As a first step toward approaching theArt of warfrom a leadership
perspective, we conduct a simple content analysis, counting the
frequency of keywords referring to factors in military leadership,
namely, the commander, the soldier, the army, the enemy, the
situation/environment, and the outcome (victory or defeat). We
define strategic leadership in the military context as howcommanders
lead thearmy/soldiersto battle against theenemytaking advantage of
situational contingenciesin order to winvictories.As can be seen in
Table 5.2, references to victory or defeat are the most frequently made
(103 times) with those to soldiers coming next (90). References to
the enemy (70), the commander (60), the army (69), and the situation
(65) are more or less the same. These simple statistics suggest to us
Table 5.2.Frequency of keywords in theArt of war.
Keyword and frequency Group total
Commander 60
General (jiang)49
Officer (shi)9
Commander (shuai)2
Soldier 90
Soldier (bing)71
Private (zu)19
Army 69
Army (jun)60
Division (shi)9
Opponent/enemy 70
Situation/environment 65
Form (xing)34
Position (shi)16
Change (bian)15
Victory/defeat 103
Victory (sheng)84
Defeat (bai)13
Danger (dai)3
Loss (fu)3
152 Hai-fa Sun, Chao-chuan Chen, and Shi-he Zhang