Vad gör alla soldater hela dagarna? : En studie av yrkesroller för GSS/K vid ett arméregemente

In 2010, full-time soldiers and NCOs were implemented as a new service category in the Swedish Armed Forces. The purpose was to fulfil the 2009 government white paper with requirements of immediately accessible, usable and flexible force. Five years later, with 5800 active soldiers and NCOs the focus for the armed forces has shifted towards deterrence and national defence. Consequently the need for active soldiers and NCOs in international deployments is declining. This paper examines the professional role of soldiers and NCOs at Life Regiments Hussars during 2015. With the support of H.J. Leavitt´s system theoretical model for organisational transformation, the effects of implementing the new category is analysed. The results show that an overwhelming majority of the soldiers and NCOs are experiencing that they operate within an operational oriented role, just in line with the government’s original intension. At the same time soldiers and NCOs are successively assigned an increasing responsibility within the support and instructor role. The NCOs uses one third of their working hours in other roles than the operational oriented. There are also individual soldiers who work full-time in an administration-, support- or instructing role. Furthermore the results show that Swedish Armed Forces protocols contain few limitations for soldiers and NCOs to operate outside the operational oriented role. Even the largest limitation, the organisational structure, with requirements expressed in category and rank, has recently seen an adjustment towards a wider professional role for soldiers and NCO. Despite these developments, sixty percent of the soldiers and NCOs in the study, replies that there are even more areas were soldiers and NCOs can overtake tasks from commissioned officers