TITLE:
The Stress Levels of Employees in an Organization with Liminal Status: The Case of Gendarmerie in Turkey
AUTHORS:
Murat Kocanli, Aytul Kasapoglu
KEYWORDS:
Military Sociology, Gendarmerie, Stress, Liminality, Uncertainties, Turkey
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.9 No.4,
April
14,
2021
ABSTRACT: This study focuses on the stress levels as an expression of the
difficulties experienced by the personnel working in a janus-faced mixed
organization with both military and civilian characteristics. In order to
overcome the “institution” and “occupation” distinction which is essential in
military sociology studies, the focus has been on “uncertainties” rather than “essentialism”
from a relational sociological perspective. In this context, both uncertainties in social relations (ambage) and uncertainties in values (ambiquity) have been tried to be
analyzed by making use of sociology literature. The originality of this study
is that it was conducted with a law
enforcement force with military status trying to cope with foreigners coming as
a result of irregular migration in their own country, instead of military personnel
who were previously employed in a foreign society outside their own country (Azari et al., 2010). Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, an online survey study was carried out
with 44 people, including officers and non-commissioned officers. With the
advantage that one of the researchers is a senior officer and the other is a
senior sociologist, the data were analyzed and interpreted with the SPSS/25
program. Analyzes using advanced statistical techniques revealed that there was
no significant relationship between stress and tenure and status, in other
words, perceived stress did not differ according to these independent variables.
Factor analysis results revealed that while the staff working in an
organization with liminal status were more affected by both “institutional” and”
occupational” stress factors, they were in a more positive situation in terms
of stress measured by scale items that could be considered personal. At the end
of the research, some suggestions were made for the development of military
sociology.