A. The qualitative differences between the concepts of leadership in military and corporate sector can be viewed in two ways- by looking at the 'levels of leadership hierarchies' and 'stages of activities'.
(a) Levels of Hierarchies. The leadership hierarchy in any organization can be divided into the functional (or activity), directional and conceptual levels. In the armed forces, the functional level leadership is qualitatively different from that in the corporate field. You obviously cannot order a man to his death. Neither can you risk a failure to accomplish a mission, due to the criticality of objectives. Therefore, the functional level or 'contact level' leadership in military lays a very strong emphasis on the concept of 'inside Out' leadership that is leadership by personal example and intrinsic (rather than extrinsic) motivation. It advocates transformational (rather than transactional) approach to leadership. To a certain extent, this approach to leadership is also required at the directional level in the military field. However, at the conceptual and to certain extent at directional levels, the emphasis seems to shift from the functions of "leading men" (directing) to the functions of forecasting, planning, organization, coordinating and controlling the complex military machine: in other words, the traditional 'managerial' functions. In this sense, there seems to be no qualitative difference between the requirements in the mil 'leader' and a corporate 'leader at the directional and conceptual levels.
(b) Stage of Activities. Military activities cab broadly be divided into the two distinct areas : Force Development and force Application. The first one involves Human Resources Management (including selection, adm and welfare-training and development of individuals), perspective planning, force structuring, training, and force maintenance. The second one involves combat, or operations in its military sense. The peculiarities of decision situations facing a military decision maker in he force Development stage, like uncertain, complex and fluid environment, pressure to constantly maintain the right 'fit' between the organization and the environment and the pressures of optimum utilization of resources compare favourably with a corporate decision maker. Here, there is adequate room and emphasis non managerial aspects of leadership. However, there is one basic difference. While in a corporate environment, vision, mission and goals are comparatively easily quantifiable in terms of performance, quality, productively, profits etc., the same is difficult to quantify for a military leader. A military leader therefore must have a very high conceptual clarity for evolving an appropriate vision and superior communication skills and dynamism for obtaining the ready commitment and enthusiasm for the organizational members towards the vision.