SRA-E Lisbon 2017

The study examined risk-willingness and character strengths among Norwegian Military Academy (NMA) officer cadets. Risk-willingness is a central attribute in the leadership philosophy mission command which originated in Prussia in the early 17th century. The Norwegian Armed Forces adopted mission command as its central leadership philosophy in the 1990s. Character strengths have been found to be important tin order for military officers to face and thrive in the presence of unforeseen events. The present study compared cadets at the NMA and a random representative group of civilians in order to assess whether risk-willingness is a significant characterization of the military selection. This study uses a quantitative approach where one hundred NMA cadets and one thousand civilians have responded to a questionnaire concerning different types of risk-willingness. The cadets were also given a questionnaire with 24 character strengths and were asked to indicate how important each character strength is for a military officer. The results revealed that the NMA cadets were significantly more willing to take risks along the dimensions physical-, achievement- and existential risk. Along the last dimension, intellectual risk, the results showed no significant differences. Twelve out of 24 character strengths emerged as important for the officer cadets in order to face unforeseen events. These character strengths were in ranked order from the most important: Leadership, integrity, open-mindedness, bravery, citizenship. persistence, social intelligence, love of learning, fairness, self-regulation, perspective, creativity. These results corroborates well with previous research in Norwegian military organizations. An argument is that the significant higher willingness to take risks among NMA cadets compared to civilians should be viewed in context of the Norwegian Army’s participation in international operations for the last 10-15 years. Furthermore, a resulting professionalism has been developed and consequently a more classic warrior-role among Norwegian military leaders has been generated. Moreover, the study argues that the slightly lower willingness to take intellectual risk among the military selection can be explained by a consensus-culture and a demand for conformity in the Norwegian armed forces. The phenomena of risk-willingness cannot easily be measured and the validity of this study must not be exaggerated. Still, supported by other researchers, this study provides valuable knowledge about the future Norwegian army leaders and simultaneously opens up for more extensive research on the topic.