Research Summaries

Back Creating and Maintaining a Specialized Occupational Force: Marine Information Environment Operations

Fiscal Year 2019
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department NPS Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) DiRenzo, Marco
Baho, Sally M.
Aten, Kathryn J.
Salem, Anita M.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary Study will investigate drivers of occupational and organizational commitment among IEO warfighters, identify industry best practices for recruiting these specialists, and recommend actions to manage talent in specialized MOSs. The threat posed to our national security by information warfare calls for specialized information warriors to defend our national interests. Specialized MOSs, because of their small size and unique skill requirements, offer status and association with an elite community. However, these characteristics also pose limits to networking, knowledge sharing, and ethos identification compared to larger and more general MOSs. This mixed-method study will analyze survey and interview data to investigate drivers of occupational and organizational commitment among IEO warfighters, identify industry best practices for recruiting technical specialists, and recommend actions to manage talent in specialized MOSs. This study will result in recommendations for how to best recruit, train, and retain IEO warfighters. Researchers will interview industry subject matter experts and survey Marine IEO warfighters drawing on literature on occupational communities, calling, knowledge and skill flow, and organizational identification. We will elaborate the survey findings through in-depth interviews and a comparative analysis of other specialized MOSs (e.g. Acquisitions, Cyber Operations, Marine Corps Band, or Special Operations). We will answer the questions: What are the drivers of organizational and occupational commitment among Marine IEO warfighters? What are industry best practices for recruiting and retaining information specialists? What are challenges/opportunities for managing talent in a Marine IEO MOS and how should they be addressed? The findings will be relevant for other small MOSs and the survey instrument and research design could be utilized in future studies to inform practices to support the creation and/or maintenance of additional specialized MOSs.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal