Relationships between military morale, motivation, satisfaction, and unit effectiveness.

Abstract

Used behaviorally anchored rating scales, developed to measure morale in military units, to examine correlates of officers' ratings of company and platoon morale with 614 US Army enlisted personnel. Several self-report measures of motivation and satisfaction with various facets of Army life (Job Motivation Indices, Survey of Organizations, Job Descriptive Index, Satisfaction Questionnaire for Airmen, Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, Job Satisfaction Index, Index of Organizational Reactions, and Overall Satisfaction Index) were completed by the enlisted personnel. In addition, information about administrative indexes reflecting company effectiveness was obtained. Ratings of platoon morale correlated most strongly with mean self-reports of overall satisfaction and somewhat less strongly with self-reports of satisfaction with narrower facets of Army life. At the company level, morale ratings were most strongly correlated with number of reenlistments and number of congressional inquiries into company conditions associated with complaints from individual soldiers.