Alone is not always strong – An interview study with five tactical officers on how they see their ability to perform the branch technical services.
According to the Armed Forces' system descriptions on how to provide personnel, posts that are head of service branches should basically be held by staff with deep professional knowledge and long experience, i.e. Specialist officers. Since 2010 recent graduate tactical officers from the military-technology profile at Swedish Defense University has also been placed on such positions. The purpose of the study was to investigate this category of personnel’s view on their own performance on such a post. The method used was semi-structured interviews with five former students that graduated from the profile in 2010-2013.The theory of a sustainable performance culture, “Will, Know, Can, May and Should,” that Stockholm University has developed, was used as a framework. By using that the author could see if the profile was even. The result says that there are imbalances. They will do the task, they know enough about the task, they can accomplish the task as long as all the positions in technical service at the Company are in place, they may (receive the authority) do the task without clear boundaries and they should (feel a responsibility to) perform the tasks they do not consider is within the responsibility of the specialist officer.