The Changing Nature of Reserve Cohesion: A Study of Future Reserves 2020 and British Army Reserve Logistic Units
| Date | 01 April 2019 |
| Author | Patrick Bury |
| Published date | 01 April 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0095327X17728917 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Armed Forces & Society
2019, Vol. 45(2) 310-332
The Changing Nature
ª The Author(s) 2017
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of Reserve Cohesion:
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17728917
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A Study of Future
Reserves 2020 and
British Army Reserve
Logistic Units
Patrick Bury1
Abstract
For too long military cohesion scholars have focused on regular infantry forces. This
article examines the impact of the Future Reserves 2020 (FR20) policy on cohesion,
professionalism, and discipline among British reserve logisticians. In doing so, it makes
three significant contributions to the cohesion literature. Firstly, addressing scholars’
almost exclusive focus on regular infantry, it presents the first academic study on
cohesion in British reserve logistics forces. Secondly, in detailing how cohesion in these
forces is based on interpersonal rather than professional bonds, it argues that the locus
of cohesion and discipline in these forces is different to that recently identified in the
regular professional infantry. Thirdly, the article argues that while FR20 is gradually
changing many of British reserve norms, the organizational realities of reserve service
continue to limit the policy’s impact. The evidence presented may be theoretically
applicable to other reserve and noncombat forces in future cohesion research.
Keywords
British Army, cohesion/disintegration, reserve component, logistics, Future
Reserves 2020
1 University of Bath, United Kingdom
Corresponding Author:
Patrick Bury, 1 West North, University of Bath, BA2 7A, United Kingdom BA2 7AY.
Email: pb696@bath.ac.uk
Bury
311
In July 2013, the British government unveiled its Future Reserves 2020: Valuable
and Valued (FR20) policy, which aimed to significantly increase the capability and
deployability of Britain’s reserve forces. Much of the policy’s focus was on the
Territorial Army (renamed the Army Reserve [AR] in 2013 and referred to this
throughout), which received £1.2 billion to expand, train, and equip it to routinely
deploy alongside the regular army (Ministry of Defence [MoD], 2013). A central
organizing principle of FR20 was the outsourcing of logistics functions to the AR in
order to save costs (MoD 2013, p. 22). The policy therefore significantly increased
reliance on reserve logistics units to deliver military capability. More broadly, it
represented the most profound organizational transformation of the AR since its
inception in 1908 and remains an important tenet of current British defence policy.
As reserves expansion was portrayed as recompense for large reductions in regular
manpower, recent works have discussed FR20’s struggle to recruit to strength (Bury,
2016a; Edmunds, Dawes, Higate, Jenkins, & Woodward, 2016) and the policy also
proved highly politically controversial (Bury, 2016c). It is also not unique; FR20
was intentionally designed to reflect the U.S. Army’s Total Force Policy’s success-
ful reliance on National Guard and reserve forces during the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan (Griffith, 2009a). FR20 is therefore important in its own right. But its
attempt to transform British reserve logistics units also raises highly interesting
questions for military group cohesion scholars.
This article takes FR20’s attempt to transform the reserves as an opportunity to
examine cohesion and professionalism in reserve logistics units and the impact of
FR20 upon them. It has three central arguments. Firstly, that social cohesion remains
essential to explaining performance in reserve logistics units. Secondly, that FR20 is
gradually changing the locus of cohesion in logistics units through two interrelated
developments: a decline in the emphasis on alcohol to generate social cohesion and
increasing professional ethos and status associated with the regulars. The article then
examines the unique nature of reserve logistics discipline to highlight the continued
importance of social bonds to understanding their cohesion and professionalism and
hence the limitations of FR20. Drawing on this evidence, the conclusion contends
that FR20 is slowly but profoundly changing the culture and social relations within
AR logistics units in some areas, but conversely, the policy is also limited by the
nature of reserve service itself.
