Research into military motivation seeks to explore what drives people to do military tasks, what drives these individuals not only to join but also what drives them to do their best. In a conscription system people are forced into the military with legal means and with a professional military the people working in the military are paid a salary through an employment. Research into military motivation shows that people are rarely completely forced through conscription or only work in the military for the salary. This paper sought to examine if there is a motivational difference between Swedish conscripts and professional soldiers. Self-determination theory is a well-established motivational theory that divides motivation into three categories: amotivation, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Where amotivation is the lack of motivation, extrinsic motivation is being controlled externally and intrinsic motivation comes from within the individual such as enjoyment of the task itself. To be able to reach intrinsic motivation the theory details three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. To measure these distinct factors of basic psychological need fulfillment and motivation, semi-structured interviews were conducted on both conscripts and professional soldiers. The interviews showed that both categories are motivated by similar factors. The biggest difference found was that the conscript feel more extrinsically controlled because they cannot affect their situation, in contrast to the professional soldiers who accepted their lack of control because they made a conscious decision to take employment as a soldier.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:fhs-11577 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Custemo, Filip |
| Publisher | Försvarshögskolan |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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