The Culture of Military Organizations

The Culture of Military Organizations PDF Author: Peter R. Mansoor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108485731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
Examines how military culture forms and changes, as well as its impact on the effectiveness of military organizations.

The Culture of Military Organizations

The Culture of Military Organizations PDF Author: Peter R. Mansoor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108485731
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
Examines how military culture forms and changes, as well as its impact on the effectiveness of military organizations.

The Culture of Military Organizations

The Culture of Military Organizations PDF Author: Peter R. Mansoor
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108724487
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Culture has an enormous influence on military organizations and their success or failure in war. Cultural biases often result in unstated assumptions that have a deep impact on the making of strategy, operational planning, doctrinal creation, and the organization and training of armed forces. Except in unique circumstances culture grows slowly, embedding so deeply that members often act unconsciously according to its dictates. Of all the factors that are involved in military effectiveness, culture is perhaps the most important. Yet, it also remains the most difficult to describe and understand, because it entails so many external factors that impinge, warp, and distort its formation and continuities. The sixteen case studies in this volume examine the culture of armies, navies, and air forces from the Civil War to the Iraq War and how and why culture affected their performance in the ultimate arbitration of war.

The Sources of Military Change

The Sources of Military Change PDF Author: Theo Farrell
Publisher: Lynne Rienner Publishers
ISBN: 9781555879754
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In varying circumstances, military organizations around the world are undergoing major restructuring. This book explores why, and how, militaries change.

Creating Military Power

Creating Military Power PDF Author: Risa Brooks
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804768092
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Creating Military Power examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources—such as the size of populations, technological and industrial base, and GNP—this volume takes a more expansive view. The study's overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place.

Enhancing Organizational Performance

Enhancing Organizational Performance PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309175828
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Total quality management (TQM), reengineering, the workplace of the twenty-first centuryâ€"the 1990s have brought a sense of urgency to organizations to change or face stagnation and decline, according to Enhancing Organizational Performance. Organizations are adopting popular management techniques, some scientific, some faddish, often without introducing them properly or adequately measuring the outcome. Enhancing Organizational Performance reviews the most popular current approaches to organizational changeâ€"total quality management, reengineering, and downsizingâ€"in terms of how they affect organizations and people, how performance improvements can be measured, and what questions remain to be answered by researchers. The committee explores how theory, doctrine, accepted wisdom, and personal experience have all served as sources for organization design. Alternative organization structures such as teams, specialist networks, associations, and virtual organizations are examined. Enhancing Organizational Performance looks at the influence of the organization's norms, values, and beliefsâ€"its cultureâ€"on people and their performance, identifying cultural "levers" available to organization leaders. And what is leadership? The committee sorts through a wealth of research to identify behaviors and skills related to leadership effectiveness. The volume examines techniques for developing these skills and suggests new competencies that will become required with globalization and other trends. Mergers, networks, alliances, coalitionsâ€"organizations are increasingly turning to new intra- and inter-organizational structures. Enhancing Organizational Performance discusses how organizations cooperate to maximize outcomes. The committee explores the changing missions of the U.S. Army as a case study that has relevance to any organization. Noting that a musical greeting card contains more computing power than existed in the entire world before 1950, the committee addresses the impact of new technologies on performance. With examples, insights, and practical criteria, Enhancing Organizational Performance clarifies the nature of organizations and the prospects for performance improvement. This book will be important to corporate leaders, executives, and managers; faculty and students in organizational performance and the social sciences; business journalists; researchers; and interested individuals.

