Abstract
Many years of closing and merging regiments in the Danish Army have generated criticism, both within the Army and in the media, due to regiment’s ability to be cultural carriers and creators of identity for many soldiers. In this light, it is relevant to examine the extent to which the cultivation of culture is still part of the regiments in the Army. In 2018, Jacob Bjerglund Graff conducted a study on how distinctive military culture can promote recruitment at the Hærens Basisuddannelse (HBU) units, based on MARESK on Bornholm. He found that distinctive military culture in the HBU promoted recruitment from this. Graff's project, therefore, raises a question that is seen as the framework for this study: is the distinctive culture at the HBU relevant. And if so, to what extent is such culture relevant to ensure further recruitment into the Army. Based on this, the project investigates the role of distinctive culture in the recruitment of a regiment in the Army, with the assumption that cultivation distinctive culture is relevant in the recruitment to a regiment. The studied case is the Logistic Regiment in Aalborg, where the 2nd LOGBTN is the field of study. The analysis uses theories of culture, narratives and leadership pipeline to analyse the empirical data, consisting primarily of interviews. The theories illustrate the culture of the battalion that educates conscripts and assess whether this is seen as distinctive, through the leaders' narratives. Based on this, it discusses the role of culture in the recruitment of conscripts, and in what respects distinctive culture can be seen as relevant in recruitment. The project concludes that the leaders do not seek to cultivate a distinctive culture in the Logistic Regiment and that they do not see the culture as distinctive. It is further concluded that in the case of the Logistic Regiment, a distinctive culture is found not to play a particularly important role in their recruitment. However, it can be concluded that cultivating distinctive culture may have relevance when recruiting from HBU. Therefore, the basic assumption of the study, that cultivation of distinctive culture is relevant in the recruitment of a regiment, does not seem to be unambiguously confirmed nor disconfirmed.