Military Innovation and Military Culture

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article examines the significance of culture as a moderator of innovation, and criticizes monolithic accounts of military resistance to innovation. It then describes a dimension of military culture focused on the concept of the ideal combatant, and how that concept relates to innovation. Military culture can be improved by: (1) engineering the competitive context for innovation, and (2) creating career paths in which new kinds of personnel have a means of advancing, while preserving enduring organizational values. ********** For modern militaries, innovation is not a scientific or technical problem; it is an organizational challenge. Some observers of JL innovation speak of revolutionary versus evolutionary, or radical versus innovation. (1) These approaches to innovation predict the success or failure of an organization's adoption of something new based on how difficult the technology is to adopt. Such constructs are flawed, because they treat as an independent variable (the organization's difficulty in adopting whatever it is that is new) the very thing we are trying to predict, the theoretical equivalent of a dog chasing its tail. Furthermore, the magnitude of a technological advance is not a good predictor of whether an organization will struggle with it. Militaries may succeed at rapidly adopting new platforms that involve major technological change, yet fail (or be unforgivably slow) to adopt innovations that are incremental improvements. Terms like radical and revolutionary have little use when applied to predicting the organizational response to an innovation. Bureaucracies thrive on consistent, standard approaches to resolving familiar problems. Militaries are bureaucracies that depend on standardization of tools, training, methods, and organization. Innovation subverts this standardization and consistency, first, in the exploration of a new approach (the introduction of variance into the system), and then (if the innovation is successful enough) in the eventual replacement of the existing approach throughout the organization. The generalization of an innovation requires organizational change, which in turn may require cultural change. Culture is a notoriously vague term, sometimes used as a catch-all to account for behavior in organizations that is not otherwise explained. It is difficult to describe in practical, tangible terms. Organizational researcher Edgar Schein has proposed a compelling description of organizational culture: A pattern of basic assumptions--invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration--that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to these problems. (2) Schein's great insight is to focus attention on aspects of organizational behavior strongly associated with problem-solving and adaptation. To understand an organization's culture, Schein invites us to focus on things associated with has worked in the past, and to examine the symbols, norms, values, behaviors, etc., that constitute these things. In other words, culture is a theory of works. This definition has great significance for understanding innovation. Militaries are societies unto themselves, with their own sociology, history, values and beliefs. Military culture is built on these principles of shared history and values. Operational and strategic concepts of what works in the military context are entwined with principles of social status and individual identity; consider the Air Force's difficulties in reconciling the increasing operational capabilities of unmanned aircraft with its pilot-centric values, or the tortured logic of the Navy's continued reliance on the aircraft carrier as its central offensive asset, or the Army's continued devotion to the heavy fight. …