'Learning' Key Leader Engagement? Bottom-up Adaptation During the Dutch Deployment in Afghanistan.

Abstract

This thesis has taken on the challenge within the field of Military Innovation Studies to explore specific cases of bottom-up adaptation. It has done so by providing an in-depth case-study of a particular process of bottom-up adaptation that has occurred within the Dutch armed forces during their deployment in Uruzgan and Kunduz: the development of the Key Leader Engagement approach.

By conducting an in-depth research into this process, this thesis has aimed to solve the following research puzzle: 'Given that the Dutch armed forces during deployment in Uruzgan and Kunduz have conducted KLE activities without institutionalized knowledge being present about how to do so, how did bottom-up adaptation processes influence the development of the Key Leader Engagement approach of the Dutch armed forces during deployment in the ISAF mission in Afghanistan (Uruzgan and Kunduz) from August 2006 to July 2013?'

In short, the findings demonstrate that the structural characteristics of the mission created an 'adaptation trap' that enabled bottom-up adaptation during rotations, but simultaneously created unfavourable conditions for these adaptations to be transferred across rotations. As a result, adaptation across rotations came to rely on a small number of 'KLE entrepreneurs' who through an interplay or personal and bureaucratic preferences were be able to steer decisionmaking processes concerning KLE during their rotation in such a way that it either enabled or impeded adaptation across rotations. Combined, these structuralist and individualist factors of bottom-up adaptation provide an in-depth understanding of how the development of the KLE approach took shape during the Dutch deployment in the Uruzgan and Kunduz missions.