ABSTRACT
Why study military organizations? The military is not just another organization, at least not all of it, all of the time. It is an organization with two faces. One deals with ‘cold’ peacetime and routine conditions, hence, resembling ‘conventional’ organizations. The other operates in ‘hot’ conditions, during crisis and peace operations or outright war. In the latter circumstances the military have the authority on behalf of the state to use violence and compel people to do things they would probably not do without the military’s actions and instructions. Only the police and comparable state institutions come somewhat close in this regard. This authority makes the military and other ‘uniformed organizations’ (Soeters 2000) exceptional. But even during peacetime conditions, the military is not just like any other organization. Even though conscription has been abolished in many nations and the military may be seen as an ordinary employer in many aspects (Moskos and Wood 1988), the working, training and living conditions are different. That was – and is – true in the armed forces consisting of citizen-soldiers (‘conscripts’), and it still applies to today’s professional armies consisting of volunteers. Three characteristics stand out (Lang 1965). First, there is the communal life. In the armed forces, military life and personal life tend to overlap, transforming the job into a part of everyday life. Military personnel, and in a number of countries also their families, live during large parts of their working lives in military housing facilities – barracks, gated communities – that are separated from ordinary life. This separation is driven by political, legal, and operational aspects of military organizations. Second, military life is steeped in hierarchy, which is a consequence of military organizations being bureaucracies ‘par excellence’. They are pyramids with a clear ‘coercive’ power coming from the top that is accepted by all and made visible on the uniforms. That is because military organizations’ effectiveness to a large degree depends on unity of thought and action. Third, military organizations stress discipline (i.e. compliance with the rules, the acceptance of authority and orders, and overt punishment in cases of disobedience). True, these characteristics vary among nations. The armed forces in the United States of America (US) are different from those in Turkey, Brazil, the United Kingdom (UK) or the Netherlands, and of course the armed forces of
these countries differ among themselves as well. And true, these primal characteristics of the military tend to become less conspicuous in our modern times. There are clear tendencies that modern military organizations value a more private – so to speak occupational – life for their personnel, become less coercive and more enabling in their bureaucratic approach (Adler and Borys 1996), and tend to encourage discipline based on self-steering instead of mere instructions and commands (Soeters 2000). In essence though, the military remain the military, no matter which developments take place. That is why we have devoted this volume to studying military organizations as a species of its own (see also Ydén 2005). That is important for the military itself, but probably also for conventional organizations. Throughout history, military organizations have been a role model, setting the example in the development of management and organization theory. That is understandable, because military organizations were the most sizable and advanced types of organizations, until the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. More than 2,500 years ago, the Chinese general Sun-Tzu authored a small book on how to win wars by using proper strategies and tactics (Sun-Tzu 1971). This little book has become a best-selling management book today, particularly popular in the field of strategic management. German sociologist and ‘inventor’ of the bureaucracy concept, Max Weber, has influenced managerial theories on strategy and structure, basing his ideas on historical processes in the Roman Empire and its armed forces. Frederick Taylor’s work on scientific management has been supported by generals and admirals of the US military since the days his work became known (de Waard and Soeters 2007; Resteigne and Soeters 2009). And finally, military organizations – at least large parts of them – are so-called high reliability organizations (HRO). Safety and the prevention of disaster and accidents are predominant elements of the organizational routines and culture in such organizations (Roberts et al. 1994; Weick and Sutcliffe 2001). Studying the typical characteristics of these organizations may lead to recommendations that are useful for many organizations, for instance financial institutions facing the consequences of the ‘credit crunch’. The same applies to our understanding of leadership in extreme circumstances, for which the military often provide concrete examples (Kolditz and Brazil 2005). Still, management and organization theory has developed into a flourishing academic discipline that very much focuses on civilian life (e.g. Clegg et al. 1996). Scholars pay attention to insurance firms and banks, textile and automotive industries, schools and universities, oil drill production plants, advertising agencies, information and communication technology services, airliners, film sets, theaters, orchestras and organizations in the field of public administration, but hardly to organizations in exceptional circumstances (Mintzberg 2001), let alone military organizations. We want to fill this void. The aim is twofold: to apply current civilian management and organization theory to military organizations in order to get a better understanding of what is going on in that particular part of organizational life (cf. Isenberg 1985). The other way around, we hope
our book will contribute to establishing notes and insights that may be useful to other, conventional organizations too. But, first, let’s pursue a bit further with what specifically constitutes the soul, the very essence of today’s military organizations. In this we will not shy away from the less favorable aspects.
