Group cohesion, culture, and practice

Abstract

Anthony King's "The Word of Command: Communication and Cohesion in the Military" formed part of an ongoing debate in this journal on military group cohesion. For him, the main vector for cohesion is collective military practice in training and operations, which he sees as a precursor to social relationships. In his critique, Guy Siebold drew attention to social psychology's approach through the "standard model." In this article, the author suggests that all approaches to military group cohesion would be enriched by an understanding of the organizational culture in which the soldiers are embedded. The author seeks to demonstrate this point by providing an outline of a model of British Army culture at the unit level, and showing how it adds value to military cohesion analysis by applying it to one of King's ethnographic examples and by briefly showing how it would provide a richer context for the use of social psychology's standard model. © 2009 Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society.