Is The Organizational Culture Of The U S Army Congruent With The Professional Development Of Its Senior Level Officer Corps

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.