Profession of Arms Essay Example

Profession of Arms Essay Example Profession of Arms Essay Profession of Arms Essay a medical doctor doing surgery, a lawyer arguing a brief before the bar, or an Army commander synchronizing the various elements of combat power in a modern COIN environment. Since the members of the society served are utterly dependent on these professionals for their health, justice, and security, a deep moral obligation rests on the profession, and its professionals, to use their unique capabilities only in the best interests of that society, and not in their own interests. All professionals inherently are servants, morally bound to an ethic of non-exploitation via their expertise. Thus military professions are generally considered â€Å"social trustee† professions in that their life blood is the trust in which the society holds them to acquire the knowledge and expertise to do something that the society cannot do for itself, but yet without which the society cannot survive; and to use that expertise according to the values held by the client. The fields of medicine, theology, law, and more recently the military have traditionally been organized in western societies as a social trustee form of profession. Effectiveness, not efficiency, is the key to the work of professionals- the sick want a cure, the sinner wants absolution, the accused want exoneration, and the defenseless seek security. To be sure, all clients in any professional field want efficient service, but effectiveness- truly efficacious results from the profession’s expert practice- is their overriding goal. Thus, professions are self-forming, self-regulating, and self-initiating organizations for the provision of expert services to a client which the profession is ethically constrained not to exploit in its own self-interest. The servant ethic of professions is therefore characterized as cedat emptor, â€Å"let the taker believe in us. † The Army’s professional ethic is built on trust with the American people, as well as with civilian leaders and junior professionals within the ranks. In contrast, other government occupations generally do not work with expert knowledge; they are designed to do socially necessary, repetitive tasks with efficiency (e. g. , a state Department of Motor Vehicles). Such bureaucracies ely on structure and process, formalization and differentiation of roles and tasks, centralized management, and standard operating procedures. Being efficient producers of non-expert work, they survive over the long term by competing successfully among other bureaucracies for necessary resources. They focus little on developing their personnel, as most can be easily replaced by acquiring and training new personnel. It follows from these descriptions that the means of motivation and so cial control within a profession- its Ethic- is also quite distinct from those of a business or a government occupation. The client (i. e. , the American people in the case of the Army) trusts the profession to produce the expert work when and where needed. And because of the client’s trust in the profession’s expert knowledge and practice, the American people are willing to grant significant autonomy to professions to create their own expert knowledge and to police the application of that knowledge by individual professionals. An exemplary Ethic is thus a necessity for the Profession of Arms to retain such trust from the American people. Further, the profession must actively self-police the use of its Ethic, precluding to the extent possible any incidents that serve to undermine America’s trust in the effectiveness of their Army or its Ethic, e. g. , the strategic failure at Abu Ghraib, the failures at Walter Reed Medical Center, the terrorist massacre at Ft. Hood, and the more recent failures at Arlington Cemetery). Further, while businesses and government occupations traditionally motivate their workers by reliance on extrinsic factors such as salary, benefits, promotions, etc. professions in contrast use means of social control that are more inspirational, largely intrinsic factors such as the life-long pursuit of truly expert knowledge, the privilege and honor of service, the satisfaction of nurturing and protecting life and enabling society to flourish, and the social status of membership in an ancient, honorable, and revered occupational group that self-polices it membership. Thus true Army professionals are always more personally motivated by the intrinsic aspects of their service, rather than by its extrinsic factors. We can fairly summarize this discussion by noting that an organizational ontinuum exists along which every Army command and unit finds itself every day. While this will be explained in more detail in a subsequent discussion on culture, here we simply restate the facts: the Army has a dual character, it is both a military profession and a governmental occupation and these two types of organizations have different cultures and behaviors, following different ethics. The end points of this continuum of organizational culture are described in the chart below; and it clearly is a continuum, with every Army organization reflecting some aspects of each. Based on their assigned mission, there may be an optimum balance between professional and occupational behavior that differs across Army organization types. A supply depot, for example, and a brigade combat team may rightly differ in character based on their profession/occupation mix. COMPARISONPROFESSIONGOVERNMENT OCCUPATION KnowledgeExpert, abstract and practical; requires life-long learning and certificationNon-expert; quickly learned on the job largely through training vs. ducation/development PracticeKnowledge applied with discretion to new situations by individual professionalsRepetitive situations, work done by following SOPs, administrative rules, and procedures Key to SuccessFocus on effectiveness of applied practicesFocus on efficiency of resources used Culture/EthicGranted autonomy to practice within a self-policing ethicClosely supervised; imposed governmental ethic InvestmentsPriority