From Both Sides of the Iron Door – Sensemaking of Military Leaders During Hostage Rescue Operations: An Example from October 7 th 2023

Power is one thing. The problem of how to administer it is another. (1) --Douglas MacArthur On 9 April 2003, jubilant crowds and US troops toppled statue of Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad and drew down curtain on major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Within hours of liberation of Baghdad, amid spreading disorder and growing expectations, debate began over reconstruction challenges ahead. Criticism and frustration with chaos on ground intensified over apparent failure of United States to plan adequately for restoration of political and economic order once major combat operations had ended. The root of Washington's failure to anticipate political disorder in Iraq rests precisely in characterization of these challenges as problems, a characterization used by virtually all analysts inside and outside of government. The Iraq situation is only most recent example of reluctance of civilian and military leaders, as well as most outside experts, to consider establishment of political and economic order as a part of war itself. The point is not academic. It is central to any effective reconstruction strategy in future wars and has profound implications for military's planning, command arrangements, and implementation of current and future governance operations. (2) Military and political leaders need to distinguish between governance operations, which are a core element of all wars, and activities such as peace operations and peacekeeping that may occur independently of war. Labeling political and economic reconstruction as a postwar problem muddles fact that central to strategic victory in all wars fought by United States has been creation of a favorable political order, a process overseen and administered by US military forces--usually Army. The United States entered virtually all of its wars with assumption that government of opposing regime would change or that political situation would shift to favor US interests. During Spanish-American War, we sought to change governments of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and succeeded. During Civil War, Washington was determined to change way South was governed. In Panama in 1989, United States ousted Manuel Noriega, and war did not end until regime against which US forces had fought was out of power and political stability had resumed. In virtually all contingencies, political leaders in Washington conceded that only US military forces were up to task of overseeing and implementing this final aspect of war. Arguably, 2003 war in Iraq is rooted in most prominent recent case where political order did not change--the 1991 Gulf War. Some top Defense Department leaders have called 2003 war a logical conclusion to 1991 campaign. President Bush's early concerns, which emerged during his presidential campaign, about involvement of US military forces in nation-building and peace operations stemmed from his desire to avoid overextending American resources and commitments. (3) A clear distinction between governance operations that are integral to war and myriad of missions referred to in peace operations discourse would be hugely beneficial. Such a distinction would allow US defense planners to focus on political and economic reconstruction that is a part of war, while relegating humanitarian and nation-building missions to other organizations. Moreover, equating governance tasks that occur in all wars with broader missions associated with peace operations and humanitarian assistance reinforces tendency to avoid planning for governance operations in tandem with planning for combat operations. The essential point is this: Combat operations and governance operations are both integral to war and occur in tandem. US soldiers in Iraq today are wondering why, if the war is supposed to be over, we are still being shot at. …

As technological superiority becomes increasingly vital for military effectiveness, a distinct category of technological leaders has emerged within militaries. This qualitative study explores excellence in this domain by interviewing 11 recipients of the prestigious Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Technological Award. In-depth interviews grounded in the critical incident technique revealed four integral facets of military tech leadership excellence: Technical mastery built through expertise and continuous learning, mission dedication demonstrated through overcoming obstacles, interpersonal skills in understanding needs and translating across domains, and adaptability in integrating innovation. Notable findings show that technologists adhere to canonical military leadership values such as mission dedication, although they apply them distinctly for technological purposes. Compared with traditional military leadership, tech leaders have specialized skills in bridging operational necessities and technological solutions. This study proposes a framework that encapsulates the attributes, motivations, and behaviors that underpin excellence in military technological leadership. These findings have implications for selection, training, and development of future leaders in military technology.

The object of research is the combat and military operations. The subject is the dynamic models of combat operations and functions of victory in the conflict. The first combat model was developed by M. P. Osipov in 1915 based on the analysis of military battles for the hundred-year period. He was first to formulate the principles of combat operations modelling. In recent decades, the economists also joined the analysis of conflicts (contests and auctions). The goal of this work lies in analysis and unification of the two indicated approaches, and provision military leadership with quantitative grounds for decision-making in preparing to the combat operations. Leaning on the statistical analysis of offensive and defensive strategic operations during the Great Patriotic War (forces and means of the parties by the beginning of operation and its outcome), the author verifies the original expansion of conflict model – the function of victory in combat operations and assesses the parameters of the form of model. The scientific novelty of consists in establishing a close connection and dependence between the two approaches to combat operations modeling: based on dynamics of the averages (classical approach) and modeling with the use of conflict functions (econometric approach). The advanced function of victory in combat operations is easy to use and complies with the provisions of military science and the theory of combat potentials.

