The profound effects of making the armed forces professional

• Jérôme LENOIR
  ESSEC Business School, former student at Saint-Cyr Military College and former officer
  
• Général Elrick IRASTORZA
  Director of recruitment for the army
  
• Général Alain BAER
  Project Director / Director of Studies, Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (Foundation for Strategic Research)
  

Summary

Making the armed forces professional, which is generally well accepted, has led to profound changes which transform the thinking and traditional working of army servicemen, and prompted a certain number of passing failures, particularly in the area of recruitment. This was the situation which Jérôme Lenoir encountered when he graduated from the military college of Saint-Cyr in the top ten, and started his first command post at the head of a section consisting of… three men - one of whom was redeployed -, and which prompted his decision to resign. Drawing on this bitter experience, he questions the ability of the army to face up to reforms as profound as that which it undertook in the first place, and to entrust its executive officers with responsibilities for which they were trained.

Summary translated from French by Rachel MARLIN.

• The entire article was written by Élisabeth BOURGUINAT.

To obtain this article, you can :

• download it for free in French (PDF help) or contact ecopar@paris.ensmp.fr (Reference VC170501).

The entire article appears in French in the Journal de l'École de Paris du management N° 33.