Management and Military Studies

Classical and Current Foundations

Joseph Soeters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429534195
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This book connects findings and insights authored by famous scholars in management and organization studies with challenges the military is facing today.

One assumes that management and organization studies is only about the rational, predictable, and manageable, and that military action is predominately irrational, unpredictable, and unmanageable; both assumptions are wrong. This book argues that the discipline of management and organization studies is highly relevant for the military in both peace- and wartime conditions, and for any situation in between. In all conditions, the giant and complex military organization needs to be structured, processed, administrated, led, and accounted for. Each chapter presented in this volume focuses on the contributions of founding thinkers in management and organization studies, with their work translated and applied to the military setting. These scholars are drawn from a variety of backgrounds, including organizational sociology, economics, political science, psychology, and engineering. Although the work of only a few explicitly refers to the military, the contributions of all these scholars are relevant in order to come to grips with security and military affairs. Together with many other academics' work, the contributions of these 18 scholars constitute the core of the field of management and organization studies.

This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, management studies, and organization studies.

1

Why management and military studies?

Organizations, and managers steering them, aim at “getting things done”. As such, the military is just like any other organization. However, military organizations can be deemed unique because of a number of specific features that in combination make them distinct – at least gradually – from organizations in general. Because of this combination of features military organizations can be seen as phenomena sui generis. These features are:

• The impact of politics, society, and institutions
• The permanency of its existence, and the lack of specific goals
• Its “multi”-character (multitasking, multiservice, multinational, multilevel, multi-partnering)
• Its bureaucratic character
• Violence as core business.

Except for the last characteristic, each of these features occurs in companies or public sector organizations too. However, much more than many other organizations, the military is subject to political decision-making. The military cannot and will not act unless ordered by politicians, be they chosen in democratic elections or in other administrative constellations. In Western democracies, the funding of the military’s resources, as well as the beginning and ending of their operations, are the full responsibility of politicians.

Furthermore, the military is here to last. It is nothing more than utopian thinking that any time soon the military will no longer be deemed necessary. At the same time, the goals and the tasks the military set out to do are not always fully clear, particularly in times when there are no manifest conflicts. The preparation of military action is not as well defined and visible as the action itself. Yet, even if the military is called to action, it is not always completely clear that this is really military work. If “the military becomes everything”, the clarity of the military’s goals can be debated (Brooks, 2016). Only rarely do military actions aim at obtaining victories or conquests these days, which makes military operations less straightforward than they used to be.

The omnipresence of military work shows that it has a multifocal character; the military is tasked to do multiple assignments, frequently at one and the same time. The military may be tasked to conduct peace operations, to provide foreign military assistance in peacetime and during disasters and crises, participate in cyber deterrence, engage in riot control, contribute to disarmament policies, conduct special operations, and – last but not least – to wage all-out wars. This list of activities is not even exhaustive. Additionally, the military – being national per se – has to work in close cooperation with other national armed forces as their own capabilities are oftentimes not vast or specialized enough or because there is a need for international legitimacy. The need for inter-organizational cooperation extends to the necessity of working together with partnering organizations from other, civilian, domains in the economy, such as IT companies, hospitals, or industrial firms.

Like almost all other organizations, armed forces are bureaucratic, i.e. based on laws and regulations, standard procedures, and rules in general. This bureaucratic character essentially is a worthy feature; it ensures the organization’s conduct is subject to rules and procedures that intend to spread appropriate, controllable and safe action and behaviour. This is good for military personnel themselves but also for people outside of the military who experience the consequences of military action.

Finally, and most importantly, the military’s core business is the use of violence, leading to destruction and lethal violence if deemed necessary. The use of large-scale violence is the ultimum remedium, a measure of last resort that politicians will resort to when threats to their (or other) countries’ safety and security become unmanageable in any other way. The military is the organization that will be put into action when such dangers and risks occur.

As said, it cannot be stated that other organizations do not know these features. Of course, politics play a large role in all organizations’ plans and actions because of legal obligations that stem from national and international policies. Bureaucracy characterizes the undertaking and acting of almost all organizations these days, and this feature has become only more striking due to the increasing digitization of processes and operations. Multinational and multi-partner operations are common in almost all larger profit organizations nowadays.