PurposeUsing Weick's sensemaking theory within a KM framework, and storytelling methodology, this study aims to deconstruct a recent public internet access policy crisis at the newly amalgamated Ottawa Public Library (Canada). As the library's former Manager of Virtual Library Services, the author retrospectively enacts the story of how the library board and management resolved a public controversy led by the staff and the community newspaper. At issue were the library staff's right to be protected from viewing internet pornography, the community's reaction to the issue of protecting children's internet access, and the library's commitment to intellectual freedom online.Design/methodology/approachPlausible meanings are presented, the public library's identity and beliefs are reinterpreted, organizational vocabularies are challenged and tacit and cultural knowledge is created and shared.FindingsIn keeping with a commitment to knowledge creation and use, the library should be actively engaged in multiple tellings of this organizational story by both staff and management. Such tellings, while perhaps not building any new consensus, would contribute to future sensemaking and could aid future strategic planning.Originality/valueApplies Weick's theory, developed in a larger KM framework, and using storytelling methodology, to deconstruct the experience of a recent organizational crisis involving public internet access in a Canadian public library.

Since the 1990s, almost all healthcare organisations have had electronic health records (EHR) to organise and manage treatment, care and work routines. This article aims to understand how healthcare professionals (HCPs) make sense of digital documentation practice. Based on a case study design, field observations and semi-structured interviews were conducted in a Danish municipality. A systematic analysis based on Karl Weick's sensemaking theory was applied to investigate what cues HCPs extract from timetables in the EHR and how institutional logics frame the enactment of documentation practice. The analysis uncovered three themes: making sense of planning, making sense of tasks and making sense of documentation. The themes illustrate that HCPs make sense of the digital documentation practice as a dominant managerial tool designed to control resources and work routines. This sensemaking leads to a task-oriented practice which centres on delivering fragmented tasks according to a timetable. HCPs mitigate fragmentation by responding to a care professional logic, where they document to share information and carry out invisible work outside of timetables and scheduled tasks. However, HCPs are focused on solving specific tasks by the minute with the possible consequence that continuity and their overview of the service user's care and treatment disappear. In conclusion, the EHR system eliminates a holistic view of care trajectories, leaving it up to HCPs to collaborate in an effort to obtain continuity for the service user.

In this study, we present the concept of resourceful sensemaking as an extension of Weick's sensemaking theory. Resourceful sensemaking extends Weick's theory by carefully examining the influence of the lifeworld on organizational sensemaking practices. Lifeworld factors that affect organizational sensemaking are brought out in a dialectical method wherein a working definition of the resourceful sensemaking concept is compared with the sensemaking practices of an administrative group. We then show how this dialectical method can help develop a more robust formulation of the resourceful sensemaking concept. The paper ends by discussing the strengths and shortcomings of the concept and suggesting directions for future organizational sensemaking research.

The purpose of this study was to understand the value of technical theater from the perspective of high-school students involved behind the scenes, focusing on the way students narrate, characterize, and make sense of their social, emotional, and cognitive experiences in their participation on the stage crew. Technical theater is a term that encompasses the lighting, set, sound, and costume design, stagecraft, stage management, and all related tasks essential to a theatrical production. Scholars have concluded that involvement in high-school theater positively impacts students' personal growth and development, their sense of collaboration, and their empathy towards others (Catterall et al., 1999; Brown & Urice, 2003; McCammon & Østerlind, 2011; McCammon et al., 2012). Secondary educators and theater practitioners have insufficient data and supporting literature to provide insight and understanding of the high-school technical-theater experience, its educational value, and its impact on adolescent personal growth. Conducted within the theoretical framework of Weick's sensemaking theory, with additional analysis using Saldaña's dramaturgical coding, and a deductive analysis using the Wisconsin Standards for Theatre 2019, this study gave a voice to the silent technicians working behind the scenes by hearing and learning from the narrative voices of high-school student technicians relating their own stories. This study uncovered three main themes: confidence, communication, and camaraderie and the participants confirmed the themes themselves. In addition to the three major themes, some other notable commonalities emerged from the shared stories, including the value of the material culture to the crewmembers, the importance of shared food and drinks, and the significance of flexibility and adaptability for the stage crew members.--Author's abstract

In this chapter, drawing primarily on Wittgenstein, we argue that a representationalist view of theory in an applied or practical science such as organization and management theory (OMT) is unrealistic and misleading, since it fails to acknowledge theory's ineradicable dependence on the dynamics of the life-world within which it has its ‘currency’. We explore some of the difficulties raised by the use of representational theorizing in OMT, and mainly explore the nature of a more reflective form of theorizing. Reflective theory, we argue, invites practitioners to attend to the grammar of their actions, namely to the rules and meanings that actors draw upon in their participation in social practices. In this view, the role of theory resembles the role Wittgenstein ascribed to philosophy: it is theory-as-therapy. The latter seeks to make action more perspicuous by providing the conceptual means to practitioners to engage in re-articulating, not only their taken-for-granted assumptions and models but also their modes of orientation and their ways of relating themselves to the situations in which they must work. Reflective theory works to draw their attention to aspects of people's interactions in organizations not usually noticed, to bring to awareness unconscious habits, confusions, prejudices and pictures that hold practitioners captive, and, furthermore, to point out that other continuations of them than those routinely followed are possible. This view of theory – as perceptually reorienting rather than as cognitively explaining – is illustrated by looking at the Karl Weick's sensemaking theory.