investment in developing individual professionalsPriority investment in hardware/softwa re, routines, and systems GrowthIndividuals develop coherent rofessional worldviewA worldview is unnecessary to the work MotivationIntrinsic, altruistic toward client; work is a callingExtrinsic: work is a job for personal gain LeadershipDevelops leaders who inspire and transform effective professionals Trains managers who focus on efficient processes and systems Table 1-1. A Continuum: Profession to Government Occupation. The goal of all Army leaders, obviously, is to create everywhere within the Army the culture of a Profession of Arms while making subservient the cultural influences of necessary supporting occupational organizations. One way to understand how professions conform their supporting organizations is the concept of a â€Å"professional† bureaucracy as opposed to a â€Å"machine† bureaucracy, which we will introduce and explain in Section 3. 3. In concluding this section, we must always remember that the Army is not a profession just because it says it is. In fact, the Army does not get to decide if it is a profession. That prerogative belongs to our client, the American people, who will do so each day depending on how our Army performs and how trustworthy they perceive it to be. In other words, status as a profession must be earned every day in the trust relationship the Army maintains with the society it serves and defends. Section 2. 3 The Army’s Expertise and Jurisdictions At a more detailed level of analysis, all modern professions display at least three common traits: they create and maintain their own expert knowledge (expertise); they apply that expertise to a situation or arena wherein their client wants it applied (a jurisdiction); and after a period of time, depending on their effectiveness, they will have established a relationship of trust with the client (legitimacy). The Army’s premier expertise is the art and science of fulfilling its military purposes stated earlier from Title 10. They need not be restated here, other than to note the amazing breadth of expertise that is needed to be militarily effective under the new concept of Operational Adaptability across the full spectrum of operations. To create and maintain that broad expertise, the Army must continually develop its own professionals with constantly renewed expert knowledge that can be conceptually grouped into our fields: MILITARY-TECHNICAL FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE that tells the Army how to conduct offense, defense, and stability or civil support operations on land at each of strategic, operational, and tactical levels; MORAL-ETHICAL FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE that tells the Army how to fight those wars morally, as the American people expect and as domestic and international laws require; POLITICAL-CULTURAL FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE that tells the Army how to operate effectively in our own and othe r cultures across organizational and national boundaries, including the vital fields of civil-military relations and media-military relations; and, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT FIELD OF KNOWLEDGE that tells the Army how to socialize, train, educate and develop civilians to become Soldiers and then to develop those Soldiers to be leaders within and future stewards of the profession. Clearly it is not the case that every Army Professional is to be equally expert in all fields of knowledge. Rather, the development of individual professionals is a process of life-long learning which combines training, education, and operational experience with emphasis among the fields of expert knowledge, shifting as one progresses through a career or, for some, progresses from generalist to specialist. But, as we will see later, the changing way in which the Army now pursues irregular warfare has significantly changed the relative importance of the fields of knowledge, shifting for example the need for expertise in political and cultural knowledge to much earlier in the career of combat arms leaders. The external jurisdictions within which the Army operates, most recently renegotiated within the Joint arena in 2006 with civilian leaders and the other services, are currently four. The Army is to be prepared to apply its expertise to: major combat operations, strategic deterrence, stability operations, and homeland security. More important to the dialogue advanced by this White Paper, however, are the two internal jurisdictions that exist within all professions. They are: 1) the development and maintenance of their expert knowledge; and 2) the development of human practitioners to apply that knowledge with expertise and character gained from years of study and practice. In more clear Army language these two internal jurisdictions are known as military doctrine and leader (and Soldier) development. It hould be clear from just these few insights into the nature of professions that the most critical field of knowledge for the Army is the last, developing Soldiers and leaders who can p ractice expertly and morally the military knowledge that the Army creates. Ultimately, the Army can have the most advanced technology possible, but without capable and adaptive Soldiers to use it, all is in vain. So, the two points to be made here are: every professional Soldier has to have a modicum level of expert knowledge in all four fields to be effective; and, a robust leader development system is simply the sine qua non for a professional Army. Establishing priorities for adequate investments in Soldier and leader development remains, however, one of the most vexing challenges facing the Army as a Profession of Arms and its strategic leaders. Section 2. 