Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 81

NETWORKING AND GENERALSHIP

or international staff time, or, alternately, are they
self-forming in this age of technological connectedness?
We performed a thorough review of the responses
and subjectively determined whether an individual
could be said to have an experience-based or selfformed network. For example, if participants said
all their contacts resulted from military schools and
international headquarters (e.g., Iraq or Afghanistan),
their networks were categorized as experience-based.
When individuals described their sole approach to networking as taking the initiative to reach out to others
with whom they had shared no prior experiences, their
networks were listed as self-forming. A third category
was for those who reported using both methods.

Qualitative Findings
Our analysis yielded the categorization of the 27
individuals’ networks, depicted in table 2. We found
the self-forming category almost entirely composed
of academics or recently retired officers, with one
actively serving officer as an outlier. As academics
who study defense and security subjects tend to find
their employment dependent upon relationships
with active duty military officers, it is reasonable
to explain that people in this category have greater
incentives to seek their own social contacts. Also,
retired general and flag officers have more time to
devote to social relationships than while in active
s