Collective Command: Problems and Perspectives for Military Operational Leadership in the 21st Century

Anthony King’s 'Command: The Twenty-First-Century General' claims to present a new perspective on command, in which a radical change of command from an “individualistic” to a “collective” practice has taken place since the 20th century. In this article, we critically assess two key ideas in King’s work, namely “collective command” and “complexity”. These are issues which are mirrored in contemporary collective leadership literature and complexity management discourse. We argue that this engagement with collective leadership and complexity has some unfortunate consequences for King’s assessment of military organization and how command practices have changed. The outset for our critique is what we perceive to be a “surreptitious slide” – namely a slide from analytical insights about the present and past to generalizations and prescriptions about the future of command and the organizational context in which it unfolds. The slide is reflected in a lack of specificity concerning what 'is' and what 'ought to be'. We suggest that scholars and practitioners attend to the diversity of actions within timeframes, specific situations, and contextual settings rather than evoke wishful thinking and legitimize specific visions of future realities. This would, among other things, shed light on how concrete issues of power, conflict, and tensions co-exist in divisional headquarters and beyond.