Keywords

military power, leadership, empowering leadership, directive leadership, mission command, command and control

Abstract

Leadership and Military Power – Can a Leadership Approach Provide a Competitive Advantage? When does a military commander's leadership approach give his or her unit a performance advantage? U.S. Army senior leaders have asserted that forces led using the mission command approach will have an edge in future combat. Mission command decentralizes decision-making to empower subordinates to react more successfully and seize battlefield opportunities. American forces have struggled to employ mission command partly because of a lack of understanding of the approach. This study applied two concepts from organizational psychology, empowering leadership and directive leadership, to better define and examine mission command and an opposing approach, detailed command. I observed three combat-like exercises at the U.S. Army's Combat Training Centers to evaluate the impact of leadership on unit performance. Using qualitative data gained from my observations and interviews with unit leaders, I found that empowering leadership/ mission command could provide significant advantages to units with high team experience. However, I found that empowered units with low team experience tended to perform worse than similar units led by directive leadership/ detailed command.

Completion Date

2023

Semester

Fall

Committee Chair

Dolan, Thomas

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs

Degree Program

Security Studies

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

DP0028093

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0028093

Language

English

Release Date

December 2023

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

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