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Military Leadership in the Ecuadorian Army

Abstract:

The success of nations’ defense and security operations depends on the prevailing military leadership style. Over the past decade, insecurity has increased in Ecuador due to the proliferation of drug trafficking and international criminal groups. In addition, the Ecuadorian state is going through an economic crisis that comes from the pandemic, corruption, unemployment, poverty, bankruptcy of companies, low oil prices, strong political opposition, high public debt, natural disasters, among other aspects. These facts limit the delivery of financial resources to the Armed Forces for the effective fulfillment of operations. Likewise, the current laws hinder the performance of the new roles played by the Armed Forces combating the country’s internal insecurity and supporting risk management. The objective of this research is to identify the dimensions, characteristics, and styles of dominant leadership in the Ecuadorian Army. The study has a qualitative and quantitative approach, the research is descriptive, inferential, correlational, transversal, exploratory and non-experimental. The research is based on the military leadership model established by Castro-Solano. The techniques used are the survey applied to a sample in two groups of officers and the in-depth interview conducted with experts. The results determine that the transformational leadership predominant in the group of operational officers, the leadership of complete range in the officers of the tactical group and, the Laissez-faire has a low presence in both groups.