ABSTRACT
Introduction A central organizational challenge that most contemporary Western armed forces face is to simultaneously pursue strategic and operational flexibility (de Waard and Kramer 2008). First, Western armed forces are confronted with a changeable strategic security context, asking for organizational competences that support the generation and mobilization of different operational alternatives in expeditionary operations (strategic flexibility). Second, this demand for operational customization needs to be combined with an effective military performance during each individual mission, over and over again (operational flexibility). What makes the combination of both types of flexibility particularly complex is that most missions have a turbulent character. Deployment usually takes place in conditions in which military units need to react to changing local circumstances to keep or regain the initiative; always have to cope with intelligent actors actively trying to undermine their operations; continuously have to realize a high speed of reaction to stay ahead of their opponents; and have to bear in mind that mistakes could ultimately have far-reaching consequences (Kramer 2007). Sinno (2008) makes clear that in these complex conditions characteristics of organizational structure significantly contribute an organization’s success. The necessity to combine both strategic and operational flexibility in turbulent conditions can lead to a dilemma of flexibility (de Waard and Kramer 2008). Strategic flexibility demands for the organizational ability to assemble and reassemble different configurations of organizational parts into new expeditionary units. Operational flexibility demands for the ability to deploy effective taskforces that are able to fluently adapt, and remain adaptable, to local conditions as a well-oiled machine. In other words, the strategic environment demands that one is able to change configurations, while the operational environment demands that one can deploy stable and well-oiled expeditionary organizations. The philosophy of modular organization design has been specifically developed to challenge this dilemma (i.e. to develop the ability to quickly assemble and reassemble effective organizational configurations). Not incidentally, many Western countries have looked at the philosophy of modular design as a design strategy for crisis response deployment (Dandeker
2003). Many military organizations try to develop the capacity to generate different organizational configurations while at the same time they try to retain the advantages of relatively fixed structures and functionalities (Bonin and Telford 2004; Schilling and Paparone 2005). Consequently, Western armed forces have increasingly started to use their organizations as toolboxes consisting of different kinds of components, from which, depending on the task, units can be picked and grouped into tailor-made task forces for actual crisis response deployment. This chapter will discuss the basics of the modular design philosophy. Furthermore, we will reflect on the degree to which modular design principles are used by contemporary military organizations. We want to end with a reflection on the value of modular design for contemporary military organizations.