The Organizational Culture of the U. S. Army

The Organizational Culture of the U. S. Army PDF Author: James G. Pierce
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781461176794
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Organization theory hypothesizes that an organization's culture enables its members to work through the basic problems of survival in, and adaptation to, the external environment. Organizational culture also guides the organization's development and maintenance of internal processes and procedures that perpetuate adaptability and promote continued existence. Consequently, organizational culture has considerable impact on an organization's behavior at any given time, particularly on organizational effectiveness. However, little literature and even less data discuss the impact of organizational culture within military organizations and, more importantly, the impact that organizational culture may have on the development of an organization's leaders.In the present study, Dr. Pierce postulates 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. Specifically, the purpose of his study is to explore the relationship between the Army's organizational culture and professional development. He examines the degree of congruence between the Army's organizational culture and the leadership and managerial skills of its officer corps senior leaders. He uses data from a representative sample of such leaders while they were students at the Army War College, Classes of 2003 and 2004.At the macro level the results of his research strongly suggest a significant lack of congruence between the U.S. Army's organizational culture and the results of its professional development programs for its future strategic leaders. He bases his conclusion on iv empirical data that indicate that the future strategic leaders of the Army believe that they operate on a day-to-day basis in an organization whose culture is characterized by:* an overarching desire for stability and control,* formal rules and policies,* coordination and efficiency,* goal and results oriented, and* hard-driving competitiveness.However, sharply highlighting a pronounced lack of congruence between what they believe the Army's culture to be and what it should be (based on their development as future strategic leaders), the respondents also indicated that the Army's culture should be that of a profession, which emphasizes:* flexibility and discretion,* participation,* human resource development,* innovation and creativity,* risk-taking,* long-term emphasis on professional growth, and* the acquisition of new professional knowledge and skills.Clearly, the second set of cultural values and behaviors are much better aligned with the current and future demands of the Army's external strategic environment. Further, almost by definition, these 533 officers represent the future leaders of the Army. That is why their collective perceptions of the Army's professional culture and of their own managerial and leadership skills are of such significance to the Army.

Understanding Military Culture

Understanding Military Culture PDF Author: Allan D. English
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 077357171X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Culture has been described as the "bedrock of military" effectiveness because it influences everything an armed service does. The recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have highlighted the importance of culture as a concept in analyzing the ability of military organizations to perform certain tasks. In fact, a military's culture may determine its preferred way of fighting and dealing with other challenges, like incorporating new technologies, more than its doctrine or organizational structure. This book examines military culture from a theoretical and a practical point of view. It focuses on the Canadian and American military cultures, and it provides the first detailed examination of the culture of the Canadian Forces. It also compares their culture to that of the US armed forces. The book concludes that while the culture of the Canadian Forces has been "Americanized" to a certain extent, the culture of the US armed forces, due to changes in their personnel and roles, has experienced a certain degree of "Canadianization" at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries.

Always at War

Always at War PDF Author: Melvin G. Deaile
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1682472493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Always at War is the story of Strategic Air Command (SAC) during the early decades of the Cold War. More than a simple history, it describes how an organization dominated by experienced World War II airmen developed a unique culture that thrives to this day. Strategic Air Command was created because of the Air Force’s internal beliefs, but the organization evolved as it responded to the external environment created by the Cold War. In the aftermath of World War II and the creation of an independent air service, the Air Force formed SAC because of a belief in the military potential of strategic bombing centralized under one commander. As the Cold War intensified, so did SAC’s mission. In order to prepare SAC’s “warriors” to daily fight an enemy they did not see, as well as to handle the world’s most dangerous arsenal, the command, led by General Curtis LeMay, emphasized security, personal responsibility, and competition among the command. Its resources, political influence, and manning grew as did its “culture” until reaching its peak during the Cuban Missile Crisis. SAC became synonymous with the Cold War and its culture forever changed the Air Force as well as those who served.

Leading Change in Military Organizations

Leading Change in Military Organizations PDF Author: Thomas Galvin
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781727835298
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
Senior leaders are told in doctrine that they must lead and manage change. But apart from some popular models for the process of change, there are few how-to guides for leading change in the unique context of military organizations. Moreover, popular change management texts focus on initiating change, and less about inheriting and sustaining change efforts already happening in the unit. This how-to guide draws from a wide range of organizational literature to provide a comprehensive set of questions and guidelines that senior leaders should answer as they navigate change efforts and work to improve their organizations.

The Yin-Yang Military

The Yin-Yang Military PDF Author: Jacqueline Heeren-Bogers
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030524337
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This book examines change processes and the challenge of ambidexterity in military organizations. It discusses how military organizations can better adapt to the complex, and at times chaotic, environments they operate in by developing organizational ambidexterity. The authors identify various multiple tasks and functions of military organizations that require multi-dimensional and often contradictory operational, technological, cultural, and social skills. In analogy to the often-opposed functions performed by the right and left hand of the body, modern military organizations are no longer one-dimensional fighting machines, but characterized by a duality of tasks, such as fighting and peacekeeping which often make part and parcel of one and the same mission. The military is both a “hot” and a “cold” organization (a crisis management organization and a bureaucracy). As such, the book argues that these dualities are not necessarily opposed but can serve as complementary forces, like the yin and yang, to better the overall performance of these organizations. As a consequence, ambidextrous organizations excel at complex tasking and are adaptable to new challenges. Divided into four parts: 1) structures and networks; 2) cultural issues; 3) tasks and roles; 4) nations and allies, it appeals to scholars of military studies and organization studies as well as professionals working for governmental or military organizations.