The Effects of Company Commanders’ Leader Prototypicality and Army Prestige on Platoon Leaders’ Identification with Their Company and Army
- J-INSTITUTE
- International Journal of Military Affairs
- vol.7 no.1
- : KCI등재후보
- 2022.03
- 11 - 21 (11 pages)
Purpose: In a military context, economic exchange has limitations to motivating their member, especially first-line military officers because they risk their lives in an extreme situation and the value of one’s life cannot be evaluated easily. Rather than an economic exchange approach, we adopted social identity theory to explore the way to motivate first-line military officers. Based on social identity theory, we tried to find several ways to motivate first-line military officers. Method: We collected data by the survey. Before hypothesis testing, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis and calculated Cronbach’s alpha to see the validity and reliability of the measurement. After verifying there is no problem in terms of validity and reliability of the measurement, we tested the hypothesis with a structural equation model. Results: The effects of company commanders’ leader prototypicality and army prestige on platoon leaders’ identification with their company were proved to be statistically significant. And again platoon leaders’ identification with their company was shown to have a significant effect on platoon leaders’ identification with the army. Furthermore, army prestige influences not only platoon leaders’ identification with the army via identification with the company indirectly but also directly. Conclusion: Because of the difficulties of evaluating one’s life even in the military context, the economic ex-change approach has limitations in motivating first-line military officers. In the academic field, the social exchange approach is adopted as the alternative approach to economic exchange. Rather than the social exchange perspective, we adopted the social identity perspective which emphasizes the identification of self-interest and organizational interest to explore the way to motivate first-line military officers. The result of this study showed that some characteristics of middle-level military officers and the external image of the whole military organiza-tion, namely, the Korean Army have significant effects on organizational identification, which means that these two factors can be regarded as possible tools for motivating first-line military officers.
1. Introduction
2. Literature Review and Research Model
3. Research Methods
4. Results
5. Discussion and Conclusion
6. References
7. Appendix