PARADOX AND CHALLENGES IN MILITARY LEADERSHIP

Journal on Baltic Security, 2015

In this reflective paper, we study the tension between leadership and institutional control in contemporary Western military organizations. More precisely, we focus on two (out of five) NATO measures of merit, namely the Measure of Performance (MOP) and the Measure of Effectiveness (MOE), and how they manifest this tension at the operational level. We suggest that fixed leadership roles are not enough - what is required instead is an adaptive, pragmatic and even rebellious attitude towards the military bureaucracy in the contemporary, ever-changing conflict landscape.

Military Psychology, 2011

Journal of Managerial Psychology, 1996

Leadership is one of the most common and least understood phenomena in the world. Thus Burns[1] begins his book on leadership. However, despite the lack of clarity from the research point of view, there seems to be agreement and understanding with regard to the nature of leadership in practice, at least on the intuitive level. As defined by Kotter[2], a well-known researcher on the subject, leadership is "getting people to act without coercion". Similar definitions have been offered by the most prominent writers on leadership[3,4], According to this view, as Mintzberg[5] points out, the manager (like the military commander) does many things: coordination , logistics, management of information, of budgets and so forth. One of their roles is leadership: motivating people to perform tasks to the best of their ability. Based on the definition by Kotter and the prominent researchers of leadership, I will attempt in this article to characterize leadership patterns and classify them, according to differential organizational psychology contexts, along a continuum of leadership behaviour. The analysis and discussion will focus more on military leadership because (as will be explained in the body of the article) on the suggested continuum military leadership constitutes a very clear and prominent reference point for comparative analysis of types of leadership in organizations. The distinct character of military leadership in combat units was clearly demonstrated by Gabriel and Savage[6], who dealt with the leadership crisis among US army officers in Vietnam. They compared military leaders with managers in the civilian business sector and their main argument was that the combat officers in Vietnam were overly influenced by the business management ethos. In fact, they behaved as "battle managers" but were not able to "provide the required military leadership". The comparative analysis of those researchers was done in structural functional terms. The present article aims to analyse the social psychological meaning and the dynamics underlying military leadership in comparison with leadership in civilian organizations, particularly business ones, which represent the other end of the same continuum. The starting point for this discussion is the description of leadership as an interpersonal process, following an approach that views leadership as a central phenomenon in the social psychology of groups and organizations[7]. This

Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 1992

The transformational leadership concept differentiates between instrumental motivation and normative commitment. The high motivation levels, the relative freedom given to junior officers, and the esprit de corps in infantry units in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have made the concept of transformational leadership highly suitable for junior commanders. Reports on a three‐day transformational leadership workshop for officer cadets designed and conducted by civilian psychologists at the IDF School for Leadership Development. Found qualitative and quantitative attitudinal data collected for six consecutive training cycles over a period of 18 months to be very favourable. A further programme attempts to integrate the transformational leadership model as an ongoing effort throughout the infantry cadets′ six‐month training programme.

Land Forces Academy Review, 2019

Enormously studied by specialists, the leadership of organizations is a primordial issue because the leader’s style conditions the efficiency of any social organization. This is one of the reasons why the current scientific concerns focus on studying the ways of improving leadership and the choice of leaders who have the skills and capabilities to successfully perform such functions. This paper deals with the characteristics of the military organization and the complex environment in which it operates, imposing major demands on the military leaders, who must develop certain skills and abilities in order to cope with the wide range of challenges they are confronted with on the modern battlefield. It also points to the features of charismatic leaders, drawing the attention to the relationship between subordinates and leaders, a relationship that is based on an emotional, spiritual, even non-rational bond between leaders and followers.

2020

Military Leadership (ML) and Command and Control (C2) are very topical concepts that have attracted scholary attentions in the defence and security sector (Chester, 1938; Maxwell, 1977; Gardner, 1987; Regan, 1998; Moraski, 2001; Leonard, 2003; Davis and Richard, 2006; Kendra, 2008; Warren, 2009; Robert et al, 2010; Muhammed and Anes, 2013; and Keller, 2014). Obviously, many of these scholars have treated the concepts separately with very little attempt to jointly interrogate their similarity and identify the distinctions between them. Leadership development has to be an important part of military training at all levels, as the C2 is also at the heart of military existence and operations. However, people often find it difficult to make distinctions between ML and C2 because of the obscurity that usually permeate the technical cleavages that exist between the two military concepts. This paper attempts a conceptual interrogation of ML and C2 as critical terms that are central to the m...

2015

The effective exercise of leadership in the military organization is essentially conditioned by the interpretative horizon regarding the process of leadership particularized for different situational contexts. Thus, the defining actional states, the specificity of the military actions and the level of structural reference induce the need to adapt certain relevant criteria of analysis meant to generate the flexibility of the pertinent options. Both the recent theoretical models and the ones adapted to the level of the Euro-Atlantic structures or to that of the Romanian army have differentiated degrees of applicability and efficacy. Besides the implications of a doctrinal nature, formative reconsiderations and in terms of the curricula as well as certain aspects of a structural nature become necessary.

Land Forces Academy Review

This article states that for an innovative organizational culture, it is important to combine social intelligence, emotional intelligence with advanced technologies, information and artificial intelligence. The military leader focuses on new understandings of modern conflict, new resources, and new ways to extend war beyond the battlefield based on his or her ability to effectively coordinate high-tech and human resources. How can he create and build the right military approach? Within the military, artificial intelligence can be used for security, defence, attack strategies, but the involvement of human intelligence could add a competitive advantage precisely if it is intelligently managed and directed. The main hypothesis is that for a revolutionary implementation of new technologies in the contemporary world, a maximum pragmatic harnessing of emotional and social intelligences is required. With the alert evolution of man, with his self-awareness and organic maturation, even leade...