Characteristics of Leadership in a Military Context: Systematic Literature Review by PRISMA Method

Leadership in a military context is marked by high complexity, high levels of stress and several other factors, aiming at the fulfilment of the mission. Thus, for the present study the following question was formulated: how has leadership in a military context been characterized in the reference literature in recent years (2019–2023)? For this, a systematic literature review was conducted using the PRISMA method, whereby the research was divided into four phases: identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion. Articles were consulted in the RCAAP, Scielo, Science Direct and Scopus databases, published between January 2019 and April 2023, according to the pre-established inclusion and exclusion criteria, and additionally, in Google Scholar. During the first phase, 37 020 documents were identified, after applying the first filtering resulted in 108, of which 17 studies were included for the analysis. The evidence attests to the scarcity of systematic literature reviews on leadership in a military context, its confusion with hierarchical positions, the lack of consensus on its definition, there being different approaches according to sociocultural contexts. The evidence found led us to conclude that leadership in the military unfolds at the political-military, military-strategic, operational and tactical levels, where transactional (with an emphasis on the accomplishment of the task/mission by subordinates) and transformational leadership styles predominate, with an emphasis on the motivation and satisfaction of followers beyond task accomplishment.