Influence of Military Commander’s Leadership Style towards Subordinate’s Morale

Leadership is regarded as one of the strategic matters in the development and management of morale. In military, leader control both interpersonal and material rewards and punishment that often shape subordinate’s behaviour and influence subordinate’s performance, morale, motivation and attitude. The objective of the study was to empirically investigate the direct effect of Military Commander’s transformational and transactional leadership styles towards their subordinate’s morale. This study seeks to determine whether the two different leadership styles have direct effects on the subordinate’s morale. This study employed quantitative methods for data collection. The respondents of this study are infantry soldiers from Border Regiment consisting of officers and other ranks. The research instruments consisted of structured questionnaires using MLQ (Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire) developed by Bass and Avolio (2004), along with items of morale. The result of this study is expected to provide insight into the importance of the application of concepts of morale for subordinates, transformational and transactional leadership styles that exist within a unit.