Nonetheless, as Soeters, van Fenema, and Beeres (2010) state, military organizations are characterized by the specific grouping of all the aforementioned features, in which the use of violence obviously stands out (see also Druckman, Singer, and von Cott, 1997). This specific combination of characteristics makes the military organization unique, as has also be indicated a long time ago by Lang in the first edition of the Handbook of Organizations (1965) or Ydén in a more recent publication (2005). It is even inevitable to make use of specific, but massively available literature, archives, and data if one wants to study military management properly (Van Riper, 1955).

From the military to management, and back

Historically, the military is one of the first examples of rational organizing (e.g. Segal and Wechsler-Segal, 1983). As such, it paved the path for other organizations to process the achievement of their goals and optimize the ways of getting things done.

The standardized division of labour in the military based on strict instructions and discipline, such as in the armies of the Persian and Roman empires or in the troops of Maurits of Orange in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, constituted the basis of the principles of scientific management that were formulated centuries later (Van Doorn, 1975). The Chinese general Sun Tzu’s small book about strategies and tactics in war has become widely popular among business professionals (Krause, 2005). Accounting techniques find their origin in grading practices that were developed in the early days of the West Point military academy (Hoskin and Macve, 1988). Engineering as an academic discipline usually started inside the military. All over the globe military academies were the first engineering schools. The landings in Normandy and the following supply chains had a large influence on the development of business logistics and the diffusion of this knowledge from the US to the rest of the Western world (Grey, 2017: 63). Metaphors for management such as “strategic positioning”, “blue ocean strategy”, “the manager as general”, and “defensible perimeters” derive from military history (Winsor, 1996; Ahlstrom, Lamond, and Ding, 2009). In many ways, the military developed knowledge and practices that were taken up by organizations that were founded later in other, civilian domains.

However, in the most recent epoch the roles seem to be reversed, as today the military seems to be following management in business more than business is following the military (e.g. De Waard and Soeters, 2007). Kern and Richter (2014), for instance, show that business practices such as Management by Objectives (MBO) and project management have been important in the administrative renewal of the German Bundeswehr. Others have pointed at the “normalization” of Europe’s defence organizations, as they increasingly undergo reforms that stem from New Public Management in the civilian sector (Norheim-Martinsen, 2016).

Certainly, the influence goes both ways as today’s military also demonstrates practices and competences that are illuminative for civilian organizations in high-risk situations; such practices and competences relate to ardent work behaviour, “in extremis” leadership, or ways to organize for disaster (e.g. Kolditz, 2007; Weeks, 2007). It is sometimes claimed that military CEOs provide something extra, compared to CEOs in general (Benmelech and Frydman, 2015). In December 2018, large advertisements at the Paris railway station Gare du Nord asserted that a retired army general could really explain what a boss is (De Villiers, 2018).

Yet, despite these claims the current book argues that the military can learn a lot from current management scholarship that is predominantly based on research and experiences in civilian business firms and public sector organizations.

BOX 1.1 FROM WARRIORS TO MANAGERS

In 1981 Michel Martin published a book on developments in the French armed forces since 1945. The title of his book was telling: Warriors to managers. His analysis covered a period, in which the warrior orientation of the French military shifted from leading young foot-soldiers in colonial “adventures”, such as in Vietnam and Algeria, to managing processes of technological upgrading, especially in the French Navy and Air Force. In particular, the introduction of nuclear power signified a modernization tendency that urged to bring professional and specialist approaches into the military. The emphasis in the French military institution gradually shifted from warriors to managers; as said, this occurred in the Navy and Air Force more than in the French Army that remained a pyramidal mass army for a relatively long period of time.

It should be acknowledged upfront that the history of management and organization studies as an academic discipline is not very old: only little over one century. Since then, the reversed influence – from business and public management to the military – has begun to evolve. One caveat applies, nonetheless. The military is not a business nor just any sort of public organization (Vego, 2010). Applying management and organization studies to the military without proper reflection about the military’s unique features has led to considerable failures over time. The current book also aims to discuss such failures in order to prevent them from happening again.

