Lieutenants Professional Development in an Institutional/Occupational (I/O) and Officer Professional Development (OPD) Context.

摘要

This paper examines the Air Force officer corps in terms of the needs of its junior officers for a grounding in officership. It validates the I/O concept of military professionalism and compares it with recent trends in the Air Force to combat careerism that have been codified under the term OPD. The paper evaluates the degree of institutionalism among junior Air Force officers and attempts to discover what mechanisms exist to draw them away from institutionalism and toward a more occupational outlook. The relationship of OPD to I/O is discussed and lieutenants development programs are compared among the four Services. The paper concludes that, while OPD made a major contribution toward moving the Air Force officer corps away from careerism, it missed the mark in terms of institutionalizing lieutenants. Subtle changes in emphasis in OPD are necessary to counter this and an initiative originally recommended by the OPD Working Group but not approved, should be reconsidered.