Understanding how ML models work is a prerequisite for responsibly designing, deploying, and using ML-based systems. With interpretability approaches, ML can now offer explanations for its outputs to aid human understanding. Though these approaches rely on guidelines for how humans explain things to each other, they ultimately solve for improving the artifact -- an explanation. In this paper, we propose an alternate framework for interpretability grounded in Weick's sensemaking theory, which focuses on who the explanation is intended for. Recent work has advocated for the importance of understanding stakeholders' needs -- we build on this by providing concrete properties (e.g., identity, social context, environmental cues, etc.) that shape human understanding. We use an application of sensemaking in organizations as a template for discussing design guidelines for Sensible AI, AI that factors in the nuances of human cognition when trying to explain itself.

This research sought to explore the sensemaking experience of four mid-level leaders engaged in cross-collaboration during the ongoing improvement process of a Thai international elementary school. Framed by Weick's sensemaking theory, and as a response to the literature calling for a "leading from the middle'' toward sustainable school improvement, this study sought to develop a more nuanced understanding of mid-level leader distributed leadership perspectives on hierarchy, existing boundaries, personal agency, and the experiences of cross-collaboration toward organizational change and school improvement. Findings revealed that mid-level leaders within the rigid hierarchy struggled with a lack of autonomy and decision-making, understanding cultural differences around ideas of efficiency and time, and the constant negotiation of authority. Implications for leadership practice reveal the following: the importance of improved knowledge for professional cultural responsiveness within multicultural environments, creativity and production are key elements of successful mid-level leader identities, lack of decision making autonomy and agency limits the extent of mid-level leader expertise, and inclusive strategic dialogue with senior leadership is required for greater organizational coherence among school leaders for sustainable school improvement.--Author's abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic presented itself as a U.S. challenge in February 2020. By mid- March 2020, most U.S. schools shut down access to their school buildings and transitioned to remote learning. How easily and efficiently schools could adapt to emergency models of teaching and learning varied from school district to school district. Thus, the primary research question is: How did U.S. K-12 school leaders describe their sensemaking during crisis planning in response to the 2020 disruptive landscape?Eleven K-12 school leaders in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey from a diverse range of public and private school settings participated in this study. Each school leader participated in a semi-structured online interview that ranged from 42-82 minutes. This qualitative study applies narrative inquiry to describe and interpret how school leaders made sense as they engaged in crisis planning amid the 2020 disruptive landscape. Weick's sensemaking theory (1995) was used as a lens for understanding the experiences of eleven K-12 school leaders. NVivo software was used for multicycle data analysis. Findings included: 1) past experience and training did not adequately prepare school leaders to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, 2) school leaders faced comprehensive challenges, 3) school leaders used identity as a driver for sensemaking, 4) school leaders utilized a diverse range of resources and strategies in their crisis response, and 5) school leaders depended on professional learning communities for ongoing support. Future research and implications for practice are recommended. Keywords: sensemaking, crisis management, pandemic, COVID-19, crisis leadership, educational leadership, narrative inquiry, NVivo--Author's abstract

Focusing on Lutheran chaplaincy, I argue that the German Protestant Church expects chaplains to be the moral conscience of the army. To facilitate this role, and to ensure that the chaplains' own consciences are never again blunted by their environment, the chaplaincy is designed to prevent clergy from becoming too closely integrated into the military. Chaplains are structurally outside the chain of command and have no military rank; their terms of service are restricted to between six and 12 years. Their role is to sharpen the consciences of individual soldiers, and to ask whether the military operations in which the Bundeswehr participates are actually conducive to peace or whether they add to the spiral of violence. This structural separation is not total, however. The Christian churches are still privileged by law in Germany, and the military's exclusively Christian chaplains are obliged to deliver compulsory ethical training to all soldiers irrespective of their professed faith (or atheism). I also argue that the challenge will be to maintain a prophetic ministry (shaped in armed forces which were created for defensive engagements only, and which did not engage in combat operations until 1995) now that German chaplains are once again supporting soldiers engaged in battlefield action. Promoting the civilian churches' peace ethic necessarily leads to conflict with secular politicians and military leaders. Even in conditions designed to strengthen their primary allegiance to their sending churches, military chaplains may feel conflicted when the soldiers they support are criticised by clergy ‘outside’.