4 The Practice of the Army Professional The specific practice of the Army professional, irrespective of rank or position, is the â€Å"repetitive exercise of discretionary judgment† to bring about effective results to the situation under his or her purview, and done in ways consistent with the professional ethic–whether a combat patrol or a major budget decision. The essence of this definition is that true professionals control their own work, most often no one tells the professional what to do or how to do it; their actions are discretionary. Think of a leader on patrol in Iraq or Afghanistan, or a senior leader in the Pentagon. How many times in the course of a day will they make a highly discretionary judgment, one not announced by a formula or computer, rather drawn primarily from their years of accumulated knowledge and experience? That is the practice of the military professional’s art, many times a day, followed up by actions to implement their decisions. Second, most all of these repetitive discretionary judgments have a high degree of moral content, where decisions will directly and rather immediately impact on the life of another human being, whether subordinate Soldier and family, the enemy, or an innocent on the battlefield. Such judgments must therefore be rendered by Army professionals of well developed moral character and with the ability to reason in moral frameworks. Such was the case in the battle of Wanat, July 2008 in Afghanistan, where leaders at multiple levels of command from infantry company upward each made discretionary judgments as to how best to use available resources to establish a new combat outpost in the Korengal Valley. Ultimately the final review of this battle established that these leaders, despite the loss of seven Army Soldiers KIA and twenty-seven WIA while successfully repelling an enemy attempt to overrun the outpost, each had made judgments that were reasonable and prudent based on what they knew at the time. While the loss of Army Soldiers forever remains a tragedy, the senior reviewer’s conclusion as to what caused them is instructive for our understanding of the Profession of Arms and the moral discretion that Army leaders must exercise: It is critical that we not mechanically equate U. S. casualties with professional error or misconduct. In war battle is the mechanism by which we defeat the enemy. In battle, casualties are inevitable. Regrettably they are often the price of victory. Thus in a stark and poignant example we see that one critical aspect of professions is the significant autonomy that they are granted to do their work. Unlike many businesses and most government occupations, the Army as a profession is not highly regulated in its internal jurisdictions by the society it serves. No one tells the Army what to write in its doctrinal manuals (its expert knowledge), Army leaders have wide discretion in setting policies to educate and train its soldiers with that knowledge, and commanders in the field execute their operations with equally wide discretionary authority. The nature of war establishes this tenet of the Profession of Arms, and the more so now under the necessity to pursue decentralized counter-insurgency campaigns. As a result of the Army’s operational successes and transparent attempts as a profession to learn from its failures, the Army is currently highly trusted as compared to other public institutions. But there have been times in the past when the Army lost autonomy and some legitimacy with the American people when it failed to abide by and to self-police an Ethic approved by the client (e. g. , Aberdeen training scandal in the 1980s, Abu Ghraib more recently). In each case, for a time the Army became somewhat externally regulated, and lost some of the autonomy necessary to maintain its status as a profession. In summary, for professions the coin of the realm is trust, â€Å"may the client believe in us. † We will return to this critical discussion of trust in the last section of this White Paper. Section 2. 5 The Unique Role of Strategic Leaders of a Military Profession As introduced earlier, the continuous challenge for the strategic leaders of the Army, at least since the latter decades of the 19th century when the Army was professionalized, has been to keep its two internal natures of profession and government occupation organized as a hierarchical bureaucracy in proper balance, with profession predominant in all areas except those very few that are intrinsic to any large organization, such as the repetitive tasks of administration and some logistics. In today’s volunteer Army, and particularly within the commissioned and noncommissioned ranks, citizens volunteer with the intention and expectation of becoming professionals and being able to do their work in the physical environment and organizational culture of a profession–one that facilitates their individual development and then grants them significant autonomy to organize and execute their own work. The leadership challenge lies in the fact that Army leaders below the ranks of sergeant major, colonel, and general officer have insufficient authority and responsibility to deflect the institution away from any bureaucratic tendencies and to focus keenly on authentic professional practice. One prime example is the control such uniformed strategic leaders have over the personnel development, evaluation and certification, and assignment and utilization processes that will either motivate or de-motivate aspiring professionals and leaders as they progress through a career of service. Many of these systems may now be out of balance after nine years of continuous war, making the current challenge for Army strategic leaders palpable. At times it has been difficult for the Army’s strategic leaders to ensure that the profession had a correct balance between its internal developmental jurisdictions and its external operating jurisdictions. In such cases it did not have the right expert knowledge embedded in its professionals to practice when and where the client deemed appropriate. For example, after the fall of Baghdad in March of 2003, it became apparent that the Army fell somewhat short in maintaining this balance, including its obligations to junior members of the profession who were asked to fight a counterinsurgency campaign without the expert knowledge and the materiel support requisite to effectively doing so. To the credit of the heroic and