The Sandcrab Syndrome--Fact or Fiction. A Study of the Attitudes of United States Naval Officers toward Civil Service Managerial and Technical Personnel.

摘要

The objective of this research was to develop and utilize a method for determining and examining the attitudes of U.S. Naval officers toward civil service managerial and technical personnel. The six subject areas covered in the research were competence and motivation, personal relationships, professional relationships, pay, personnel rotation, and civilian personnel regulations. The major hypothesis was that the general attitude of the average Naval officer toward his civilian counterpart is negative. A questionnaire containing 27 questions was developed and distributed to 371 Naval officers who were students at the Naval Postgraduate School. Responses were received from 197 officers which formed the total response population. From that population, the responses of those officers who had directly supervised, been supervised by, or worked closely with civilians were extracted, analyzed separately, and compared with the responses of the total population. Narrative comments submitted by the respondents were also analyzed. The research led to the conclusion that the major hypothesis was generally erroneous. A second major conclusion was that close contact with civilians improves officer attitudes toward them. (Author)