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Working and ageing
254 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

with their own unit rather than with the armed forces and certainly not, with
new government policies.
It is also fruitful to discuss the reactions based on theories on organisational
resistance. Management literature describes how resistance to change among
employees can manifest itself and be overcome. Grey (2003) gives an
example of a model in five phases:
(a) denial: employees do not realise the need for change;
(b) defence: employees realise that change is necessary, but try to avoid it;
(c) discarding: routines and approaches start to modify;
(d) adaptation: employees adapt to and in the new system;
(e) internalisation: the new system becomes a routine.
Examples of all five phases of the career switching project, can be found,
concurrently, within the armed forces. This is logical considering the different
conditions in different parts of the organisation. It is a process that gradually
leads to full acceptance in the entire organisation. Management can further
the process by giving support, and by providing incentives and positive
feedback. First, it has to do with influencing managers in the organisation so
their units comply fully with given intentions: inform, develop incentives (also
for managers), encourage employees from the target group to apply, create
good examples of people who have carried through the process successfully.
It would be a mistake to believe it is easy. Military officers have a strong
professional identity. Organisations with clear professional areas of
responsibility can be characterised using theories on professional
bureaucracy. ʻChange in the professional bureaucracy does not sweep in from
new administrators taking office to announce major reforms, nor from
government technostructures intent on bringing the professionals under their
control. Rather, change seeps in by the slow process of changing the
professionals – changing who can enter the profession, what they learn in its
professional schools (norms as well as skills and knowledge), and thereafter
how willing they are to upgrade their skillsʼ (Mintzberg, 1983, p. 213).
Insufficient information in many units on the opportunity of career switching
is however not necessarily exclusively a manifestation of resistance to
organisational change by unit management. There is concern that if you lose
a valuable officer with special skills, it is not self-evident that you are allowed
to recruit a substitute, and replacement might be very difficult.

13.5.2. Individual barriers related to employability
What is employability of military officers? The concept itself is not well-defined.
According to the European Commission, employability is generally understood