highly adaptive leaders within the Army, and an example of the Army’s ability to recreate its own expertise, that situation was rectified in less than three years and new doctrine and practices were developed to affect the counter-insurgency campaigns from 2006 to today. As mentioned in the foreword, however, our task now as we transition form a decade of counterinsurgency operations is to restore balance in the Army capabilities along the full spectrum of anticipated operations. As this example demonstrates, the role of strategic leaders is more than critical as the Army simply cannot be a Profession of Arms unless they lead it to be one. Captains and Majors and the non-commissioned officer corps can make their own part of the Army more professional, but they do not control the levers of the major developmental systems within the Army. Further, the American people also care about this necessary balance. They want an expert, effective Army for the security of the Nation, one in which their sons and daughters can develop and mature through their service. They want the Army to be a self-policing, professional meritocracy wherein Soldiers and leaders are advanced solely as earned by their individual merits of competence and character. This leads us into discussions of Army culture and, at its core, the Army Ethic. These topics are the focus of the next sections of this paper. Section 3: Army Culture, and Influences on the Profession This section explains the nature and importance of US Army organizational culture, in terms of its influence on professional behavior. It describes the distinctive culture of the Army and explains why it takes this form. It shows how the interaction and â€Å"creative tension† between different dimensions of culture generally leads to adaptive, reliable and resilient behavioral styles and forms of organization. The section closes with a brief discussion of contemporary tensions within the culture that demand resolution. Section 3. 1 The Concept of Organizational Culture Organizational culture is a system of shared meaning held by organizational members†. Institutions – organizations that endure – have distinct and stable cultures that shape their behavior, even though they comprise many, ever-changing individuals. An organization’s culture generally reflects what it found (and perhaps still finds) to be functional in times of strong need. Military organizations are state instruments for the exercise of legitimised violence, and Soldiers are trained in the use of arms and bear arms as part of their routine duties. Because they have this distinct purpose, military organizations tend to develop deeply-held assumptions about what is appropriate and what is not. Culture goes beyond style into the spirit and soul of the body corporate. As with personality and character, culture is usually hard to describe, especially to people whose association with the organization is superficial. And it is even harder to measure. It is, in short, the â€Å"glue† that makes the Army, and its units and commands distinctive sources of identity and experience; it is essentially â€Å"how we do things around here. † Closely associated with an organization’s culture is its climate. In contrast to culture, which is more deeply embedded, organizational climate refers to Soldiers’ feelings and attitudes as they interact within the culture. A â€Å"zero defect† culture, for example, can create a climate where Soldiers feel they are not trusted and create attitudes where transparency and open dialog are not encouraged. Climate is often driven by tangible spects of the culture that reflect the organization’s value system, such as rewards and punishments, communications flow, operations tempo, and qua lity of leadership, which determine individual and team perceptions about the quality of the organization and their role within it. It is essentially â€Å"how we feel about this organization. † Unlike the more deeply embedded culture, climate is often considered to be alterable in the near term (e. g. , replace a toxic leader). Army culture has adapted over the 235 years of its history so, while it has many features in common with other western armies, it derives from experience in and of the American way of war. The Army has developed certain patterned ways of doing things according to its distinct jurisdiction and operational environment. What worked, especially in times of crisis, has become a set of rules – or rather, two sets of rules, one explicit and conscious, and the other implicit and unconscious – that are subsequently passed to new members. There are many ways, formal and informal, of passing on these â€Å"rules† to new members. The most obv ious is training, but organizational symbols, rituals, and social modelling of others’ behavior all play a part. Even though, with time, the assumptions on which these rules were/are based tend to drop out of people’s consciousness, yet their influence continues to be felt. Most Army people don’t ask, for example, why they are required to drill on parade grounds and to salute: they just accept both activities. But both drilling and saluting drive home powerful subliminal messages (as well as having functional rationale). Similarly, while the Seven Army Values that are one expression of the Army Ethic are articulated in artifacts such as value cards and posters, the values are felt at a more visceral level. The words express what is already in peoples hearts. Because of this they have quickly become accepted and unquestioned. In the same way, the Army’s belief in the importance of marksmanship, as reflected in marksmanship badges or, in the case of infantry, in the expert infantryman badge, reinforces assumptions that essentially go unchallenged: not just because they are marked by badges, but because marksmanship and infantry expertise are patently activities which the Army has consistently found to be highly functional over time. And although distinct sub-cultures also form in a variety of groups, such as the Army’s branches, e. g. , Infantry, Engineers, Artillery Armor, etc. , as each applies its