The Power of Experience? Innovative and Authoritative Leadership Values Among Danish Army Cadets

• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20951435
• Author: Vilhelm Stefan Holsting,Morten Brænder
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 48(1) 70 –91

The Power of Experience?

Innovative and

Authoritative Leadership

Values Among Danish

Army Cadets

Morten Brænder

1

and Vilhelm Stefan Holsting

2

Abstract

Traditionally, the military is seen as an unequivocally authoritarian organization.

With survey data collected at the Royal Danish Military Academy, this study shows

that that is a qualified truth. Thus, cadets enrolled directly from the noncommis-

sioned officer corps—those most acquainted with the norms of the armed forces—

do not weigh authoritarian leadership values over nonauthoritarian ones. Instead,

their view reflects that for the experienced leader, the context, and not overt ideals,

enables them to choose the leadership tools they expect will prove most effective.

On the contrary, cadets enrolled based on their civilian merits clearly prioritize

authoritarian values. This is particularly true among cadets returning to the military

after a break, former professionals, and former draftees alike. Their view also

reflects experience, but a different kind of experience, as they have primarily

encountered the military hierarchy from the receiving end.

Keywords

competing values framework, cadets, pragmatism, military organization, profession-

alism/leadership

1

Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

2

Institute for Leadership and Organisation, Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Morten Brænder, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Bartholins All´

e 7, 8000 Aarhus C,

Denmark.

Email: mortenb@ps.au.dk

Armed Forces & Society

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20951435

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Article

Brænder and Holsting 71

What values do you associate with military leadership—authoritarian or nonauthor-

itarian? Popular wisdom—as communicated in Hollywood blockbusters—clearly

points toward authoritarian values, encompassing the rigor and discipline seen as

distinguishing the military organization from the outside world. In popular culture,

the drill instructor—whose task it is to safeguard the transition from the civilian to

the military sphere—is often seen as representative of military norms. Certainly,

neither “Gunny” Hartman (Full Metal Jacket, 1987), Lt. Sobel (Band of Brothers,

2001), nor D. I. Fitch (Jarhead, 2005) is a very lenient or understanding leader.

Granted, Hollywood also has a counterimage, represented, for example, by Captain

Miller in the World War II epic Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Chris Kyle in the

biographical Iraq War drama American Sniper (2014). These men earn the respect of

others. They lead by example. They have the courage to make the tough choices

through sharedhardships. And by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of their

subordinates, they know how to yield the best results.

So, which of these imagesis representative of the militarytoday? In this article, we

argue—theoretically—that the popular notion of the military as a rigid organization

needs to be moderated. Military leadership values do not develop in a vacuum. They

are affected by developments in the surrounding society, and they depend on the

practical experiences of the men and women embodying the military organization.

Empirically, we substantiate this claim by comparing three groups of future

military leaders with different enrollment backgrounds. This comparison is possible

because of the implementation of the parliamentary Defense Settlement of 2012.

Following this, 50%of future military leaders should be recruited from the outside,

and all cadets should have a bachelor’s degree. This decision shook up the defense

establishment by openly challenging the institution’s recruitment monopoly (Fried-

son, 1999). Now, the armed forces had to recruit a large proportion of its future

leaders among people who—in the formative years of their youth—had not been

socialized to the military world.

From a method’s perspective, this new recruitment procedure is interes ting,

because it enables a more balanced comparison of cadets recruited from the non-

commissioned officer (NCO) corps with cadets recruited on the basis of their civilian

merits. Before the 2012 Defense Settlement, a large proportion of the cadets also

entered the armed forces from the outside. They were, however, enrolled directly

from high school, as in the Sandhurst or West Point models. Accordingly, prior

comparisons of cadets with a civilian background and cadets with a military back-

ground would have been difficult to interpret, as these two groups would have

differed substantially both in terms of military experience and life experience.

Although a large proportion of those recruited on the basis of their civilian education

now have previous military experience–from deployment or NCO service—such a

comparison will be more balanced, since all cadets today enter officer school at a

later stage in life.

Accordingly, our aim is to compare different groups of cadets and answer the

following overarching research question: Does military experience correlate with

2Armed Forces & Society XX(X)