The Bulletin of National Defence University of Ukraine

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  • Vol. 20, No. 6, 2025

  • Transformation of military organisational culture under the influence of war: An empirical study using the OCAI methodology

  • Received 23.05.2025,
  • Revised 22.10.2025,
  • Accepted 27.11.2025
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Vol. 20, No. 6, 2025
  • organisational changes; Armed Forces of Ukraine; leadership; cultural adaptation; transformation; combat effectiveness
  • https://doi.org/10.33099/2617-6858-25-20-6-93-101
  • Pages 93-101

The relevance of the study is conditioned by the fact that a full-scale war radically changes the conditions of functioning of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, putting forward new requirements for leadership, communication, and preservation of institutional values. In such circumstances, the transformation of organisational culture becomes a key factor in the cohesion, sustainability, and effectiveness of command, and its empirical measurement allows understanding the mechanisms of internal adaptation of military units to external pressure. The purpose of the study was to empirically assess the dominant types of organisational culture among Ukrainian servicemen during the war (2022-2025) using the OCAI method. The OCAI (Organisational Culture Assessment Instrument) methodology adapted to the military context, questionnaires of military personnel, open interviews, and document analysis were applied, and descriptive statistics, paired t-test and one-factor variance analysis (ANOVA) were used for data processing. A survey of 83 military personnel showed that the dominant type of culture remains hierarchical (34.25 points), but in the desired state its value is significantly reduced (20.26 points) in favour of adhocratic (an increase from 12.1 to 26.97 points) and clan (from 27.22 to 27.77). The most pronounced changes were recorded in the success criteria, where the adhocratic culture rose from 20.34 to 35.64 points, and the hierarchical culture decreased from 32.98 to 14.08 points. There was also an increase in innovation (from 6.36 to 7.64), initiative (from 6.96 to 7.68 points), and result orientation (from 7.16 to 8.24 points), which showed the active adaptation of troops to the conditions of modern warfare based on trust, mutual support networks, and value-oriented leadership practices. This study was one of the first empirical applications of the OCAI model in the military context of Ukraine during the war, its originality lies in the adaptation of the tool for highly structured and stressful institutions, which allowed diagnosing changes from a rigid hierarchy to more flexible models. The results obtained enrich the international discourse on military leadership and organisational development, and are also of practical value for reforming the system of training military leaders, forming a sustainable organisational culture in the defence sector

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