unique expertise to its tasks with all converging in the operations of the Army, these sub-cultures usually share a general set of beliefs and assumptions about how things should be done. These are often manifested in icons, heroes, stories, and rituals that promote bonding among Soldiers. Stated again, culture is the glue that gives the Army and its units and commands distinctive sources of identity and codes of behavior by being the essential description and prescription of â€Å"how we do things around here†. While we would expect the perception of â€Å"what works† to change as circumstances change, the reaction to new circumstances is not always rational. A skill such as marksmanship is one of the eternal verities in the way that the Army does things, but the same is not necessarily true of all of its key functions. For example, the basic assumptions underlying the Cold War Army through to the mid-1990s resulted in a policy of equipping and preparing only to fight the â€Å"big war† in Europe. This was based on the assumptions such as national mobilization, host nation support, engagement with other coalition forces, the centrality of the Army division, and a belief in the power of technological superiority. So strong were these assumptions that they persisted even after being challenged in almost a decade of small, irregular conflicts in Somalia, Kosovo and Haiti in the 1990s and in the early years of post-9/11 engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, as combat operations were increasingly occurring â€Å"among the people†. If a basic assumption comes to be strongly held within an institution, members will find behavior based on any other premise difficult to contemplate, even in the face of obvious difficulties. This will be all the more likely if career advancement depends on conforming to prevailing career paradigms, and if â€Å"mavericks† who challenge such paradigms are sidelined or sanctioned. But competition between operating paradigms can also lead to constructive tensions that make the Army culture dynamic and the institution responsive. Without such competition, there would often be no progress. Moreover, we would not expect sweeping change as the result of the acceptance of the new paradigm. This is not so much because military institutions are inherently conservative, but because there are certain consistencies between different ways of war, such as the premium given to mission accomplishment, persistence in the face of adversity, caring for one’s own, etc, all of which result in a degree of continuity of practice. In cultural terms, an important overall result is a deeply embedded warrior code that demands that all those bearing arms be capable of using them responsibly. Thus, even in the face of a far-from-perfect operating paradigm, the Army will manage to perform credibly, if not always optimally. Ironically, it is its very ability to do this that can delay the crunch time of facing up to the need for cultural change. And the contemporary Army can no longer afford years of delay before it accepts operational realities that persistently challenge the prevailing paradigms. In terms of current and near-future contexts, there is a crucial need for Army leaders to lift their performance in terms of recognizing and reacting to compelling signals for cultural change and leading the reshaping of Army culture. Concern about â€Å"hybrid threats† – the diverse and dynamic combinations of regular and irregular forces, both conventional and unconventional, as well as criminal elements – dominate current thinking about future armed conflict. The proper question is not whether the Army culture (or that of the armed forces in general) will change, but rather how and how quickly Army leaders should manage such a change. In the contemporary era, understanding the way that institutional culture shapes professional behavior is an essential senior leader competence. Self-awareness at the institutional level is as important as is self-awareness at the personal level. What cannot be understood cannot be changed. Section 3. 2 – Levels of Army Culture To understand the Army’s culture also requires an understanding that there are three levels within the Army’s culture. At the surface is the level of artifacts, which includes all the tangible phenomena that one sees, hears, and feels when operating in an Army unit. Artifacts include the visible products of the group, such as the architecture of its physical environment; its language, its technology and equipment; its symbols and artistic creations; its style, as embodied in uniforms, manners of address, and emotional displays; the myths and stories told about the organization; its published list of values; its observable rituals and ceremonies; and so on. Chain of command pictures in a unit’s ready room, for example, are artifacts reminding all viewers of the hierarchy of authority and responsibility that exists within the Army. The second level of the Army’s culture includes espoused beliefs and values- what the Army says is important. Beliefs and values at this conscious level will predict much of the behavior and tangible material that can be observed at the artifact level. For example the Seven Army Values that makes up one representation of the core of the Army Ethic manifests at the artifact level in values cards and posters . Further, the Army’s beliefs in the importance of marksmanship as reflected in marksmanship badges, or infantry expertise as reflected in the expert infantryman’s badge. At this second level of culture, if leaders allow disconnects between word and deed, gaps can be created between espoused values, and values in use- when Soldiers or leaders do not â€Å"walk the talk† in line with espoused Army beliefs and values. This creates confusion across the ranks and leads to dysfunctional and demoralizing behavior. For example, if the Army espouses the importance of Soldier and leader education and professional development but does not invest in it adequately, then Soldiers vote with their feet, depriving the Army of years of accumulated experience and