Military Leadership: From Industrial to Post-Industrial

Introduction

It has practically been a worldwide practice to employ an authoritative leadership style in the military because of its supposed advantages. It was believed that by giving the military people orders that they could not disobey the outcome of any battle or another strategic event would be satisfactory because the probability of any issues occurring was almost nonexistent. It is apparent that without a leader, it is impossible to properly navigate the forces and ensure that everything is under control, but the exaggeration of this concept (authoritative leadership) has proven to be ineffective many times (Akıncı et al., 2022). To elaborate, since the power was given only to the leadership, people in service could not help plan the strategy, resources, and other critical factors. The loss in any battle or war was, in its entirety, the fault of only the leader due to the one’s authoritative style of leading.

Main body

As a result of the limitations of this strategy in armed forces, it was further rethought and modified to the leadership style that is now recognized as post-industrial. For instance, there has been a shift to smaller units that are less complicated to operate with (Margiotta, 2022). Naturally, the leadership style itself has also been modified in a way that it now focuses more on the psychology of the group members that are led (Frăţilă, 2022). It is critical to focus on whether the unit’s beliefs are the same and, therefore, if people in service are likely to act in favor of the mission if an unexpected problem occurs to reach a satisfactory outcome, either in a battle, war or another strategic event.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of transitioning to a post-industrial leadership style in the modern military. Taking into account that the efficacy of the armed forces can generally be estimated only by their being able to produce favorable military outcomes during the war or battle of any strategic level, it poses a challenge for the research of this matter. That is why another possible definition of military effectiveness will be employed to answer the question of this investigation. The meaning of efficacy will be narrower and equal to the effectiveness with skill and the ability of the people in service to use their qualities to respond to a problem.

The design of the research will be firmly based on the analysis of the two units with leaders employing different leadership styles (industrial and post-industrial). Having roughly mapped out the design of the actual research, it is critical to define the proposed hypothesis, variables, and research methods. Naturally, the study hypothesizes that the effectiveness of the military has increased since the shift to the post-industrial leadership style. The effectiveness of the people in service will be estimated through a series of interviews and a simulation. All members of both units will be requested to answer the questions that are related to their psychological well-being (in the armed forces specifically). For instance, it will be determined whether the candidates share similar values and beliefs with their leader, whether they approve of one’s leadership style, and how they consider their experience in the military to be.

Furthermore, the individuals will be requested to complete the general questionnaires about their everyday work in the units, their responsibilities, negative experiences, and suggestions to increase productivity within their unit. This series of surveys are expected to show whether the post-industrial leadership style (that primarily focuses on the psychological well-being of the group) results in more satisfactory answers to the posed questions compared to the unit-led industrially. Consequently, to estimate the actual military effectiveness, the participants would complete the test where they will be requested to solve three problems of a different strategic level. This so-called simulation will aim at evaluating the problem-solving skills of the candidates and analyzing a full set of skills that they use to produce solutions to random problems promptly. In other words, they will be asked how they would behave provided that they faced a specific challenge during their workday to see their military effectiveness in practice.

Therefore, the variables for the analysis will include the independent variables, which will be psychological well-being, the ability to act under stress, and dedication to the unit’s objectives and values. To be more exact, these variables will be evaluated during the aforementioned service, and a simulation to further indicate the correlation between the dependent variable, which is military effectiveness. Overall, the four variables will be evaluated for both groups of this research, with the industrial and post-industrial leadership styles respectively.

Conclusion

All in all, this design of research will aim at evaluating whether the factors related to the psychological well-being of the candidates within the military will affect their effectiveness. Taking into account that the post-industrial leadership style focuses on ensuring that the unit is mentally prepared rather than physically, these criteria will be able to show the difference between the efficacy of the two leadership styles. This research is expected to produce statistics that will be further analyzed to support the hypothesis stated above.

References

Akıncı, G., Alpkan, L., Yıldız, B., & Karacay, G. (2022). The Link between Ambidextrous Leadership and Innovative Work Behavior in a Military Organization: The Moderating Role of Climate for Innovation. Sustainability, 14(22), 15315. Web.

Frăţilă, C. B. (2022). On Types and Paradigms of Military Leadership. International Conference Knowledge-Based Organization, 28(2), 166–170. Web.

Margiotta, F. D. (2022). The Changing World Of The American Military (1st ed.). Routledge.