Military and Civilian Personnel Integration and Collaboration in Defence Organizations - Introduction

Defence organisations consist of military and civilian personnel working in partnership while governed by different personnel management systems and reflecting distinct cultures – all of which may affect military-civilian collaboration, personnel outcomes, and organisational effectiveness.

Although the issue of civilian-military personnel integration has not received much empirical attention to date, Defence organisations are increasingly recognizing the importance of optimizing collaboration between their military and civilian workforces, with many adopting organizational terms implying that the military and civilian workforces form a cohesive whole: the Defence Team (Canada), the Whole Force Concept (United Kingdom), One Defence Team (Sweden), and Total Defence Workforce (New Zealand). This presentation provides an introduction of this domain as it pertains to military and security establishments in order to set the stage for the subsequent panel presentations. The panel invited proposals examining conceptual, theoretical, and empirical analysis of military-civilian personnel integration and collaboration in defence organizations, including topics such as intergroup leadership and supervision, organizational identity, organisational culture, civilianization of military occupations, aspects surrounding fairness and perceptions of fairness for service members and civilian employees, civilians on operations, and the analysis of policies, procedures, and best practices relating to civilian and military personnel management.