exacerbating recruiting demands. However, if the beliefs and values are reasonably congruent with the Army’s deeper underlying assumptions, then the articulation of those values into a philosophy of operating (â€Å"how we do thing around here†) can be a powerful source to help create cohesion, unity of effort, and identity. Finally at the third, deepest level of culture are basic underlying assumptions. When a solution to a problem confronting the organization works repeatedly, it comes to be taken for granted. What was once a hypothesis, supported only by a hunch or a value, gradually comes to be treated as reality over time. Assumptions such as â€Å"Soldiers should be physically and mentally fit† become so assumed they are rarely ever discussed – only how can we make them fitter is a point of discussion. As should now be clear, one purpose of this White Paper, as the Army is in transition adapting to the new underlying assumptions associated with Operational Adaptability, is to foster a review of Army culture to ensure it is adapted appropriately and consistently at all three levels- artifacts, values and beliefs, and the basic underlying assumptions. Thus the necessity exists to understand and to include Army culture in our discussion. Section 3. 3 Army Culture and its Functional Utility The Army is not an easy entity to read. That said, we can identify three major cultural dimensions, derived from underlying assumptions about the way that an army should organize itself and its performance that clearly apply to the US Army. First, the behavior of Soldiers at all levels is guided by a strong sense of Professionalism. It is characterized by an ethos of striving for excellence, both in respect to the relevant functional specialty (e. g. infantry, transport, communications, aviation, e tc. ) and on developing combined-arms war fighting competencies.. This sense of professionalism also derives from members’ identification of goals and ideals of their service, and their adherence to the ethic of â€Å"service before self†and â€Å"duty first†. Second, the institution has a strong sense of Community, or Corporateness, a cohesion that develops as a result of belonging to the â€Å"professional family† and shared mission, purpose, and sacrifice. This is manifested in a strong sense of tribalism and clannishness, such as the â€Å"band of brothers† ethos. Third, the Army has a strong tendency towards Hierarchy, based on the logic f explicit and implicit authority distinctions in professional and social relationships. Although these three core dimensions have evolved over time for sound functional reasons, we should not necessarily expect perfect alignment or consistency between them. In fact, the dimensions exist in a pattern of creati ve tension, the outcome of which is usually effective organizational behavior. For example, because of their role of exercising legitimized violence, military organizations are invariably hierarchical, disciplined, rule-driven and conservative; given the destructive resources at their disposal, it would be irresponsible of them to be otherwise. A hierarchical ‘chain of command’ style of management communication allows leaders to exert close control over tasking and resource allocation, and the discipline that exists within units and the adherence of subordinate commanders to rules and standard operating procedures, within defined limits of discretion, makes the organization as a whole reliable and predictable. In some government occupations, this would result in the organizational form known as Machine Bureaucracy in which personal discretion of staff is neither needed nor wanted, and behavior is guided by strict adherence to elaborate rules and regulations. But in the Army and its supporting organizations there exist countervailing forces that militate against such a tendency. Military organizations indeed tend to be at some level bureaucratic, but preferably in the much more constructive form known as Professional Bureaucracy. The orientation of a professional bureaucracy is standardization of effective outcomes in an unstructured and uncertain environment. Professional bureaucracies rely for control on the specialist and discretionary expertise of highly-educated professionals, and their exercise of discretion is not only important but is demanded. Equally, hierarchy in the professional bureaucracy not only leads to organization and control of work activities but, just as importantly, provides its members with moral and contextual frames of reference. Procedures and hierarchy are as much about how and why the individual’s job fits into the overall mission as they are about doing things â€Å"by the book†. The hierarchical structure thus serves as a road-map to enhance each member’s understanding of where their contribution relates to that of others. The Army’s strong culture of Community also serves to alleviate any tendency towards behavior that is guided by rule-bound bureaucracy, and unthinking or automatic obedience. To begin with, the Army’s sense of Community acts to broaden its members’ sense of local identity by â€Å"developing the ‘I’ into the ‘we’†. This is the well-spring for cooperation and 360-degree loyalty and service derived from professional networks of â€Å"organized reciprocity and solidarity† and the basis of â€Å"swift trust†. These networks and the values on which they are based implicitly encourage members at all levels to exert themselves for the benefit of those in other sub-units and units, and to put the institution’s interests ahead of their own. This sense of Community is at the root of a commitment to provide an internal service that, in the absence of a profit motive, might bring no tangible benefit to the provider. It encourages Soldiers to trust their commanders, helps Soldiers’ families to trust the system and to feel part of the wider service community even when Soldiers are away on deployment. And, as noted by military historian John Keegan, the Army’s strong sense of Community is a disincentive for self-serving behavior, since self-serving opportunism erodes a Soldier’s standing in