Rasmus Marquard Andresen

Command teams bring senior enlisted leaders into leadership partnerships with commanders. While used across several leading NATO countries, their enactments have never been studied. Command senior enlisted leaders (CSELs) are part of unit command but do not hold formal authority. Still, they are expected to implement their commanders’ intent, and policy descriptions intermingle ideas of individual command authority and shared leadership. These features appear at odds with core tenets of bureaucracy, which armies also strongly manifest. This dissertation studies how command teams are enacted in the Danish Army through three interrelated studies. Study A explores how CSELs are authorized. It finds that CSELs are authorized both as perceived extensions of their commanders’ authority and through personal authority granted via social contracts with unit personnel. This locally negotiated authority is structurally ambiguous but can also enable access, representation, and influence in ways formal command authority cannot. Study B explores the internal dynamics of command teams, considering the recent concept of collective command. It finds that sensemaking and, to some degree, decision-making are collective processes, while still anchored in the ideal of individual command. Study C examines how command teams engage the formal and informal army organization. Where commanders use the chain of command, CSELs primarily engage the informal organization around NCOs. This enables information sharing and problem-solving across the formal-informal divide to be integrated through command teams as bridges. In sum, CSELs’ informal leadership seems to strengthen formal command by reinforcing commanders’ influence within, and drawing insights from, the informal organization.

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