Perceived motivational climate and unit cohesion: The case of French soldiers in training

ABSTRACT

Using a correlational design, this exploratory research investigates the relationships between soldiers’ perceptions of the motivational climate created by platoon leaders and unit cohesion in a French military sample. Conducted among 257 soldiers, the findings indicate that new recruits perceive motivational climate as significantly more task- than ego-involved. Moreover, multiple regressions show that a task-involving motivational climate predicts higher measures of cohesion than does an ego-involving motivational climate. Implications for the professionalization of military forces and exercising command in training are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Perceived motivational climate
• group cohesion
• military training

Acknowledgments

We thank the Action Editor and both reviewers for their helpful comments on the earlier version of this article. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the French Ministry for the Armed Forces.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In 2000, Newton, Duda, and Yin indicated that both task and ego-involving motivational climate could be separated into three low-order subscales. These factors were labeled Effort/Improvement, Cooperative Learning, and Important Role for the task-involving motivational climate, and Intra-Team Member Rivalry, Unequal Recognition, and Punishment for Mistakes for the ego-involving motivational climate. However, as these six lower-order factors are not yet clearly identified (Biddle, 2001), only the two higher order factors were used in this study.

2. As indicated by Wong et al. (2003), the first way to define military research is to focus on studies that use military samples to test theories that have applicability across a broad range of organizations, such as, for instance, sport organizations. A second way to define military research is to consider the unique characteristics of the military. The present study clearly focused on this first way.

3. The training centers for noncommissioned military (CFIM) were set up in 2013 in order to standardize initial training for enlistees in the same brigade, and more generally initial training within the army, in the same way as training schools for officers and subofficers.

Prior to this, young enlistees were trained in-house within the regiments. At the CFIM, they are grouped into sections according to their future regiment, and it is leaders of these regiments who provide their initial fifteen-week training before organizing their specialization training within the regiment.