost all respondents affirmed that they were professional military officers.

Although most officers indicated basic agreement on professional qualities, when asked to select the concept of professionalism that most closely paralleled their own views, approximately half (48 percent) of each Air University student officer group identified with Morris Janowitz’s description of the pragmatic professional.

• Janowitz describes the military professional as one who is educated in political as well as military affairs, has managerial and technical skills, and cultivates a broad understanding of domestic and international affairs. It is important to note that Janowitz says a military officer is motivated by professional considerations.

The remaining half of each group was split in their responses between Samuel Huntington’s traditional view of professionalism (24 percent) and James R. Golden’s moderate concept of a military professional (28 percent).

• Huntington noted that a military profession is characterized by three things: expertise, responsibility, and corporateness.

Comparing this to Janowitz, Huntington’s concept is much more traditional and narrow, as it is a military only perspective. He stated that officers are professionals because they have expertise in the management of violence. He also said that officers are. responsible to the state for the security of society; they are incorporated into the officer corps, sharing a certain set of values based on that membership.

• Golden views military professionalism as a gradual shift toward Janowitz’s pragmatic professionalism and sees a more controlled use of force and a convergence of military and civilian values.

Golden’s description of the military profession during wartime is more similar to Huntington’s traditional professionalism.

On general concepts of professionalism, then, almost all officers surveyed thought that professionalism was important and considered themselves to be professionals. Although there was a variance in fundamental beliefs as to what denotes a professional, a higher percentage of each officer group endorsed the general concept of the "pragmatic professional." However, it was most interesting to find that although all the officers considered themselves "professionals," there was not even a 50 percent agreement on which one of three very broad concepts described the professional officer. In other words: "We all say we are what we can’t even define!" I believe there is a message here for the leadership and for all officers.

The following are the results of the four primary professional indicators that were used to collect more specific information.

Seven questions specifically measured attitudes on the first indicator — institutionalism versus occupationalism. One of these was a statement on professional military education (PME) in which at least 63 percent of all respondents agreed that PME was vital in nurturing competent and professional military officers. However, another statement measuring preference for base housing showed a high level of disagreement with at least 64 percent of each officer group stating a preference for off-base housing. It was the percentage of all the statements measuring institutionalism and occupationalism attitudes that led to an overall index of 3.3 for SOS, 3.4 for ACSC, and 3.7 for AWC officers. The student officers were more institutional than occupational in their outlook.

The duty index was measured by six specific statements on the survey. Officers from all three schools tended to agree that personal interests and desires must take second place to operational requirements. It was surprising, however, to find such a significant number of officers at ACSC and AWC who disagreed with that statement (ACSC, 16 percent; AWC, 13 percent; and SOS, 14 percent). Thirteen percent can be considered a significant number of AWC respondents since they represent a very select group of leaders. When officers were asked to respond to the following statement, "Military personnel should perform their duty regardless of personal or family consequences," the sense of agreement was not as strong, especially in ACSC and SOS (SOS, 51 percent; ACSC, 52 percent; AWC, 60 percent).

One curious highlight to this series of questions showed the officers with support Air Force specialty codes (AFSCs) as having a higher sense of duty than officers with operational AFSCs (62 percent versus 48 percent, respectively). The reverse would have been expected to be true since operational AFSCs are "closer to the cutting edge" of the Air Force wartime mission and these officers would, supposedly, feel a greater commitment to duty. Several explanations were postulated for this.

• Support officers, by their very jobs, are "supporting." This nearly subconscious reality may equate to a stronger sense of selflessness and, hence, "duty."

• Operations officers, in contrast to the obvious supporting role of support officers, are at the "receiving end" of the pipeline. To some extent, they may be less able than support officers to see their role in context to the larger Air Force. Many rated officers, at least during the first decade of their service, would probably admit to a narrower Air Force focus compared to their nonrated counterparts.

• Since most officers holding operational AFSCs are rated, the publicity regarding higher pay, need to improve retention, and the long tradition of flight pay may be producing an occupationalist or "marketplace" mentality in a higher percentage of these officers.

These are only postulations, since the research was not designed to clarify this issue — it was not even suspected to exist to the degree that it did. The overall duty index was 3.4 for SOS, 3.6 for ACSC, and 3.9 for AWC. Here, again, sense of duty was ranked above average (a 3.0 on the scale) by all three groups, with AWC students indicating the highest sense of duty.

According to Huntington, the members of a profession share a sense of unity and consciousness of themselves as a group apart from non-professionals. Four questions measured the corporate index. For example, "personally identifying" with the Air Force officer corps (rather than with the officers in their specialty or their immediate work unit) was highest for AWC and lowest for SOS (AWC, 41 percent; ACSC, 32 percent; SOS, 18 percent). This is not surprising, as a greater sense of unity would be expected the longer one is associated with a profession.

As with the sense of duty index, there was a similar variance between support and operational officers, with 20 percent more of the support officers identifying primarily with the Air Force officer corps while officers with operational AFSCs identified more frequently with their career field. Hypothetical reasons for this would be the same as those stated earlier. The overall corporate index was 2.8 for ACSC, 2.9 for SOS, and 3.3 for AWC respondents. This index showed the greatest difference between officer groups, with the AWC officers having a higher sense of corporateness than their SOS and ACSC counterparts.

