The Influence of Experience and Organizational Goals on Leadership in the Military Cockpit

This chapter begins with a description of Aviv Kochavi, who served as a commander in a paratrooper unit at the height of the Second Intifada. It talks about Aviv's strict and demanding command style that soldiers often label a “hard head.” The chapter shows how the military first instills and then enforces a set of norms that distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate violence based on the extent to which it serves organizational goals. It analyzes three analytically distinct categories of violence taken from the perspective of deployed combat soldiers: strategic, entrepreneurial, and opportunistic. It also points out how the categories of violence differ on a number of dimensions and highlights the beneficiary of the violence.

Download Full-text

“The Strength behind the Uniform”: Acknowledging the Contributions of Military Families or Co-Opting Women’s Labour?

Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice ◽

10.7202/1076200ar ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 41 (2) ◽

pp. 57-71

Author(s):

Leigh Spanner

Keyword(s):

Gender Equality ◽

Military Families ◽

Armed Forces ◽

Division Of Labour ◽

Military Family ◽

Operational Effectiveness ◽

Organizational Goals ◽

Labour Relations ◽

Canadian Armed Forces ◽

The Military

Since 2008, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has called the military family “the strength behind the uniform.” The contributions and sacrifices of military families, and in particular spouses, are now formally recognized as essential to operational effectiveness, such as the ability to deploy troops quickly and easily. This represents a departure from previous eras, which took for granted the “naturalness” of a gendered division of labour in military households in support of organizational goals. Making visible and valuing this work parallels recent efforts by the CAF to improve the wellbeing of its people and advance gender equality in the organization and on operations. This article considers the gendered labour and power implications of formally recognizing the contributions of military families and spouses to the CAF. What does recognizing the military family as “the strength behind the uniform” mean for women and the gendered labour relations in military families? By drawing on analyses of policies, programs, and institutional rhetoric, alongside interviews by military family members, the article argues that in formally recognizing the family’s contribution to operational effectiveness, the CAF is co-opting the labour and loyalty of women spouses in military families. The institutional emphasis on “taking care of its people” obscures the ways in which the service required of military families is gendered and relies on women being constrained by traditional gender norms. These findings have implications for the genuine wellbeing of military families and for assessing feminist progress, or lack thereof, within the CAF institution.

Download Full-text

Democrazy—Dem Go Craze, O: Monitoring the 1999 Nigerian Elections

Issue A Journal of Opinion ◽

10.1017/s1548450500005862 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 29-33

Author(s):

Darren Kew

Keyword(s):

Transition Program ◽

The Political ◽

High Stakes ◽

Political Class ◽

Soccer Match ◽

The Public ◽

The Military

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.

Download Full-text