7 th International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences “ASEAN 2015: Challenges and Opportunities” (Proceedings) Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, June 5-6, 2015 280 Measuring Tool for the Command Climate of Military Units: The Intangible Human Dimension 1. Kwong Fook Wen , Col. Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Kem Sungai Besi, 57000 Kuala Lumpur, [email protected]. 2. Jegak Uli, Prof. Dr. Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Kem Sungai Besi, 57000 Kuala Lumpur, [email protected]. 3. Inderjit Singh, Lt. Col . Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Kem Sungai Besi, 57000 Kuala Lumpur, [email protected]. 4. Norazman, Prof. Ir. Dr, Blast Engineering, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Kem Sungai Besi, 57000 Kuala Lumpur, [email protected]Abstract The climate of a unit has a direct impact on its effectiveness. Reviewing the unit climate is important for a commander as that would allow him to manage his human resource effectively. Thus, a tool for the review is necessary for assessment of military units. This paper highlights the research done in developing a command climate survey tool for commanders. The paper addresses the unit command climate survey factors such as morale, leadership, cohesion, quality of life and human relations environment. The research adopted the quantitative approach using the post-positivism philosophy as its philosophical paradigm. Proportionate stratified random sampling was used for sampling and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used for the statistical validation of the model with the data (n = 1,132). The results indicate that the unit command climate could be explained by the domains of morale and environment (R2 = 0.319). Morale comprises the dimensions of leadership, motivation, espirit de corps and spirituality while environment involves the dimensions of work, neighbourhood, family and friends, and community. The Importance-Performance Matrix Analysis (IPMA) shows that both the morale and the environment domains have similar total effect on the command climate of a unit. However, environment demonstrates a more important role in determining the outcome of the unit command climate when compared to morale. The paper offers a stand-alone survey tool for a commander who can administer it to obtain score and tally the results for an analysis of the unit climate. This would provide indications of the surveyed unit’s strengths and weaknesses. Keywords: Command Climate, tool, survey. PACS: 89.20.Dd
17
Embed
Measuring Tool for the Command Climate of Military Units: …fs.libarts.psu.ac.th/research/conference/proceedings-7/2...Sungai Besi, 57000 Kuala Lumpur, [email protected] Abstract
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
“ASEAN 2015: Challenges and Opportunities” (Proceedings)
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, June 5-6, 2015 280
Measuring Tool for the Command Climate of Military
Units: The Intangible Human Dimension
1. Kwong Fook Wen , Col. Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia, Kem Sungai Besi,
Research has shown that work-family conflict increased work turnover, caused
more sickness absences (Hacker & Doolen, 2003) and less job done, as well as poor
family, community and life satisfaction (Hassan, Dollard & Winefield, 2009). Thus, the
enhancement of the aspects of family and friends for a better environment is done
through improvement of the service and social environment. Therefore, a measure of
commitment towards family and friends among the officers and soldiers would provide
an indication of the command climate that allow them to carry out their missions.
7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
“ASEAN 2015: Challenges and Opportunities” (Proceedings)
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, June 5-6, 2015 286
Operationalizing the Domains of Command Climate
The identified dimensions of morale and environment were operationalized by
using the descriptions as shown in Table 1 below. This operationalization enabled the
construction of items for the survey questionnaire of the eight identified dimensions
used in the instrument for command climate.
Table 1 - Descriptions of the domains of command climate Domain Dimension Description Morale Leadership The degree to which subordinates have confidence
and trusts in their leaders. Motivation Motivation for combat can be understood as “the
impulse that compels the soldier to face the enemy on the battlefield” or “the determination that induces soldiers to fight, in spite of the adversities and the inherent dangers of war”.
Espirit de
corps The feeling of pride that goes along with the sense of belonging, fellowship and loyalty between comrades, units, formations and Corps in times of peace and war. The bonding between soldiers and their secondary groups beyond their primary group bonding that relates the soldiers to the institutions of the unit.
Spirituality “Spiritual fitness” is the core values, beliefs, and the
source of one’s meaning in life and the provision of psychological and counselling services.
Environment Work A safe and conducive working environment that
result in high work satisfaction. Neighbour-
hood High quality and standard housing facilities and infrastructure, encompassing the necessary maintenance services.
Community The interaction of personnel between military
installations and their surrounding or nearby civilian communities. The provision of community facilities in bases that are of quality and standard.
Family and
friends Family unity and supports from friends.
