After the end of the Cold War, many European countries cut back so heavily on defense expenditure that they lost their capacity to defend themselves. This resulted in greater need for improved cooperation and interoperability among member states’ armed forces. One important attempt to improve the understanding and interoperability among the European Union (EU) nation’s armed forces was taken in 2008 by the creation of the European Initiative for exchange of young officers aimed to make the officer education in Europe more transparent and convergent with each other. This article presents a proposal for a generic pedagogic model for an academically professional officer education that can improve understanding and interoperability among the EU nation’s armed forces. The model helps to facilitate a process of professionalization of the military profession with an officer education that can meet the requirements of higher education systems as well as the demands of the military profession.

Föreliggande bok har ambitionen att sätta samman tre års forskningsresultat (2016-2018) inom ramen för det av Försvarsmakten (FM) finansierade forskningsprojektet Ledarskap och ledning i en förändrad organisatorisk kontext och omsätta kunskaper till ett pedagogiskt och lättillgängligt material som kan användas i såväl Försvarshögskolans ordinarie kurs- och utbildningsprogram, som enskild läsning eller som utgångspunkt för gruppdiskussioner, seminarier och förberedelser inför något av de teman som tas upp i boken. Bokens innehåll speglar forskningsprojektets sammansättning som består av forskare från Ledarskapsavdelningen i Stockholm, Försvarshögskolans Ledarskapscentrum i Karlstad, och Ledningsvetenskap i Stockholm. Att bokens empiri kommer från militär kontext hindrar inte att bokens innehåll även kan vara av stort intresse för civila läsare, särskilt inom ramen för dem med intresse för civil-militär samverkan i såväl nationella som internationella insatser.

Cooperation in multinational military operations is one of the main tasks for the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF), which means that Swedish officers need to be able to meet international military staff standards. For this reason, the SAF and the Swedish Defence University organize an annual international staff exercise which aims to train officers in and increase their knowledge of North Atlantic Treaty Organization staff methods and procedures. The essence of successful staff work is good leadership and effective team work. In this article, we present findings from three staff exercises that have significant impact on leadership and possibilities for good team learning that relate to a team learning model. These findings have great potential to be of value in planning and improving leadership education and training in both military and civilian contexts.

Military staffs are composed of many smaller teams that are interdependent upon each other for a positive functioning level of the whole staff. Many factors can improve or harm the harmony of the staff. Recently, there has been an increased interest in the soft factors that may affect team performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the Big Five personality dimensions, political skill and perceived team performance in a multinational staff training event. The sample included 185 military staff officers (49% response rate). The results indicated that the personality dimension Emotional stability and Political skill had a limited, yet statistically significant, predictive power on team performance. Practical considerations and future research directions are suggested.

International operations have become one of the main tasks for the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF). The SAF and Swedish National Defence College organize annual international staff exercises with the purpose of training officers to carry out effective staff work. This study analyzed a staff exercise using Edmondson's team learning model in a military setting. The model was developed by including group cohesion. As defensive routines are a threat to team learning behavior, the possible presence of these was examined. The results indicate that team leader coaching is crucial to support all the variables in the model. The added variable of group cohesion contributed with insights on how the commander used task solving to create group cohesion. Some examples of defensive routines were also revealed but there seemed to be challenges in identifying such routines in this type of exercise setting.

This book is a report of cross-national research that that explores the expectation, motivation and satisfaction of the new recruits from Belgium, France, Japan, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey's armed forces toward the basic military training. It both aims to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the basic training in order to contribute to the improvement of training quality, and increase a common understanding of questions related to the basic military training such leadership quality, self-images, motivation to further career in the armed forces and so forth.

The critical dependence of armed forces on teams carrying out tasks in a continuously changing, uncertain and often dangerous environment, raises questions about how to better understand factors that enable or hamper effective team learning. So far there is no developed field of research into team learning in the Swedish Armed Forces. This is the first of several studies within the Swedish Armed Forces to explore and gain a better understanding of team learning. In this first study of team learning we followed a military staff exercise. The theoretical base in this study is Amy Edmondson’s theoretical model for studying and analyzing team learning. The model consists of context support, team leader coaching, team psychology safety and team learning behavior. The results of this study supports the theoretical model of team learning and describe factors that are important for creating good conditions for team learning behavior.