the network and hence his/her access to the benefits of cooperative action from others. The common values and modes of thought and language that derive from a strong sense of Army Community also helps in quickly and efficiently communicating command intentions and a host of other forms of networked behavior. Similarly, the social networks that are developed over a professional career again assist professionals in different parts of the Army to connect and communicate with fellow professionals elsewhere in the organization. Military sociologist Morris Janowitz called this feature â€Å"greasing the skids†, by which he meant making â€Å"the formal system work by means of the informal network of personal trust which binds the armed forces into a social organization†. This, he said, â€Å"infuses a basic ingredient of vitality† into an often massive organization. We have seen that sophisticated management of a strong culture is a vital ingredient in combat power. Almost as importantly, however, such management also creates intrinsic incentives for continued service of mid-career professionals, at the career/life stage when family pressures are increasing and the gap between potential earnings in the corporate sector (after the end of this recession) and in the military continue to widen. In summary, the interaction between various complex dimensions of culture creates a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In this sense, a strong and sophisticated culture is a vital ingredient of combat power. Note that this is just as valid for the Generating Force as it is for the Operating Force. And the fulcrum is Professionalism, in the sense of both high performance standards and a strong sense of duty and service-before-self. That is to say: the stronger the Professional Ethic, the greater the leverage derived from the Army’s culture. Section 5 Conclusion Like other professions such as medicine and law, the military also requires that its actions are in service to and in accordance with the moral good they provide. For the Army, this is the defense of the rights to life and political autonomy of the people of the United States, and the viability of their government. Therefore, the Army must produce leaders that can turn their education and moral understanding into an organizational culture that supports the Army’s status and actions as a profession. The Nation grants jurisdiction and legitimacy to the Army as a profession because it trusts the Army to work with competence and character in the following jurisdictions: Major Combat Operations, Stability Operations, Strategic Deterrence, and Homeland Security. The Army’s enforcement, within its culture, of a professional Ethic that enables it to perform this duty with the moral values America endorses, protects and enhances our trust relationship with the American People. Let the dialogue begin: How will the Army best do this duty? James H. Toner, True Faith and Allegiance: The Burden Of Military Ethics (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995): 22-23. See Les Brownlee and Peter Schoomaker, â€Å"Serving a Nation at War,† Parameters 34 (Summer 2004): 4-23. See Eliot Friedson, Professionalism The Third Logic: On the Practice of Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). It is also the case that the Army internally has several â€Å"enterprises† that manage Army-level systems, e. g. , material acquisition, etc. , on a not-for-profit basis using techniques sometimes adapted from businesses. Such enterprises do have many Army professionals serving within them, but beyond that they tend to be bureaucratic in their structure and operations, operating on annual budget cycles and following highly centralized and standardized management processes and procedures. See, Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, Revised and Expanded ( NY: Free Press, 1994): 5. Huntington, Soldier and State, 16. For an excellent discussion of the negative impact of that issue on the Army Officer Corps, see Mark Lewis, â€Å"Army Transformation and the Junior Officer Exodus,† Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Fall 2004): 63-74. TRADOC/ARCIC Study of Army Culture, 2008. See T. O Jacobs and Michael G. Sanders, â€Å"Principles for Building the Profession: The SOF Experience,† Chapter 20 in Snider and Matthews (eds. ), The Future of the Army Profession, 2d Edition (NY: McGraw-Hill, 2005): 441-462. For major recent works on professions see, Andrew Abbott, The Theory of Professions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) and, Eliot Freidson, Professionalism Reborn: Theory, Prophecy and Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). David Segal and Karen DeAngelis, â€Å"Changing Conceptions of the Military Professions†, chapter 10 in Suzanne C. Nielsen and Don M. Snider (eds. , American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009): 194-212. For an explanation of the three main trust relationships of the Army as a profession of arms, see: Don M. Snider, Dissent and the Strategic Leadership of Military Professions (Carlisle, PA: U. S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2008). See James Burk, Expertise, Jurisdiction and Legitimacy, chapter 2 in Don M. Snider and Lloyd J. Matthews (eds. ), The Future of the Army Profession, 2d Edition: 39-60. See, Richard Lacquement, â€Å"Mapping Army Expert Knowledge and Clarifying Jurisdictions of Practice,† chapter 9 in The Future of the Army Profession, 2d Edition: 213-236. Joint Publication 3. 