ABSTRACT
One major common concern in the literature has been the impact of dominant themes on the motivational basis for military service. This chapter focuses on the notions of institutional and occupational orientations as vehicles for exploring this common concern further. The occupational orientation in analyses of the military is rooted in the perspectives of industrial psychology. The institutional orientation, on the other hand, is embedded in the traditions of military history and military sociology. Soldiers intending to make the Army a career, irrespective of their unit membership, were consistently more institutionally oriented than were noncareer-oriented soldiers. Institutional and occupational orientations are quite compatible in that they are covariant for some, though not all, groups in the US Army. The identification of both service and military components of the institutional orientation has implications for military personnel policies beyond the simple distinction between career and noncareer personnel.
