Is the Organizational Culture of the U.S. Army Congruent with the Professional Development of Its Senior Level Officer Corps?

Is the Organizational Culture of the U.S. Army Congruent with the Professional Development of Its Senior Level Officer Corps?

Author: James G. Pierce

Publisher: Strategic Studies Institute

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 79

ISBN-13: 1584874597

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Introduction -- Organizational culture -- Importance of organizational culture analysis -- An overview of professional organizations --Purpose of the present study -- Brief discussion of the concepts of organizational culture and professionalism -- Organizational culture -- Professionalism and professional development -- Methodology -- An overview of the Competing Values Framework (CVF) model -- Origins of the Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) -- An overview of the Management Skills Assessment Instrument (MSAI) -- Methodology of the study -- Findings and analysis -- Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) : findings and analysis -- Final analysis -- Implications -- Overview -- Implications for the army profession


Adopting Mission Command

Adopting Mission Command

Author: Donald Vandergriff

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1682471047

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In September 2010, James G. Pierce, a retired U.S. Army colonel with the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, published a study on Army organizational culture. Pierce postulated that "the ability of a professional organization to develop future leaders in a manner that perpetuates readiness to cope with future environmental and internal uncertainty depends on organizational culture." He found that today's U.S. Army leadership "may be inadequately prepared to lead the profession toward future success." The need to prepare for future success dovetails with the use of the concepts of mission command. This book offers up a set of recommendations, based on those mission command concepts, for adopting a superior command culture through education and training. Donald E. Vandergriff believes by implementing these recommendations across the Army, that other necessary and long-awaited reforms will take place.


Real Leadership and the U.S. Army

Real Leadership and the U.S. Army

Author: John B. Richardson (IV.)

Publisher: Strategic Studies Institute U. S. Army War College

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13:

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This monograph begins with a case study that provides a means for analyzing the complexity of organizational leadership in the contemporary security environment. As such, it presents a high stakes problem-set that required an operational adaptation by a cavalry squadron conducting combat operations in Baghdad. This problematic reality triggered the struggle to find a creative response to a very deadly problem, while cultural norms served as barriers that prevented the rejection of previously accepted solutions that had proven successful in the past, even though those successful solutions no longer fit in the context of the reality of the present. The case study highlights leaders who were constrained by deeply-held assumptions that inhibited their ability to adapt quickly to a changed environment. The case study then moves on to provide an example of a successful application of adaptive leadership and adaptive work that was performed by the organization after a period of reflection and the willingness to experiment and assume risk. The case study serves as a microcosm of the challenges facing the U.S. Army, and the corresponding leadership framework presented in this monograph can be used as a model for the Army as it attempts to move forward in its effort to make adaptation an institutional imperative. The paper presents a more holistic approach to leadership where the leader transcends that of simply being an authority figure and becomes a real leader who provides a safe and creative learning environment where the organization can tackle and solve adaptive challenges. The paper concludes by recommending that U.S. Army leaders apply Harvard Professor Dean Williams's theory to the challenges confronting the Army's leader development process thereby fostering a culture of adaptive leaders.


Forced to Change

Forced to Change

Author: Bernd Horn

Publisher: Dundurn

Published: 2015-03-28

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 145972786X

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Undeniably, the 1990s were a period of crisis for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). Drastic budget reductions and a series of endless scandals all collided to form the perfect storm. The outcome of this was nothing short of the implosion of the Canadian Armed Forces Officer Corps. Stripped by the government of the right to regulate itself, the Officer Corps, which represented the nation’s stewards of the profession of arms, was forced to reform itself. Key to this transformation was education. However, the road was not easy, as cultural change rarely is. Forced to Change tells the story of how the Canadian Armed Forces found itself at its lowest point in history and how it managed to reform itself. The question is whether it was a fundamental transformation or just a temporary adjustment to weather the storm.


Culture in Conflict

Culture in Conflict

Author: Paula Holmes-Eber

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2014-05-21

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0804791902

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In response to the irregular warfare challenges facing the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2005, General James Mattis—then commander of Marine Corps Combat Development Command—established a new Marine Corps cultural initiative. The goal was simple: teach Marines to interact successfully with the local population in areas of conflict. The implications, however, were anything but simple: transform an elite military culture founded on the principles of "locate, close with, and destroy the enemy" into a "culturally savvy" Marine Corps. Culture in Conflict: Irregular Warfare, Culture Policy, and the Marine Corps examines the conflicted trajectory of the Marine Corps' efforts to institute a radical culture policy into a military organization that is structured and trained to fight conventional wars. More importantly, however, it is a compelling book about America's shifting military identity in a new world of unconventional warfare.


China's Military Power

China's Military Power

Author: Roger Cliff

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1107103541

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This book provides a comprehensive assessment of China's military capabilities in 2000 and 2010, with projections for 2020. Recognizing that military power encompasses more than weaponry, it develops an original empirical framework for measuring militaries that also includes doctrine, training, and organizational structure.


Four Guardians

Four Guardians

Author: Jeffrey W. Donnithorne

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1421439921

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Exploring the profound differences between what the military services believe—and how they uniquely serve the nation. When the US military confronts pressing security challenges, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps often react differently as they advise and execute civilian defense policies. Conventional wisdom holds that these dynamics tend to reflect a competition for prestige, influence, and dollars. Such interservice rivalries, however, are only a fraction of the real story. In Four Guardians, Jeffrey W. Donnithorne argues that the services act instead as principled agents, interpreting policies in ways that reflect their unique cultures and patterns of belief. Chapter-length portraits of each service highlight the influence of operational environment ("nature") and political history ("nurture") in shaping each service's cultural worldview. The book also offers two important case studies of civil-military policymaking: one, the little-known story of the creation of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force in the early 1980s; the other, the four-year political battle that led to the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986. Donnithorne uses these cases to demonstrate the principled agent framework in action while amply revealing the four services as distinctly different political actors. Combining crisp insight and empirical depth with engaging military history, Four Guardians provides practical utility for civil-military scholars, national security practitioners, and interested citizens alike. This timely work brings a new appreciation for the American military, the complex dynamics of civilian control, and the principled ways in which the four guardian services defend their nation.


The Sociology of Military Science

The Sociology of Military Science

Author: Colonel (US Army Ret.) Chris Paparone

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2012-11-08

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1441188290

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This groundbreaking work challenges modernist military science and explores how a more open design epistemology is becoming an attractive alternative to a military staff culture rooted in a monistic scientific paradigm. The author offers fresh sociological avenues to become more institutionally reflexive - to offer a variety of design frames of reference, beyond those typified by modern military doctrine. Modernist military knowledge has been institutionalized to the point that blinds militaries to alternative designs organizationally and in their interventions. This book seeks to reconstruct strategy and operations in "designing ways" and develops theories of action through multifaceted contextualizations and recontextualizations of situations, showing that Military Design does not have to rely on set rational-analytic decision-making schemes, but on seeking alternative meanings in- and on-action. The work offers an alternative philosophy of practice that embraces the unpredictability of tasks to be accomplished. Written by Colonel Paparone (U.S. Army, Ret., PhD) with a special chapter by two active duty officers, it will appeal to all in military and security studies, including professionals and policymakers.