From the archives, 19-8-2003 

A QUESTION OF IDENTITY: THE LEADER-MANAGER BINARY

‘Identity’ has been central to recent theoretical discussions in academic disciplines ranging from Sociology to Management. Security Studies have been no exception. In Security Studies, ‘the question of identity’ has surfaced repeatedly and at times controversially, testifying to its importance. This is self-evident from the various arguments using identity as referent in debates at the macro plane: the outbreak of instability post Cold War has been attributed to identity based conflicts between human collectivities; the famous Huntington thesis has it that today’s world order can be best explained as a ‘clash of civilizations’ based on religio-cultural identification of states and social groups; to some, persistence of the Indo-Pak conflict owes to Pakistan’s need for an identity other than being a mere negation of India’s democratic and secular polity; there is a school of thought subscribing to the view that the Kashmir problem has origin in the attempted redefinition of Kashmiri identity away from an inclusive Kashmiriyat to a fundamentalist Islamist one. It is only natural therefore that the resulting effervescence of literature on the vexed question of identity has also found reflection at the micro plane.

 

At the micro plane, the discussion regards identity in Security Studies has contributed to the growth of Military Sociology. The landmark study by the aforementioned Huntington, The Soldier and the State, dealing with officership as a profession, defined the military’s role as ‘management of the means of violence’. In this definition lies the origin of the controversy over the primary identification of the officer corps - as Warrior-Leaders or Managers. Successor studies in the same genre by Janowitz (The Professional Officer) and Moskos (The Institution-Occupation Debate) are indicative of the search for, if not a crisis of, identity of the military professional through the preceding half-century. The on-ground situation that this theorizing helped explicate has been summed up in a passage in the ARTRAC publication on Leadership thus:

 

“…even the Armed Forces in USA replaced leadership with management…The Americans lost that war (Vietnam War), the only war they have lost in their history. One of the major reasons that contributed to this set back was that they had discarded leadership in favor of management.” (p. 9)

 

There are two strands in the theoretical discussion on identity – that of the individual and that of the collective identity as a corporate entity. As regards the former, Psychology informs that individuals subsume within their composite whole multiple identities. Furthermore, individuals not only self-select to identities but also have these devolve or thrust on them. For instance, a person may be a liberal-humanist and yet be categorized by religious denomination by the very sound of his name. An individual could simultaneously be Indian, cosmopolitan, an ex NDA, a father, an army officer, an Infanteer, a regimental officer, conservative and more pertinently both a leader and a manager. The identity that comes to fore would vary with the circumstance. Thus there is no contradiction in a leader who can also manage and a manager who also leads.

 

Nevertheless, there is a primary identity that best sums up an individual. This commonplace logic is also not without its complexity. Firstly, his self-perception of his identity may differ from that perceived by others. There may be a disjuncture between perception and reality. For instance an officer may consider and project himself as a Tiger. While he may convince himself and those who write his reports, many among his subordinates may remain skeptical. Secondly, between polarities, such as, for instance, religious and agnostic, it is relatively easy to locate an individual. It is relatively more difficult should the binary be envisaged as a spectrum, as is the case with the Leader-Manager binary. The situation and role would require the officer to draw on the two different identities, namely leader and manager, subsumed within him, amongst other identities latent under the circumstance.

 

Likewise, Organizational Theory’s reveals that corporate identity, such as that of a Service, or of its components like the Infantry, is equally problematic to delineate and forge. The kind of weaponry, structures, logistics and technology involved in modern war considerably privileges management at the expense of leadership. The Service being heterogeneous has its components lend it their chief characteristics. From this contention emerges the dominant identity of the Service. For instance, the Air Force glorifies the identity of a ‘flyer’ and within this identity that of a ‘fighter pilot’. Thus the identity of choice and necessity for Air Forces anywhere is that of the ‘combat flyers’ rather than of avionics experts or maintenance engineers. Correspondingly, for an Infantry heavy army, as is the Indian Army, and one so enmeshed in Infantry intensive operations as LIC and manning of the LC, AGPL and LAC, there is no denying that Infantry ethos will have a determining influence on Service identity. (This may not be the case with the US Army, given its current doctrine of having combat arms in a mop up role when firepower has already won the war for it.) Clearly, the operational circumstance, prevailing doctrine and organization of a force have a bearing on its self-image.

