Practice and Challenges of Leadership Development in Military Higher Education
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Date
2018-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In today’s increasingly complex world, the challenges and opportunities for leaders, and those in charge of developing them, have never before been greater. This has led to an increasing recognition of leadership as a dynamic development concept. As a result, organizations have come to rely on leadership development as a remedy. This research was conducted with the objective of assessing the current practices and challenges in leadership development at the two higher education institutions: the Ethiopian Defense Command and Staff College and the Combined Army Academy. This translates into three thematic areas of concern: leadership development courses/streams; informal aspects of leadership development; and, the leadership of the academic institutions. This study used descriptive research type of design incorporating both quantitative and qualitative approach. The researcher adopted a stratified sampling and purposive sampling in this study. Accordingly, all the necessary data has been gathered through a combination of structured interviews, with 2, department heads, (2) institutional leaders and 2 curriculum development and FGDs were held with two groups of six (6) selected students and the rest 40 survey questionnaires were distributed for academic leaders and 53 student officers and instructors. The study aimed at the identification of leadership practices from three interrelated perspectives: the current practice in institutional leadership; the actual development of leadership capacities among officer students enrolled in the institutions; and the design and implementation of leadership development programs. The identification of leadership practices were pursued through the use of the leadership assessment survey covering six core practices relating to transformational and transactional leadership styles. These practices are: charisma, social leadership, vision, transactional, delegation, and execution. The study identified low levels of frequencies in reference to visionary leadership; charismatic leadership and delegation and there were limited focuses on leadership development, lack of long term leadership development plans, lack of performance standards for leadership development, and lack of clear guidance on leadership development. Then, To minimize problems in the practice of LD first and foremost, in the Military Hihger Education, leadership development should be made part and parcel of the strategic and operational frameworks of educational institutions providing the services.
Key Words: Transformational leadership, leadership development, leadership practice. Leadership Challenges, Military leadership.
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Keywords
Transformational leadership, leadership development, leadership practice, Leadership Challenges, Military leadership