This book contends that knowledge in the domain of management and organization studies is relevant to the military in the built-up of the organization, the preparation and training stage as well as during the real operational actions. Management and organization studies are relevant at both the cold and the hot side of the armed forces, so to speak. As Brown (1953: 7) phrased it already a long time ago, “effectiveness of our armed forces in war depends upon the effectiveness of our armed forces in peace”. We already mentioned the logistics of operation Overlord. One other historical example – the Battle of the Bulge – will suffice to illustrate the point. The Nazis’ attempt to regain the port of Antwerp via a counter-offensive in the Belgian Ardennes in the winter of 1944/1945 failed, not because of a lack of fighting spirit or fire power on their side, but because of the inadequate resupply of people and material resources, in particular fuel and ammunition. Logistics – an essential part of organization studies – has often determined the final result of military engagements (e.g. Van Creveld, 2004). It will be shown throughout this book that the military in all its aspects and actions cannot do without the proper use of insights and findings from management and organization studies. This book’s central argument is that studying and applying managerial knowledge will improve military organizations’ performance.

Characteristics of the book

This book is a follow-up of a previous publication on Sociology and Military Studies, in which the work of 14 founding authors in sociology was connected with the challenges the armed forces face today (Soeters, 2018). Each chapter leaped from “there” (sociology) to “here” (military studies) and from “then” (date of publication of the main insights) to “now” (the current challenges). That is exactly what this new book intends to do.

This book aims to review insights from management and organization scholars who in majority have not devoted much time to military affairs, and translate and apply their thinking to military challenges. The selection of these scholars can be debated as other choices could have been made. Yet, even though there may be a certain arbitrariness in this selection, it can be argued that the mainstream of management and organization scholars is included. It has to be admitted that the number of male scholars outnumbers the number of female scholars. This is related to the relatively recent rise of female scholars in management and organization studies, and, in fact, in science in general.

The authors that will be discussed are predominantly from the Western hemisphere, in particular from the US, and to a lesser degree Europe. The origins of management as a science, an academic discipline and a practice can be found in the US, much more than in Europe (Shenhav, 2007: 5). Management theories and practices only relatively recently started to take off elsewhere on the planet. Besides, management theories and experiences that are only expressed in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Turkish, and Russian are not discussed here. Language – in particular the English language in addition to the French, German, and Dutch languages – has been a selection criterion for inclusion in this book. Clearly, this opens up the need for a similar book later, but then including management scholars from elsewhere on the globe.

The order in which the various scholars appear is loosely historical. This implies that the chapters in the book start with authors, who were born in the nineteenth century and have passed away, followed by more recent scholars, most of whom were still alive at the moment this book was written. The management thinkers and practitioners in this book testify that management and organization studies are a relatively young bran...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Why management and military studies?
• 2. Frederick Taylor: standardized work division, calculation and efficiency, criticism and new developments
• 3. Mary Parker Follett: dynamic administration, from the growing of power to constructive conflict
• 4. Chester Barnard: the human side of the (military) enterprise and leadership
• 5. James March: decision-making in organizations and the military, the “upper echelon” approach
• 6. Chris Argyris: organizational learning in the military
• 7. Henry Mintzberg: managing in exceptional and military circumstances, strategy development, organization’s structures and closing gaps
• 8. Oliver Williamson: externalizing activities through transaction costs economics, new public management, organizational hybridities
• 9. Michael Porter: strategic management and value creation in business and the military
• 10. Kenneth Merchant: management control, hard and soft controls, financial policies, quality management
• 11. Jeffrey Pfeffer: external control, unleashing the work force, the knowing-doing gap, effects- and evidence-based management
• 12. Karl Weick: making sense of safety and incidents, making sense in military operations
• 13. Steven Barley: the acceptance of technology, virtual work in the military, drones, cyber and big data
• 14. Geert Hofstede: international management, international military cooperation
• 15. Rosabeth Moss Kanter: diversity, organizational change and innovation in (military) organizations
• 16. Keith Provan: forms of network governance and network performance
• 17. Nils Brunsson: limits to organizational rationality, organizational hypocrisy, standardization
• 18. Barbara Czarniawska: narratives in management, security and the military
• 19. Martha Finnemore: international governmental organizations in the world of security and the military
• 20. Conclusions: general developments, military effectiveness, changes, restraint and understanding
• Index