1.1 Introduction
The Military is an institution, since its purpose, objectives, organization, actions, behavior and the roles of its members, the allocated resources (human, material, financial) are specifically determined and regulated by normative prescriptions (laws, regulations, instructions, orders), but at the same time the Military can also be seen as an organization because it is an ensemble of people structured in entities with specific roles, functions and responsibilities and which relates both to official and informal rules in the course of its life and activity, as a whole. Through its mission and specific administration and leadership system, the military organization differs and individualizes itself from other organizations.
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
The rapid restructurings of the military profession, the implications of our country’s adherence to international military alliances, the participation with strengths in theaters of operations, increasingly draw the attention to the attributes that the leaders of the military hierarchy must possess in order to organize and coordinate the activities being carried out in the military system. The army is an organized system of social relations that embodies certain common values and working processes and responds to the fundamental needs of the society in which it functions. It has both human and material and financial resources to carry out legally assigned tasks. Through its fundamental mission, the military organization is individualized and personalized in comparison to other organizations. Also, the military organization, i.e. The army, has its own system of organization, leadership and hierarchy, the activity of which is carried out in accordance with the provisions of the laws of the state, with the provisions of the military regulations, orders of the commanders and chiefs.
Due to this demand, the Department of Defense restricts, by regulation, a recently retired senior officer from functioning in any role that provides a defense contractor undue advantages. Additionally, this cooling off period is intended to diminish the possibility of senior military officers from setting up self-benefitting arrangements prior to their departure from military service. This constraint takes effect immediately after the senior army officer’s retirement and varies in length, depending on the case. However, regardless of the regulatory mandates that prevent retired senior army officers from immediately capitalizing on their institutional knowledge, relationship network, and perceived residual authority, their capacity to leverage these strengths remains intact (although to a lesser degree as time elapses), even after the legal so-called cooling off period expires (Clark, 2011).
In the military field, leadership gains a special importance and distinction, because the staff training and the organization of activities are carried out in the perspective of future activity conditions and can provide a lot of unpredictable elements, by far different from the organizational expectations and expectations. The fundamental mission of the military organization is “the unconditional fulfillment of constitutional missions and missions resulting from the quality of the respective state as a member of a political- military alliance” (Zaharia, 2014). All this requires the commanders and the military chiefs to adopt some new methods of leadership, training and development of military and civilian personnel, motivation and engagement of staff in carrying out legally entrusted missions and tasks.
Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Role of Leadership Styles in Driving Military Innovation.
1.3 Statement of Problems
This transactional leadership style can degrade the innovation that might otherwise stem from the organization’s workforce and consequently degrade the organization’s competitive posture (Somech, 2006). While in service, senior military officers hold a disproportionate amount of power in relation to the balance of the people in the organizations they command. They are accustomed to receiving immediate response from large masses of people without their judgment being questioned (Amos, 2013).
There is an operant conditioning effect that reinforces their expectation of having progressively larger amounts of immediate and uncontested support for virtually any initiative they pursue (Komaki, Minnich, Grotto, Weinshank, & Kern, 2011). Many of these senior army officers increasingly develop confidence in their own thinking and judgment to the exclusion of seeking additional inputs. Additionally, according to Ulmer, the commonly accepted authoritative (i.e., hierarchical) leadership style used on the battlefield receives broad support as widely applicable and the most appropriate leadership style for military operations (Ulmer, 1998), and some of the military leadership style transfers to subsequent civilian work, as was found in a case study of two retired leaders in the field of education (Riegling, 2008).
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Role of Leadership Styles in Driving Military Innovation. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:
- To examine the relationship between the leadership styles of Military officers functioning in Driving Military Innovation.
- To examine the leadership styles required to optimize an organizational climate of military innovation.
- To examine the predominant leadership style of the subjects revealed through the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire.
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