Although the corporate professional indicator was the lowest of the four, as with the other findings, the responses still clustered around the average.

The fourth professional indicator, specialist versus generalist, was measured specifically by three statements. For example, the officers were asked to respond to the statements: "You cannot be a ‘specialist’ and also be a ‘professional.’" and "A ‘professional’ must be a specialist in his primary field." When asked to respond to the statement that you cannot be a specialist and a professional, the officers emphatically disagreed (SOS, 90 percent; ACSC, 95 percent; and AWC, 96 percent). The specialist-generalist index was the least clear-cut in its meaning. The SOS and ACSC response was identical (3.9), and the AWC response was 3.7. The majority of officers considered them-selves to be specialists. As indicated by the AWC response, the longer officers serve in the Air Force, the less likely they would consider themselves to be specialists. However, even at the 05/06 level, 59 percent said they were specialists. Although nearly two-thirds of the SOS, ACSC, and AWC respondents felt that professional Air Force officers should balance specialized and generalized knowledge, in an Air Force composed of over 50 career fields and 400 officer AFSCs, the majority have worked primarily in only one or two AFSCs.

In addition to findings on professionalism in general and the four primary professional indicators, I examined three additional but less significant areas: influencing factors, integrity issues, and the Air Force spouse.

Several survey statements were designed to determine what things influence career decisions. The respondents were asked to rank in order of importance nine factors influencing them to stay in the Air Force. Job satisfaction was the primary factor influencing career decisions among all officers surveyed. Base pay and job security rounded out the top three, while professional status, retirement, and patriotism occupied the middle three positions. Nonpay benefits, stable family life, and esprit de corps were the least influential of the nine factors. Retirement at 20 years was not seen as unprofessional.

Lack of integrity was another significant issue. Fifty-six percent or more of all respondents from the three PME schools claimed that other officers compromised their integrity sometimes or often. ACSC respondents, for some unexplained reason, identified lack of integrity as a more serious problem than did SOS or AWC respondents. Perhaps the explanation for this is that 04s are in a unique position enabling them to see breaches of integrity and because they are the historical buffer between the dictates of the leadership and the junior officer force.

Another finding was the importance of the Air Force spouse. The spouse was an important factor in the career decisions of nearly all respondents. It was surprising to find that, with the exception of SOS, spouse influence was not related to educational level or paid employment over the past five years.

The role of spouses working for pay was of greater importance for SOS students than for ACSC or AWC officers. Since a higher proportion of the younger spouses are working outside the home, there will probably be increasing pressure on officers to accommodate the "other half" in their career decision.

What, then, was learned from these surveys? The primary and combined objective was to gain a more accurate picture of professionalism in the Air Force, an achievable goal since so little empirical data existed previously. Ultimately, three main conclusions with collateral recommendations were reached.

First, the term professionalism is important both for its frequent use in the Air Force and for the attitude that almost all officers have of themselves as professional military officers. That is hardly surprising. Who could disagree, for example, with such terms as dedication to duty and country, identification with the mission, commitment to service, and integrity? They sound great, but what do they mean?

Although the pragmatic approach was favored, no universal definition of professionalism was found. There was less than 50 percent agreement on any of the broad concepts describing professional officers. Although all officers think of themselves as professionals, they have different ideas as to what professionalism means. Even statements made by the Air Force leadership to "improve the level of professionalism" are probably falling on deaf ears. Apparently, discussions of professionalism can be productive only if the participants get down to specific behaviors and reject abstract philosophical concepts. Unless a concept like "self-sacrifice" is specifically translated into "more remote tours," "work longer hours," "don’t expect any pay raise this year," etc., use of the term is meaningless.

Second, previous research has yielded no baseline by which professionalism could be measured. Yet a number of Air Force officers speak and write about the deterioration of professional values. I suggest that the professionalism survey be repeated among PME students at Air University at least every three years. It was also clearly recognized that a need exists to include more survey statements on integrity for its accurate assessment. A thoughtful reassessment should be done by those who believe there is a "professionalism gap" between senior and junior officers. In fact, if one considers the likelihood that the ACSC and AWC respondents were probably biased toward the professional end of the spectrum (due to competitive selection for PME), the responses by SOS students could be considered nearly identical to the AWC counterparts. On nearly every indicator examined, officers of all ranks leaned toward the professionalism end of the spectrum. There are, to be sure, occupationalist tendencies, but they have not become dominant themes.

If this study suggests any gap, it is probably between those who claim there is a deterioration and the audience they are addressing. I think these findings should be made available to Air Force leadership because the results indicate that Air Force members are communicating ineffectively about professionalism.

Finally, I recommend that the study of professionalism be continued in the PME curriculum but with one caution: it must go beyond the necessary philosophical foundations and identify specific behaviors that will impact on the Air Force of the 1980s and 1990s. Objective identification of specific behaviors is critical, and no one has really explored this arena.

Major C. Anne Bonen (R.N.; B.S., Texas A&M University; M.P.A., George Washington University) is Chief, Social Actions, Boiling AFB, D.C. She previously served as assistant for social actions, Scott AFB, Illinois; at the Leadership Management Development Center, Maxwell AFB, Alabama; in the USAF Nurse Corps at Andrews AFB, Maryland and Maxwell; and job enrichment manager at Hq MAC, Scott AFB. Major Bonen is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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