Organisational Abandonment

It should not be underestimated how crucial the creation of the individual’s identity connection to the organisation is for the smooth operation of the organisation. Post-service identity theory is built around this interaction. Meeting organisational needs will always remain the priority of the organisation, particularly when specific and specialist training is conducive to keeping members safe and ensuring they can act as required under all circumstances. This means that although the organisations are responsible for perpetuating the identity connection between individual members and the organisation, it is a complex process to blame the organisation for the resulting identity connection and the way this outcome challenges former service members when post-service. However, individual service members do hold the organisation accountable for the challenges they face post-service, usually feeling as though they were inadequately prepared for exit. This stems from the fact that the organisation creates them as soldiers (conceptually speaking) and does not take steps to ‘un-create’ them. This results in the individual service members experiencing feelings of organisational abandonment.  

‘…transition is a misnomer, it’s not a transition, you just drop of a cliff…it’s a yawning chasm you just fall into…’ (Charles)  

To help understand transition, Schlossberg states   

a transition can be said to occur if an event or non-event results in a change in assumptions about oneself and the world and thus requires a corresponding change in one’s behaviour and relationships (1981, p. 5).   

Transition theory is applied to adulthood and helps to explain the application of coping strategies by individuals as they experience various events in their lives (Schlossberg, 1981). Transition through changes in life often results in new self-perceptions (Schlossberg, 2011). Schlossberg (1981) describes loss of career aspirations as a subtle event amongst numerous events that form transitions in an individual’s life. Contrary to this, the participants do not describe their separation from service as a subtle event and instead report it to be a disruptive event that has substantial impact on their lives. This is in line with Schlossberg’s (2011) later work on unanticipated transitions, although career change still does not make her list of these unanticipated events, instead she references major surgery or serious car accidents. Therefore, with reference to the literature, the participants suffer the consequences of a disruptive non-anticipated transition when they separate from service, when it should only be a subtle event and less disruptive in nature (Schlossberg, 2011). The significance of this for these individuals is their need to understand that transition is a process, not an event.  

It is during this transition experience that former service personnel can start the process of disconnection from their former service organisation and re-identification as civilians (Hakak, 2015). There can be several hurdles for these former members to face during this period, but primarily, the issue is a misinterpretation of what transition means for service personnel. For former military personnel, they understand transition to be the process of exiting from the defence force but become confused when their personal investment in the transition process continues past separation, after the organisational support ceases. For former police and emergency services personnel, they do not undergo a formal transition process from their organisation however the term is often unofficially applied to their separation. Instead of understanding it to be a life-process as described by Schlossberg (2011), former service members view it as a part of their exit from the organisation. When the organisation fails to offer support past separation, the individual former service members become disillusioned about the transition process and lose focus as to how their post-service experiences can be improved by their own actions. The individuals experience feelings of abandonment by the organisation which leads to blame being cast outward that does little to improve their transition experience (Hakak, 2015). 

Contrary to the experience of the participants, separation from service is a career event and what follows thereafter is a transition process in their life, similar to other experiences such as leaving school, moving house, separating from spouses, having children, or losing loved ones (Schlossberg, 2011). The individual’s ability to adapt to the transition is borne within their ability to change their self-perception. To successfully transition, the change in their behaviour and attitude needs to come from their willingness to disconnect from their service identity and redefine themselves as civilians. For the purpose of this discussion, that includes their ability to contribute to their own positive post-service job experiences. This means that holding the organisation responsible for their post-service challenges is not conducive to a successful transition.  

Notwithstanding the processes that are suggested to assist with the transition of service members from the police, military and emergency services, it is important to capture the perspective of the individuals and their experience. Drawing upon the findings in Chapter 6, it is at separation that the participants experience the most distress and confusion around their identity. Here, in their personal timelines, they discover the extent to which they have been re-created into their service persona and, most importantly, the lack of tools to un-create themselves from this identity. Whilst in uniform and within the confines of their service role, the participants appear safe and secure in their identity. They may be struggling with the job, and experiencing vocational discontent or mental health issues, but they are stable in their identity. Once they separate from the service, their right to the identity is stripped, and they are left disillusioned and confused and unable to understand what just happened.  

‘okay bye, bye, have a nice life’ (Lucy)  

Feelings of organisational abandonment are significant for many of the participants. The identity connection with the service organisation and their service role means that they make assumptions about the way in which the organisation will manage their separation. The organisations, however, have a role to fulfil in the community and that is to make sure they can always meet their operational demands. When dealing with members who can no longer contribute to these outcomes, they are not active in managing their separation. Whether the responsibility lies with the organisation or not, the individual participants believe that it should. In the labour market it is unusual for an employer to assist an employee to gain new employment, and it is unusual for any employee to expect that this should be the case. This is a unique expectation that several of the participants hold and is directly attributable to the identity connection they have formed with the organisation and their role. 

The identification of the absence of a systematic approach to the un-creation of soldiers, either at an individual or organisational level, is the contribution of this research that is framed within post-service identity theory. It is the post-service experiences of the participants that set post-service identity theory apart from other similar discourses such as identity theory or social identity theory (Tavares et al., 2016). Post-service identity theory frames the experiences of the participants at three intervals. Based on the findings addressed in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, the first interval is the training and creation of soldiers within the service environment, the second interval is the individual adoption of the service-based identity to ensure inclusion in the team and focus on the collective goal, and the third interval is the post-service experience following separation from service. Importantly, however, the environment that is addressed above is a static environment. The organisations function within certain parameters and they ‘wash, rinse and repeat’. The individual experience, however, is on a spectrum. The participants move through the static environment provided by the organisations, and although the experience for the individual may appear to be fluid and variable, few seem to be able to avoid the outcome. Unlike many environments that individuals experience, the service environment that fosters the individual experience causes it to be a one-directional spectrum rather than a continuum. A continuum would indicate that individuals can move forward and back, or up and down, and this is not the case. The fixed identity that arises is facilitated by the fixed nature of the individual movement along the spectrum of experience. They do reach the end eventually and have all experienced similar stations of change along the way.