After decades of sustained combat operations, public officials and military leaders have promoted the value of preserving the lives of troops by implementing armed Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs) in supporting combat operations. Despite a decrease in physical injury and death to ground troops, drone warfare is not without U.S. casualties. Rather, psychologists have begun to realize that this different form of warfare uniquely traumatizes the members of the UAV crews who may be piloting or supporting these craft from the confines of a building or trailer only miles from their homes. This form of combat opens up new avenues for moral injury. Although the full extent of this remote trauma has yet to be thoroughly examined, preliminary studies have revealed the potential for devastating consequences.

Since 1945 Canadian defense policy has continuously been shaped by a set of interrelated deterministic variables: geography, alliances, the public favoring of social programs, and budgets.1 The country’s political, bureaucratic, and even military leadership, have long since sought ways to get more “bang for the defense buck” through the adoption of measures that ostensibly would generate greater efficiencies and efficacy in the Canadian Forces (CF) without undermining the military’s ability to fulfill North American and European alliance obligations. One such approach was the 1968 unification of the three armed services — navy, army, and air force — into one CF. Another effort, and the one being analyzed in this chapter, was the adoption of the concepts and platforms affiliated with the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and its close cousin, Transformation, particularly during the period of 200511, at the height of Canada’s combat operations in Afghanistan. But, as this chapter will emphasize, the CF’s approach to both the RMA and Transformation produced mixed results as plans were undermined by the deterministic constraints typical of defense policy-making in Canada, inter-service tensions found at the executive level within the CF, and, of course, the challenges and costs of combatting an insurgency in Afghanistan.

This article was first published in the Summer 2005 issue of Parameters. You may not be interested in war.., but is interested in you. --Leon Trotsky It is the tragedy of history that man cannot free himself from war. Indeed, far more than by the development of art or literature or trade or political institutions, the history of man has been determined by the wars he has fought. Time and again, advanced and cultured societies have been laid low by more primitive and virile enemies with superior military institutions and a stronger will to fight. The end of the Cold War, the rise of globalization, the spread of democracy, and the advent of a new millennium raised hopes that mankind might move beyond the catastrophic wars that shaped the 20th century. Those hopes were dashed by Somalia and Rwanda and Bosnia, by the Sudan and the Congo and Kosovo, by Chechnya and Afghanistan and Iraq. Understanding war, not as we would like it but as it is, remains the central question of international politics. And for the most primal of reasons: isn't going anywhere. Political and military leaders are notoriously averse to theory, but if there is a theorist about who matters, it remains Carl von Clausewitz, whose Vom Kriege (On War) has shaped Western views about since the middle of the 19th century. While it goes too far to say, as John Keegan has, that Clausewitz influenced every statesman and soldier interested in for the past 100 years--most never actually read or grasped him--Clausewitz endures, not because he is universally understood or accepted but because he is so often right about first principles. (1) Much of what he wrote about the conduct of in the pre-industrial era, about marches and magazines and the of posts, fits best with his own time. But his insights about the nature of itself remain uniquely and enduringly prescient. Clausewitz described as nothing more than a on a larger scale ... an act of force to compel the enemy to do our will. (2) Today, war is used to mean very different things in very different contexts, from the on poverty to the on drugs to the on terrorism. Because it evokes a call to action and stimulates national resolve, war is perhaps the most used and abused word in the political lexicon. What does it mean precisely? is surely both a and an act of force, but it is perhaps best described as between states. While not inconsistent with Clausewitz, this usage lends both simplicity and clarity to often-muddied waters. Thus defined, can be distinguished from raids, rescue operations, peacekeeping missions, counter-drug and anti-terror operations, military occupations, shows of force, and a host of other activities which involve the use of military forces. Implicit in this usage is reciprocity; an unanswered, one-time cruise missile attack is a military operation and a use of force, but hardly a war. However ineffectually, however great the mismatch, both sides must participate in the duel for to exist. Nor does official sanction particularly matter. Whether formally declared or not, is war. Nowadays, even advanced states routinely forego the diplomatic niceties, though all seek and welcome the imprimatur of international support and recognition when they can get it. Here, armed conflict means fighting--not a show of force or the threat of invasion, but actual combat. The difference is important because the many gradations of the use of forces are distinct from the use of force. Fundamentally, itself is not about deterrence or dissuasion, although the capability and the will to wage it may be. As Bedford Forrest so pungently put it, War means fighting. And fighting means killing. The distinction is crucial. The chance of stumbling into is too great. All too often, statesmen have used the threat of as a tool of policy, only to be astounded when it fails and erupts. …