Organizational Culture: Applying a Hybrid Model to the U.S. Army
Abstract
Explanations for the success of militaries both in war and peace have traditionally focused on key factors such as technology, leadership, personnel, training, or a combination of the above. A more recent addition to the list of possible variables contributing to the effectiveness of military organizations is the concept of culture. As expected, most applications of the concept of culture in a military context do so with the term "military culture." While military culture is often used effectively as an overarching label for the military's personality, way of thinking, or values, there is little literature that defines the term "military culture," categorizes or delineates the values that military culture claims to capture, or provides techniques to change military culture. Turning to the literature of organizational behavior, "organizational culture" appears to be a context-free version of the context-specific military culture. The advantage of using the construct of organizational culture, however, is that there is a rich literature providing models for assessing, diagnosing, and aligning the organizational culture to environmental demands. Organizational culture refers to "the taken-for-granted values, underlying assumptions, expectations, collective memories, and definitions present in an organization." These values and assumptions are learned as people in the organization deal successfully with problems of external adaptation and internal integration (i.e., how the organization responds to the environment and organizes internally to accomplish its goals). Despite the extensive literature on organizational culture, however, most studies applying organizational culture to military situations fall short in fully exploiting the implications of the organizational culture concept. This paper will use the best aspects of several theories to analyze U.S. Army culture and then align it to the demands characteristic of the future nature of war.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA596601
Entities
People
- Charles D. Allen
- Leonard Wong
- Stephen J. Gerras
Organizations
- United States Army War College