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This chapter focused on challenges and tensions that characterize leadership in the military context. It aims to identify and analyze key paradoxes that are reflected in this unique setting, while exploring the challenges, opportunities, and advantages posed by these core paradoxes for leadership. It addresses different types of paradoxes, among them: (a) shared leadership versus hierarchical leadership, (b) flexibility and creativity versus conformity and discipline, (c) complexity and chaos versus simplicity and linearity, (d) hegemonic and prototypical leadership versus leadership of multiple identities, and last (e) distant leadership and exchange relationship versus intimate leadership and communal relationship. For each focal paradox, we uncover the dynamics, processes, management tensions, and possible subsequent outcomes. We suggest that leadership that is able to effectively attend to competing expectations and paradoxical tensions is essential in the current hybrid and complex organizational structure and unique context of the military. The chapter draws on interviews and prior research of leadership in the Israeli military, as well as other global military contexts, to gain a more nuanced understanding of the challenges of modern military leadership.

Leadership is a social phenomenon. Therefore, it has to be examined according to its social context. The point to be underlined by the social context is the social network in which the leader emerges. Considering the studies, the social network side of leadership is relatively ignored comparing with sociometric studies. In that sense, the aim of this study is to reveal whether there is a relationship between the positions of the military personnel, who are defined as one of the gray-collar working groups in the literature, within the social network mechanisms of which they are members, and their self-leadership perceptions. To answer the question, a self-leadership scale was applied to 69 gray-collar employees working in a military unit and network analyses were performed. According to results, there is a strong, positive and significant relationship between the network mechanism centrality criteria indegree, reach centrality and closeness and the self-leadership perceptions of individuals. In addition, there was no significant relationship between eigenvector centrality and honest brokerage, which are among the network mechanism criteria, and the actors’ self-leadership perceptions. The study has aimed at accenting and adding different perspectives to the leadership studies and gray-collar literature.

Recognizing the need to build global-minded citizens, higher education institutions are increasingly trying to find ways to leverage their international programs to develop students’ intercultural competence. The MA in global leadership at Royal Roads University, Canada, created an international partnership in Ecuador that serves to go beyond the traditional student study abroad or service learning focus and instead focuses on developing competencies of global mindedness and strategic relationships. In this chapter, we present an analysis of how an international student group engaged in building dynamic partnerships within a Global South country to create change for sustainable development initiatives of mutual concern. Through a case example, we describe how these partnerships evolved and adapted in ways that enhanced the learning needs of the students while simultaneously supporting the development of new educational opportunities for Ecuadorians. To illustrate, this chapter delineates the activities that members of the program undertook to connect and develop a mutuality of relationship across diverse stakeholders in Ecuador. The authors analyze this network-building process from the perspective of cultural context, building trust and influence, and responding to social development needs of host communities.

Stress and the military go hand-in-hand, particularly in combat environments. While some personality traits or types weaken relationships between stress and performance, others, such as psychopathy, may strengthen them. In the present chapter, we consider the ramifications of individuals with high levels of psychopathy or psychopathic tendencies in the military with regard to both their own stress and performance and that of those around them. We discuss different reactions to psychological and physical stress, as well as the implications of psychopathic tendencies as they relate to current military issues, including gender, leadership, teamwork, turnover, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide. By juxtaposing relevant research findings on stress and psychopathy, we conclude that psychopathic tendencies should have neither uniformly negative nor positive effects on stress and performance in the military. Rather, effects on such individuals and the peripheral others with whom they interact will likely vary greatly depending on numerous factors.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the case of General Guillaume-Henri Dufour may offer useful ideas for the development of responsible leadership in military ethics. Military ethics is a field of growing importance. And in the military profession, leadership is particularly valued. The systematic and continuing production of leaders at all levels is a constant task of military forces in any country, and the need for leaders who are responsible and ethical is not only desirable, but also essential – as a variety of ethical failures have shown us.

Guillaume-Henri Dufour was a decorated soldier serving Switzerland as a general, who founded a military academy and trained others in the military sciences, who served as a politician, and who contributed noted achievements in the fields of cartography and civil engineering. A short sketch of his life is provided, and then focus turns to two specific occasions: the Sonderbund War and the agreement for the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.

This chapter explores the timeline of Lieutenant Colonel Myer’s year in military command and how the culture was significantly impacted by her reign of terror and toxic leadership (Reed, 2004). A once jovial and productive organization, quickly after Myer’s assumed command the military squadron took on an appearance of disenchantment and mistrust of authority. Eventually, due to Myer’s toxic leadership practices, organizational cohesiveness and performance eroded, and new employee groups formed in an effort to feel less vulnerable and attempt to find solidarity in numbers and neutralize Myer’s destructive leadership (Konopaske, Ivancevich, & Matteson, 2018; Milosevic, Maric, & Loncar, 2019). In the end, and after several horrific events, many groups pushed upwards, broke the chain of command, and demanded that Myers be removed from command.

This chapter focuses on the development of concordance theory with respect to India's civil–military relations and Pakistan's early yet significant state of discordance, which led to subsequent domestic military interventions. On a regional level, discordance is far more prevalent, and India operates in a South Asian environment where domestic military interventions are not uncommon – Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka being clear examples.

Moreover, the influence of China in the region cannot be overlooked, since India's defense policy is often a reaction to the role of China and the presence of conventional and nuclear forces. The proliferation of nuclear weapons, in particular, threatens a delicate balance in a highly volatile region where China exerts enormous influence on neighboring states including Pakistan. An argument can be made that India's domestic concordance between the military, the political elites, and the citizenry contributes to the preservation of regional stability, because India has chosen to maintain its regional strength vis-à-vis China and Pakistan, while continuing to search for a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue with allies such as the United States. India's most recent and ongoing nuclear deal with the United States originally struck in 2005 is an example of the delicate synergies taking place to offset potential threats from China, Pakistan, and Iran, while maintaining domestic military and technological strength.

Although India's successful domestic course encourages partnerships among international political and corporate allies, Pakistan's continuous domestic discordance has resulted in recent difficult relations with the United States, India, and Afghanistan. Pakistan's inability to quell al-Quaeda extremism has contributed to a lack of domestic confidence in General Musharraf's political agenda. Musharraf has continued the discordant political and social relationship begun by his predecessor Ayub Khan. As a result of Khan's initial and dramatic alienation of the East Bengali community, Pakistan's military and political elites have never recovered the domestic credibility needed to partner with other political groups and the citizenry – a credibility so vital to domestic concordance and international foreign policy.I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.– Mahatma Gandhi

Unlike many militaries in Europe, the Canadian Forces (CF) have no union or representative association. Although two separate studies have shown that more than one-third of military members think positively about forming a union (Bradley & Charbonneau, 2004; Deneumoustier, 1971), there has traditionally been little movement towards any form of associationism within Canada's military. While there is no formal ‘contract’ between the CF and the government of Canada, an informal social contract has appeared to be successful in maintaining the status quo. Critics of the social contract argue the agreement is one-sided; that is, the responsibilities of the member to Canada are well defined in the National Defence Act and Queen's Regulations and Orders but there is “no such articulation of the responsibilities of the Government of Canada to the men and women of the CF” (Milner, 1998, p. 10).