Values and Virtues in the Military. Nadine Eggimann Zanetti

the MVVC

       VIA-IS (Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005)

       8.3 Results

       8.3.1 Primary analyses

       8.3.2 Factor structure of military virtues

       8.3.3 Four military virtue factors

       8.3.4 Relations of the four factors of military virtues to the five factors of character strengths

       8.4 Discussion

       Study III: Investigating the Criterion Validity of the Five Military Value Factors and the Four Military Virtue Factors

       9 Can the military value factors and military virtue factors determine organizational citizenship behavior and motivation to lead?

       9.1 Introduction

       9.1.1 Factor structure of the MVVC

       9.1.2 OCB and MTL as validation criteria

       9.1.3 Aims of the study

       9.2 Method

       9.2.1 Participants and procedure

       9.2.2 Measures

       Independent variables

       Criterion variables

       9.3 Results

       9.3.1 Primary analyses

       9.3.2 Universal values, military values, and military virtues as determinants of OCB and MTL

       9.3.3 Incremental validity of military values and military virtues for determining OCB and MTL

       9.4 Discussion

       General Discussion

       10 Main results and conclusions

       11 Strengths and limitations

       12 Implications for research and practice

       13 Open questions and further research

       14 Final comments

       List of Figures

       List of Tables

       References

      ←17 | 18→ ←18 | 19→

Management Summary

      Expressions describing values and virtues (e.g., honesty, security, loyalty, integrity) have always been a top priority within the military context of leadership, training, ethical commitment, and psychological research. Values and virtues are qualified as morally good, positive characteristics of personality (De Raad & Van Oudenhoven, 2011). Likewise, concepts of positive psychology such as character strengths, values, and virtues are regarded as highly influential on work satisfaction, individual performance, motivation, adaptability, and effective leadership in the military context (Matthews, Eid, Kelly, Bailey, & Peterson, 2006b). Additionally, the military environment is a natural home for concepts of positive psychology and their overall importance is widely documented (Matthews, 2009). This bolsters the inclination to view the military, specially the Swiss Armed Forces, as a value-oriented organization. However, there has not yet been an empirical psycholexical consideration of military values and virtues and a corresponding analysis of the factorial structure within a military organization. Combining the method of a psycholexical approach with a factorial analysis as part of the structural assessment of values and virtues enables to identify cultural-sensitive characteristics of the organization.

      The current thesis investigated military values and virtues within the Swiss Armed Forces, with the focus on a psycholexical-based identification of military value and virtue descriptors and the assessment of their factorial structure. Data were collected from professional and militia military persons across the entire hierarchical levels of the Swiss Armed Forces. The validity of the resulting military value and virtue factors was further explored by relating them to (a) measures of universal values by the Austrian Value Questionnaire (AVQ; Renner, Salem, & Alexandrowicz, 2004), (b) the Big Five personality traits (Big Five Inventory; John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991), and (c) the five second-order factors of character strengths by the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS; Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005). Furthermore, the positive outcome of military values and virtue factors was verified with regards to organizational citizenship behavior (OCB; Organ, 1997) and motivation to lead (MTL; Chan & Drasgow, 2001) among Swiss recruits.

As part of the Pre-study, the Military Values and Virtues Catalog (MVVC) was developed. The scope included the identification of 25 military value- and 42 virtue-descriptive expressions, evolving from a psycholexical-oriented ←19 | 20→analysis of military guidelines and in line with the prioritizing ratings as assessed by the top executives of the Swiss Armed Forces.

      In Study I, the corresponding catalog was given to a sample of 550 career officers and career non-commissioned officers (NCOs) to capture the rating with regards to each specific military value and virtue as it applies to everyday military decisions and actions. Principal component analysis in combination with Goldberg’s top-down approach delivered five military value categories (in terms of factors) reflecting the Swiss military culture, characterized as Freedom (I), Social Cohesion (II), Good Soldiership (III), Mutual Respect (IV), and Military Conformity (V). Relating the correlations with the Big Five personality traits (i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness), the strongest ties were found between Good Soldiership (III) and Conscientiousness, as well as between Mutual Respect (IV) and Agreeableness. In regards to the five universal values (i.e., Intellectualism, Balance, Religiosity, Materialism, and Conservatism), Good Soldiership (III) showed the highest correlation to Conservatism, while the correlation coefficients were generally not higher than between military values and personality traits.

      In Study II, the MVVC was administered to 270 militia officer candidates from different service branches, with the goal of assessing