 

With that as theoretical backdrop, it remains to determine what ‘ought’ to be the primary individual identity of an Infantry Commander and the consonant collective identity of the Infantry. This owes to identity being the defining ingredient of organizational ethos and culture. It helps build cohesion, considered as a critical battle-winning factor. An organizational culture that commands consensus within an organization prevents dissonance and confusion that would otherwise result from identity ‘falling between two stools’ as it were. A positive cycle develops with members identifying with the dominant organizational ethic through appropriate socialization, and in turn deepening both corporate and individual identities.  There is thus a need for arriving at some clarity as to identity, and appropriating the dominant identity, in this case making an enlightened choice between Leadership and Management, to subserve war-waging ends. 

 

It is best to imagine the Leader-Manager binary as a spectrum owing to two causes. First is that ‘Command’ subsumes both leadership and management functions. It must be noted that even the head of the smallest sub-unit, a Section, is deemed a ‘Section Commander’.  Secondly, both individuals and collectives locate at different points along the spectrum depending on circumstance and conjuncture. For instance the management function would naturally demand greater attention from an Adjutant than from a Company Officer. Thus the same individual would have to be both a manager and a leader so as to make possible and smoothen this somewhat frequent transition between jobs. For a collective as the Infantry, evolution as evidenced by the induction of new equipment and weaponry and educated manpower, would see its collective identity necessarily move from the leadership end to the management end over time. Nevertheless, identification of the primary identity of Infantry Commanders is in order, for logical identification of the collective identity of the Infantry.

 

In so far as what ‘ought’ to be this identity, there is one defining imperative for a fighting arm, more so the Infantry - it being summed up in the adage: ‘You cannot manage men to what may be their deaths, you have to lead them.’ The Infantry’s role in battle being ‘to close with and capture or destroy the enemy’ or ‘deny a piece of ground’, there is no escaping death as a feature of combat. Therefore, the leadership function will continue to overshadow the management function. (This argument incidentally remains true for the US Infantry even if this is not so with the US Army.) It is but a corollary that an Infantry commander at any level, from a Section to a Division, will require to be primarily a Warrior-Leader, even as he is alongside also a Manager. The fact is that the closer a commander is to where the ‘dying gets done’ and to direct charge of the troops who are to ‘do the dying’, in terms of hierarchical level, distance and time, the more pronounced is the leadership function. This is more intimately so for commanders at the junior level, who are therefore rightly referred to as ‘junior leaders’. Since they are the mainstay at the spear end where results are achieved, their primary identity will naturally color the identity of their collective, the Infantry. Resort to analogy from the Air Force is instructive. Since only ‘fighter pilots’ perform combat duties delivering the desired results, their identity defines that of the Air Force. There is therefore little difficulty in identifying the identity of the Infantry as ‘Leadership’ as against ‘Management’.

 

Having discussed the ‘ought’, a look at the actuality is in order. We need look no further than Kargil for an answer. However, a revisit to the vaunted officer casualty-ratio may be instructive. While this statistics underlines the Warrior-Leader identity of junior officers, it serves to obscure the inadequacy of the same of the JCO cadre that comprises Platoon level leadership. There is a case to be made out as to the questionable wartime utility of this literally and figuratively bloated cadre. Alternate avenues for social mobility for the soldiery require institution rather than compromising on combat effectiveness in this manner. Secondly, it is for consideration whether the cynicism expressed in the barroom distinction oft made between a ‘good’ and ‘successful’ officer is smoke of a raging fire. This springs from the requirement of honing and demonstration of managerial expertise so as to exhibit qualification for higher ranks and tenanting career appointments that give greater job satisfaction. This could well be at the expense of Warrior-Leadership traits, particularly when senior levels may inadvertently reward mirror images of themselves. It is for this reason the highest level in the Infantry hierarchy of the Division, must subscribe to the Infantry identity of Leadership, even if higher the level, the greater is the call on managerial abilities. It is only at the operational and strategic levels, that leadership subsumed within a dominant management can be practiced.

 

The problem therefore boils down to ensuring Leadership as primary identity for commanders at any hierarchical level in the Infantry, in order that the collective identity of the Infantry remains sacrosanct. The latter would establish a closed loop with its incremental positive feedback. That the Infantry has been continually in operations over the past decade has helped in this. The demands of operations have kept the Warrior-Leader to the fore, while not discounting the contribution of the ‘Manager’ within each commander to the heartening results. That a few ‘climbers’ (For an apt definition of this term please see the concluding section of the ARTRAC pamphlet ‘Leadership’!) ‘manage’ to project themselves as Leaders only testifies to consensus on the primacy of Leadership over Management as the primary identity of its members and the collective identity of the Infantry. Continued emphasis on this aspect through an appropriate incentive-reprimand regime would serve to foreground this aspect, given that, owing to the very success of the Infantry, operational commitments appear to be winding down over the foreseeable future. Such measures would guard against a replication of the draw down from the professional heydays of 1971 ending in the rude awakening at the Battle for Jaffna.