The Cohesion Literature
The “classical” school of military cohesion holds that soldiers fight, and their groups
stay together, due to the interpersonal bonds of the primary group (Shils & Janowitz,
1948). This social cohesion theory has proven highly influential in explaining mil-
itary performance (Gal, 1986; Siebold, 2007; Siebold & Kelly, 1988; Stouffer et al.,
1949; Wong, Koldtiz, Millem, & Potter, 2003). However, “revisionist” cohesion
scholars have challenged the primary group theory from a military praxis perspec-
tive. For King (2006), Ben-Shalom, Lehrer and Ben-Ari (2005), Strachan (2006),
312
Armed Forces & Society 45(2)
MacCoun and Hix (2010), and MacCoun, Kier, and Belkin (2006), effective perfor-
mance is primarily explained not by interpersonal social bonds between soldiers, but
by the collective performance of the group. These authors emphasize effective
collective training to argue that professionalism has superseded interpersonal bonds
as the main source of cohesion in western combat forces. The implications of this
praxis-based theory of cohesion are far reaching. In The Combat Soldier (2013, p.
339), King argued that the intensive collective training associated with western
military professionalization has gone beyond the transformation of these forces’
effectiveness to fundamentally alter the nature of their social relations. He shows
how the emphasis on professionalism has imbued current military practice with a
moral force—a professional ethos—that unites military groups through their values
and behaviors. Two areas are of particular interest for this article: the importance of
individual and group status honor as a motivator for effective performance and, in
place of the traditional formal military punishment system for encouraging combat
performance, an emerging paradigm of self-discipline (King, 2013, 2015). Thus,
professionalism and discipline have been intimately linked with cohesion in western
forces and have been argued to have had a profound impact on the associative
patterns between their combat soldiers.
The praxis-based interpretation of cohesion sparked a healthy debate in the pages
of this journal (King, 2007; Siebold, 2007; Siebold, Crab, Woodward, & King,
2016). Nevertheless, with some notable exceptions (Siebold, 1996; Zurcher,
1965), the vast majority of the cohesion literature has focused on regular infantry
soldiers. This leaves open the interesting and important question of how do reserve
logistics forces—with less time to train and therefore, theoretically at least, lower
skill levels—generate, and sustain their cohesion? Indeed, none of the sociological
literature on reserve service (Ben-Ari & Lomksy-Feder, 2011; Griffith, 2009a,
2009b, 2011; Lomsky-Feder, Gazit, & Ben Ari, 2008; Sion & Ben-Ari, 2005; Vest,
2013; Weber, 2011) or the British reserves in particular (Beckett, 2008; Connelly,
2013; Dandeker, Greenberg, & Orme 2011; Edmunds et al., 2016; Kirke, 2008;
Walker, 1990) has examined the nature of reserve logistics cohesion, nor the impact
of professionalism upon it. Given FR20’s reliance on reserve logisticians to deliver
capability, perhaps it is time to do so.
Case Selection and Method
A mixed-methods approach was used to triangulate data and present the most com-
prehensive analysis of AR logistics cohesion possible. Between January 2014 and
August 2016, five field observations of reserve logistics units, and 14 group and 13
individual interviews, were conducted. In collaboration with the British Army, the
fieldwork and group interview units were selected by case—to ensure they had
undergone organizational change as a result of FR20 and represented a broad spec-
trum of unit geography, trades, and experiences—and were also representative of the
wider reserve logistics population. None of the units had deployed on operations in
Bury
313
the past year. The fieldwork was used to gain contextual understanding of the “life
world” of reserve logisticians. Group interview data were analyzed to identify com-
mon response themes using NVivo Version 10 software. Quoted comments are
therefore exemplary of themes commonly expressed in the data (n ¼ 300).
Complementing this, a longitudinal survey of a wider random sample of reserve
logistics units, including some of those units observed and interviewed, was used to
generate data on reservists’ perceptions of FR20’s impact on unit cohesion. To
strengthen the arguments concerning the rise of professionalism in reserve logistics
forces, some data from regular infantry and logistics units were also included. The
survey contained two questionnaires widely used in militaries: the modified platoon
cohesion index and the subunit readiness and morale questionnaire (Gal, 1986;
Griffith, 1988; Siebold, 2012). Between April and June 2015, and again during the
same period in 2016, reserve logistics personnel were asked to participate through
the chain of command. Approximately 1,500 personnel from a total 43 units were
approached to participate in 2015, and the study sample (n ¼ 427) was confirmed as
statistically representative of the wider reserve logistics population (n ¼ 4,617) by
w2 goodness-of-fit test (1, n ¼ 427) ¼ .39, p ¼ .53. In 2016, however, the sample (n =
258) was not statistically representative, and...
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