0 Operations (pub data) See Don M. Snider, â€Å"The Army as Profession,† chapter 1 in The Future of the Army Profession, 2d Edition: 1-38. This conclusion was reached in a research project on the Army as profession in 2002; it is doubtful that it is invalid after nine years of war in which the Army had to rely more on its human than its technological capabilities. See Don M. Snider and Gail Watkins, â€Å"Project Conclusions,† chapter 25 in: The Future of the Army Profession, 1st Edition): 537-547. This widely acknowledged conclusion is more often given lip service that action; the Army’s human development systems remain in the industrial age, almost totally inadequate to the present and future needs of the profession. See the monograph series: Toward a US Army Officer Corps Strategy for Success by Casey Wardynski, David S. Lyle and Michael J Colarusso (Carlisle, PA: U. S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, 2009-2010). See Don M. Snider, et. al, â€Å"The Multiple Identities of the Professional Army Officer,† chapter 6 in The Future of the Army Profession, 2d Edition: 143. This quotation is taken from a May 13, 2010 memorandum from General Charles Campbell to the Director of the Army Staff, LTC David Huntoon, subject, â€Å"Army Action on the Re-Investigation into the Combat Action at Wanat Village, Wygal District, Nuristan Province, Afghanistan on 13 July 2008, available at ( pub data). Cite poll data From the outset, the American military differed from other traditional professions in always being practiced in a bureaucratic setting, in being composed of people who in many cases did not have a lifelong commitment to their occupation, in having its autonomy constrained by respo nsibility to extra-professional (state) authority, and to explicitly being politically neutral. † Segal and DeAngelis, op. cit. See Leonard Wong and Don M. Snider, â€Å"Strategic Leadership of the Army Profession,† Chapter 28 in The Future of the Army Profession, 2d Edition: 601-624. A. L. Kroeber and C. Kluckhorn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions (NY, 1952); Edgar Schein, Sense and nonsense about culture and climate, in Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate, ed. Neal M. Ashkanasy, Celeste P. M. Wilderom and Mark F. Peterson (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000), xxiii-xxx.. Joseph L. Soeters, in Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate, ed. Neal M. Ashkanasy, Celeste P. M. Wilderom and Mark F. Peterson (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000), 465-483; and Benjamin Schneider, David Bowen, Mark Ehrhart and Karen Holcombe, The climate for service: evolution of a construct, in Ashkanasy, Wilderom Peterson, op cit, 21-36. It is not surprising that the construct of ‘culture’ is still so fuzzy, given its stage of development. The concept of ‘personality’ is still somewhat fragmented, with a number of major competing paradigms – and this is a field of study that is more than a century old. In contrast, ‘organisational culture’ has been seriously studied in an academic sense, for less than three decades. Snider, Don M. 1999. â€Å"An Uninformed Debate on Military Culture. † Orbis 43(1): 11-16. HQ, TRADOC. 2009. Seeking Balance: US Army Culture and Professionalism in the 21st Century. Carl Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Rand Publications, 1989) 86-91. Snider, Don M. 1999. An Uninformed Debate on Military Culture.? Orbis 43(1): 11-16. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 6. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1960). Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (London: Chatto Windus, 1998). Reference Capstone Doctrine. Nick Jans, with David Schmidtchen, The real C-cubed: Culture, careers and climate and how they affect military capability, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No 143: Strategic Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University: 2002. Henry Mintzberg, The Structuring of Organizations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1979); Henry Mintzberg, Managing government, governing management, Harvard Business Review, 74, 3 (1996) 75-83. The landmark study in this field, of regional economic performance in Italy, found over a 20-year period that social capital in ach region was a crucial factor in explaining differences in wealth creation, business innovation, entrepreneurship, and government performance. See Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). John Keegan , A History of Warfare (London, 1993), xv. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, op cit, xvi-xvii. Reference TRADOC Study HQ, TRADOC. 2009. Seeking Balance: US Army Culture and Professionalism in the 21st Century. This list is, of course, not comprehensive. There are multiple sources of basic assumptions that inform culture and it is not possible to consider them all here. Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 6. For the purposes of this paper, I will use the word â€Å"soldier† to refer generically to any member of the military. I will capitalize â€Å"Soldiers,† â€Å"Marines,† â€Å"Sailors,† and â€Å"Airmen† when referring specifically to members of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force. George Will cite †¦ COL Tony Pfaff, â€Å"Resolving the Ethical Challenges of Irregular Warfare† (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2010). need footnote on terminology †¦ Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). Underwood, B. , Case, C. , and Hannah, S. Owning Our Army Ethic†, Military Review, 2010. A definition of human rights is contentious. To avoid controversy, the human rights in this paper are â€Å"thinly† conceived. This means the rights that matt er most in military operations are a small set of basic human rights consisting of the rights against torture, rape, unjustified killing, arbitrary imprisonment, access to basic subsistence, and personal liberty. This conception of human rights is both consistent with the founding of the United States and defensible as objective moral goods which serve as a founding source of the Army Ethic. In order to establish a moral basis for the Army Ethic we need to examine the good the Army provides. Field Manual 1 states the Army is the defender of â€Å"our way life. † However, achieving objectives or defending a â€Å"way of life,† are goals that many organizations could adopt as their purpose. Drug cartels, the mafia, or Al Qaeda, could easily make the same factual claim. They too are defending their ways of life. Another view of the Army’s purpose is that it provides for a â€Å"common defense. † Again, other organizations that practice collective violence can make the factual claim