Is the Mass Exodus a Sign of Systemic Collapse?

Few subjects demand as much continual questioning, appraisal and review as do the policies and performance with regard to manning the armed forces. At a time when sophisticated technologies, forward deployments and rapid responses are indelible facts of national security, military preparedness depends critically on forces-in-being. One can augment those forces rapidly in time of emergency, but a credible defence begins with the ability of a nation to steadily attract and retain the men and women who would assume the initial burden of a fast breaking war. For this the country depends on the size of the youth population and in the sense, on demographics set in motion eighteen to twenty years ago. According to a written reply to Lok Sabha by defence minister A K Antony in Mar 2011, "the extent of shortage of officers is around 12,349 in the Army, 1,818 in the Navy and 837 in the Air Force. The shortage of pilots in the Air Force is about 426." This figure was 11,238, 1,339 and 1,528 respectively in 2007. To make the matter worse the vacancies are all in the Lt Col and equivalent ranks of the three services who actually lead troops into war and counter insurgency operations. It is evident from the above that even with the population of over one billion in the country the armed forces are finding it difficult to recruit the required number of youth as Commissioned Officers. More alarming is also the fact that a large numbers of those who join the armed forces want to leave prematurely and many continue indifferently even though they have no promotional prospects.

The selection system of the armed forces has traditionally been assessing the person-organization fit based on technical skills and personality traits. The process is very elaborate and yet what perplexes is that a person selected after thorough scrutiny and trained extensively looses interest in the job and wishes to leave prematurely. Questions that beg for an answer are (a) what trigger the turnover intention? (b) Is it the personal values that are in conflict with that of the organization? or (c) Is it that the organizational values as perceived at the time of their entry were different than how it is perceived after joining These questions assume greater significance to the armed forces because personnel hiring in most cases is for life and once joined it is not easy to leave. This means a person who joins the armed forces but does not feel motivated will have to maintain organizational membership irrespective of his motivation and thus he is likely to exhibit less commitment. Is it desirable?

Since I was one such officer sitting on the fence for over 10 years decided to undertake an empirical research to unravel the truth. Having served in the selection system, I knew for sure that there is a conflict of values that are espoused and promoted in the armed forces. Hence, I choose to examine this hypothesis scientifically. I asked 220 officers of the Indian Navy of three branches namely Executive, Technical and Administrative and across three service tenures i.e. 1-7, 8-16 and 16+ years to rate a value taxonomy on a seven point scale firstly, as to how important the 24 values in the taxonomy are to them as a guiding principal in their life and secondly, how they perceive these values to be promoted in the organization. The results were indeed revealing. It was seen that across the spectrum, officers attached great importance to just 4 of the 24 values namely Openness, Fairness, Logic and Moral Integrity. This goes to prove that the selection system is by far selecting the right material whose guiding principles in life are fairness, openness, logic and moral integrity. However, their perception of how these values are promoted in the organization said it all. Once again across the board they feel that the organization promotes these values to much lesser extent. What does this imply?

It is a well established fact in psychology that a person placed at odds with his values will not be comfortable and the turnover intention will set in or he may continue to maintain organizational membership for lack of other opportunities or for his investment in the organization which may be important like waiting to earn his pension etc. Does it surprise anyone now as to why so many officers wish to leave the armed forces prematurely and also why so many continue regardless of their progress in the organization. For complete details of the research work you may like to read my book “Values, Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction – An Empirical Evidence” listed on Amazon.com.