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Is the Organizational Culture of the U.S. Army Congruent with the Professional Development of Its Senior Level Officer Corps?

Authored by Dr. James G. Pierce.

September 2010

170 Pages

Brief Synopsis

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 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.

Dr. Pierce recommends that the leaders of the Army profession initiate an organizational culture change effort. Specifically, he recommends changes to the more informal aspects of the professional development program, such as the less than lifelong commitment to the Army profession, the “up or out” personnel policy, and the officer evaluation system which may be creating an underlying assumption that failure will not be tolerated regardless of the circumstances. Those conditions all are representative of “theories-in-use” that are incongruent with the concept of professionalism. As a result of the current culture, senior leaders may be exercising an excessive degree of structured supervision which reinforces the culture of stability and control despite, the formal education system which attempts to teach the opposite. Therefore, it is not surprising that junior professionals learn to distrust their senior leaders and to then subsequently perpetuate the cycle of over-control, or depart the profession altogether.

Summary

Why is organizational culture is important? The theory of organizational culture maintains that individual behavior within an organization is not solely controlled by the formal regulations and structures of authority as supported by structural theorists. Instead, the theory postulates that cultural norms, values, beliefs, and assumptions provide unconscious guidance and direction, and consequently, the subsequent behavior of organizational members. Accordingly, Martin et al. (1997), emphasize that studies of organizational culture share a common objective, which is “to uncover and interpret aspects of organizational life so that we can better understand the perceptions, beliefs, and actions of organizational members” (p. 3). If you want to be able to comprehend the current behavior of an organization as well as to reasonably anticipate its future actions, then you must be able to understand the deep basic underlying assumptions that comprise the abstract concept of organizational culture (Schein, 1999). A strong appreciation of an organization’s culture can help explain why organizational members sometimes exhibit “mysterious, silly, or irrational” behavior (Schein, 1985, p. 21).

Organizational culture can be found at every level of an organization, and since organizational members are multicultural entities understanding an organization’s culture is significant “because the beliefs, values, and behavior of individuals are often understood only in the context of people’s cultural identities” (Schein, 1999, p. 14). Consequently, the long-term strategic decisions made by the senior leaders of an organization are influenced by their multicultural background, but especially by the organization in which they have spent the bulk of their lives, such as members of professional organizations like doctors, lawyers, and military officers.

Professional organizations exist in a competitive environment where their social jurisdiction and legitimacy can only be supported or perpetuated as long as they maintain their expertise over an area of abstract knowledge that society perceives as important (Freidson, 1970, 1986; Abbott, 1988; Burk, 2002; Snider et al., 2009; Moten, 2010). Since organizational culture is hypothesized to have a considerable impact on organizational behavior and because of the relative scarcity of literature discussing the impact that organizational culture may have on the development of professional leaders, this study attempts to examine the congruence1 between organizational culture and the professional leadership and managerial skills of professional leaders. Specifically, this study examines the U.S. Army culture and its senior leaders.

This research strongly suggests that there is a lack of congruence between the U.S. Army professional culture and the professional development programs of the Army’s senior level leaders. This conclusion is based on empirical data that indicate that the future leaders of the Army profession believe that they operate on a day-to-day basis in a profession 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. Emphasizing this lack of cultural congruence, the respondents of this study also indicated that the Army’s professional culture should be one that that is characterized by flexibility, discretion, participation, human resource development, innovation, creativity, risk-taking, and a long-term commitment to professional growth, and the acquisition of new professional knowledge and skills,2 which is a culture that is more aligned with the Army’s strategic external environment.

One of the principal reasons for the popular interest in the study of organizational culture is to determine the linkage between it and organizational performance (Berrio, 2003). This study has reviewed a previously assumed but unverified connection between organizational culture and professional development. It has uncovered a lack of congruence between the dominant type of organizational culture of the U.S. Army and the professional managerial/leadership skills of its senior level leaders. This observed lack of congruence may be inhibiting performance and unconsciously perpetuating a cycle of caution and an over-reliance on stability and control. The data outlined in this study is illustrative of an organization that emphasizes stability, control, formalized structures, and a results oriented—get the job done—culture that attempts to comprehend the ambiguity of the future through an unconscious reliance upon the successful solutions employed in the past, a process also known as the “irony of success” (Paparone and Reed, 2008).

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