Military Leaders' Leadership Styles and Subordinates Hardiness Level: Can Transformational and Transactional Leadership Influence Soldier’s Hardiness?

Abstract

In comparison with the western military setting, the absence of the study of leadership styles and personality hardiness in the Malaysian Army (MA) has been noticeable. Personality hardiness of the soldiers', and whether military transformational and transactional leadership provides a significant impact on soldier's hardiness level, is critical in a modern military environment in facing many unique challenges, due to the increase of forward deployment rate. As such, the present study examines the proposition that the military leader's leadership styles could enhance military subordinate's hardiness level, as conceptually suggested by previous research. This is employed via the use of an investigation of Experimental Vignette Methodology (EVM); pre-test and post-test collected data on soldiers' hardiness level, with the intervention of leadership paper vignettes which involved 169 participants for Experiment 1; (transformational leadership), and 143 participants for Experiment 2; (transactional leadership). Additionally, MLQ Form 6S was employed for transformational and transactional leadership, while DRS 15 was utilized to measure the hardiness level. The results from the two experiments found that transformational leadership significantly affected subordinate military hardiness, while transactional leadership had no influence on hardiness. Finally, the implications of the present findings are assumed to further facilitate further hardiness research in the Malaysian Army, with regards to subordinate’s commitment and performance.