7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
“ASEAN 2015: Challenges and Opportunities” (Proceedings)
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, June 5-6, 2015 287
Methods Used For the Measure of Command Climate
The research adopted the quantitative method approach and embraced the post-
positivism philosophy as its philosophical paradigm. The survey research involved
cross-sectional studies using a questionnaire for data collection. The questionnaire
consisted of a 42 items ten-point Likert-scale paper and pencil self-report assessment. It
comprises of four sub-scales each measuring the two domains of morale and
environment. The leadership’s dimension contains six items, the motivation’s sub-scale
has four items, the espirit de corps’ sub-scale comprises of five items, the spirituality’s
sub-scale contains four items, the work’s sub-scale comprises of ten items, the
neighbourhood’s sub-scale contains five items, the community’s subscale has four items
and finally the family and friends’ sub-scale contains four items. Command climate is
measured by three items represented by cohesion, willingness to be deployed and the
state of discipline in the military unit. Proportionate stratified random sampling of n =
1,132 was used for sampling in this research. The statistics show that the demography
of the respondents represents a subset of the total population. The quantitative design
used is the non-experimental correlation design that comprises of the multiple
regression and Partial Least Square (PLS) - SEM techniques. The variables of morale,
environment and command climate were used to obtain correlational statistics to
describe and measure the degree of association and their relationships. As in other
multivariate data analysis, considerations that are needed when applying PLS-SEM
include the elements of the variate, measurement, measurement scales, coding and data
distributions (Hair et al., 2014). The multivariate measurement involves using several
variables to indirectly measure the concept of command climate to improve
measurement accuracy. The anticipated improved accuracy is based on the assumption
that the variables of morale and environment to measure a single concept of command
climate is more likely to represent all the different aspects of concept and thereby result
in a more valid measurement of the concept (Hair et al., 2014).
The data screening and descriptive analysis show the suitability of the data
collected. The 5 % Trimmed Mean statistics shows that the two mean values obtained
for all the items in the command climate measurement model are not very different
indicating that there is no requirement to investigate the data points. The histograms of
all the dimensions show scores which are reasonably normally distributed. The Q-Q
Plots also show reasonably straight lines that suggested a normal distribution of the
7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
“ASEAN 2015: Challenges and Opportunities” (Proceedings)
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, June 5-6, 2015 288
data. Similarly, the detrended normal Q-Q Plots that were obtained by plotting the
actual deviation of the scores formed straight lines with no real clustering of points
indicating normal distribution of data. The analysis output obtained using the IBM-SPSS
indicates that all the items of the dimensions of the morale variable have correlation
coefficients > 0.3, indicating that the data are suitable for further analysis (Pallant,
2015).
Results and Discussion
The hypothesized relationships among the constructs of morale and
environment with command climate were obtained by running the PLS-SEM algorithm
in obtaining the estimates for the structural relationships (i.e. path coefficients). The
results of the PLS-SEM algorithm are as presented in Figure 2 below:
Figure 2 : Structural Relationship of the domains of Command Climate
The R2 value of 0.319 of command climate indicate that 31.9% of command
climate is predicted by the constructs of morale and environment. The estimated path
coefficients, β, obtained indicate standardized values between -1 and +1 representing
positive and negative relationships. The results of the path coefficients indicate that
morale (β = 0.317) and environment (β = 0.274) have positive relationships with
command climate. The β values indicate that environment is a weaker indicator than
morale in the structural model of command climate. The structural model shows that
there are relationships between morale with environment (β = 0.828). As pointed out
7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
“ASEAN 2015: Challenges and Opportunities” (Proceedings)
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, June 5-6, 2015 289
by Hair et al. (2014), the values of the variables of command climate that are close to +1
or -1 are statistically significant. The ultimate test to determine the significance of the
coefficients was conducted by means of bootstrapping. The results of the bootstrapping
are indicated in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: Bootstrapping results of the command climate structural model
The bootstrapping results provides the standard errors and compute the
empirical t values that determine whether the coefficients are significant. The results in
Table 2 below indicate that the relationships between morale and environment with
command climate as well as morale with environment are significant at a level of 5%
probability of error as all the t values are >1.96 threshold value. Amongst the two
predictive constructs, morale (β = 0.317) has better total effect in predicting command
climate as compared to environment (β = 0.274).
7th International Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
“ASEAN 2015: Challenges and Opportunities” (Proceedings)
Faculty of Liberal Arts, Prince of Songkla University, June 5-6, 2015 290
Table 2: Significant t value of the command climate model