Organizational Change and Adaptation in the US Army

The military profession changes by both slow evolution and sudden revolution. This article offers a typology to understand the factors that influence such changes, and then suggests how each factor might help or hinder the US Army's ability to adapt in the near future. ********** Between the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the US Army transformed how it prepared for war. This shift grew from an equally stark change in how the officer corps conceived military professionalism. The old professionalism was built upon the belief that military competence was a product of character, common sense, and natural aptitude. Those innate qualities might be refined through experience or study but were largely beyond the ability of the institution to manufacture. Consequently, there was little effort to train officers in anything but the technical skills of engineering and gunnery. The new professionalism, by contrast, assumed command was a communal affair built upon a body of expert knowledge that could be codified, imparted, and regulated through umpired field training, professional education, and tactical doctrine. These activities implied the Army can, indeed must, shape the manner in which officers think and act. In war times, the change in professionalism was manifest as a shift from informal direction grounded in the personality of the commander to more formal control using impersonal staff procedures. The former was embodied by the figure of a general sitting atop a hill, aides dashing off with orders dictated by the commander; the latter was characterized by a command post filled with staff officers producing detailed written plans in accordance with standardized procedures taught at a staff college. Although undeniably more functional, the elements of personality were sacrificed in the transition. Individuals lost autonomy as they were subsumed within standardized organizational structures. Officers commissioned in the 1890s regarded this change as a natural evolution; one officer sneeringly called the era of his immediate predecessors the Army's Dark Age. (1) From the vantage of this younger generation, the path was one of progress. Previous generations would not have agreed. They found that the notion the institution could manufacture commanders misguided and offensive. These irreconcilable views disprove the myth of a universal military profession. There is no normative standard against which all can be judged. Instead, military professionalism can take many forms, each reflecting the prevailing ideas and values of its society and time. Because these ideas and values are so fundamental to those who hold them, a major shift in professionalism creates a significant divide within an army. Soldiers from either side of the division might be as foreign to each other as if they came from different countries. Those accustomed to the old ways regard the change as one for the worse, a betrayal of what they hold dear. Those who come up in the new tradition cannot fathom how their predecessors could have been so backward. The first part of this article provides a conceptual framework to explain why such changes happen. The second portion applies the framework to the US Army. Using lessons from the past and observations of the present, this article explores the possibility a significant professional shift is decades in the future or whether one might already be underway. Why Military Organizations Change The existing scholarship of military adaptation provides several models of organizational change. In The Soldier and the State, Samuel Huntington examines the case of the US Army as just described. He argues a separation from society that was born of civilian neglect and geographic isolation in the late nineteenth century allowed military professionalism to flourish. His argument rests upon a flawed understanding of the beliefs of the officer corps of the time and its relationship with society

Adaptation (eye) · Economics · Management · Organizational change · Political science · Public relations · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · Military History and Strategy · Military, Security, and Education Studies · Psychology · Public Administration

• Parameters – Full Issue – Winter 2016

  USAWC Parameters•The US Army War College Quarterly…•2016

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