Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface to the First Edition
- Introduction: Military Effectiveness Twenty Years After
- Maps
- 1 The Effectiveness of Military Organization
- 2 Britain in the First World War
- 3 The Dynamics of Necessity: German Military Policy during the First World War
- 4 American Military Effectiveness in the First World War
- 5 Italy during the First World War
- 6 The French Army in the First World War
- 7 Japan, 1914–18
- 8 Imperial Russia's Forces at War
- 9 Military Effectiveness in the First World War
- Index
1 - The Effectiveness of Military Organization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Preface to the First Edition
- Introduction: Military Effectiveness Twenty Years After
- Maps
- 1 The Effectiveness of Military Organization
- 2 Britain in the First World War
- 3 The Dynamics of Necessity: German Military Policy during the First World War
- 4 American Military Effectiveness in the First World War
- 5 Italy during the First World War
- 6 The French Army in the First World War
- 7 Japan, 1914–18
- 8 Imperial Russia's Forces at War
- 9 Military Effectiveness in the First World War
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The interrelated issue of military structure and effectiveness confronts planners and commanders with some of the most intractable intellectual issues associated with organizational behavior. The realities of preparing forces to kill and to face death in the service of the state create problems with no analogues in other forms of social interaction. It is easier to define the behaviors one wishes to discourage in individuals – cowardice, flight, and non-cooperation – than to define the positive performance of complex organizations, which all armed forces inevitably become. ‘The primary object of organization,’ wrote General Sir Ian Hamilton, ‘is to shield people from unexpected calls upon their powers of adaptability, judgment, and decision.’ Yet other commanders have observed that individual and organizational flexibility is essential to military success.
Despite a sizeable theoretical literature on organizational efficiency, military effectiveness remains an ill-defined concept. For some civilian and military analysts, effectiveness is tied to the social structure of military organizations. The sociological approach focuses on factors such as unit cohesion, group solidarity, small–unit leadership, and Kameradschaft. Similar research seeks to link effectiveness to non-material factors like esprit, staying power, and the will-to-fight. Outside of the small-unit focus, the sociological focus– regardless of whether the methodology is quantitative or descriptive – may provide special insights into the likely performance of large-scale military organizations, since it focuses on such problems as the normative aspects of officership, recruitment, military socialization, morale and political attitudes, and troop trainability.
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- Military Effectiveness , pp. 1 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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