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Leadership for Military and other Dangerous Environments

Special Issue of Military Psychology

There is insufficient empirical and theoretical work addressing leadership in military and other dangerous environments. Therefore, the purpose of this special issue is to encourage researchers to advance the science of leadership in these unique contexts. We define dangerous environments as those in which leaders or their followers are personally faced with highly dynamic and unpredictable situations where the outcomes of leadership processes may potentially result in death or severe physical or psychological injury to unit members. Such situations may be faced in war and operations other than war (e.g. peacekeeping or humanitarian assistance operations), or even in intense training. As we suggest that unique leadership factors may operate when unit members are personally exposed to danger, our definition of dangerous environments distinguishes itself from other extreme contexts where the danger is instead to people outside the unit or group; such as emergency operating room teams, or emergency response teams that arrive on the scene after danger has subsided.

The editors pose the general questions, 1) in what ways are leadership processes distinguishable from non dangerous environments? And, 2) how can we best develop leaders and leadership to operate and be effective in dangerous contexts? We define leadership as a multilevel system where leaders, followers, groups, and the context they operate within interact to create (or deter) leadership – a process of positive influence. Therefore submissions can address these two broad questions through numerous more specific focuses such as: leader selection, training, education and development processes; followership; organizational/unit culture and climate; individual differences and attributes; motivational and influence processes; sense-making and meaning-making; leader, follower, group, and social network relationships; cognition (e.g. decision-making or intuition); affect and emotions; and many other areas.

We encourage a multidisciplinary approach and invite submissions from leadership, psychology, sociology, management, organizational behavior and other disciplines. We also invite the application of research from non-military domains such as fire fighting, law enforcement, intelligence services, or other domains where lessons can generalize across dangerous contexts and be applied specifically to military leadership and its development. Papers should make a clear contribution toward advancing the understanding of leadership processes, leader development, or leadership development specifically for extreme and dangerous contexts. We encourage authors to consult or collaborate with practitioners who operate in military or under other dangerous conditions to ensure papers have ecological validity and practical implications/applications.

Call for Papers:

Submissions should be received by 15 December 2008. An electronic copy of the submission should be sent to Donald Campbell. Questions about this special issue, expectations, requirements, and the appropriateness of a topic can be answered by any of the editors: Donald Campbell, Sean Hannah, or Michael Matthews.

Manuscripts should be prepared in MS Word in accordance with APA format and be no longer than 40 pages (including references, tables and figures).