Military Review English Edition September-October 2014 | Page 72
Photo by Capt. Kevin Sandell, 11th Public Affairs Detachment
A team of five soldiers hoists a fast rope on their shoulders before being extracted using the special purpose insertion and extraction
system and fast-rope insertion and extraction system method, 18 July 2014. The UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter is flown by a crew with the
North Dakota Army National Guard’s C Company, 2nd Battalion, 285th Aviation Regiment.
is almost always discouraged. This can result in few
courageous followers.
officer courses. For now, however, followership still remains an unpopular topic within Army academic circles.
Military Education Opportunities
Organizational Culture as
Organizational Life
There could be many opportunities to teach ethics
and followership at all levels of professional military
education. Entry-level officer basic courses include
leadership classes, but almost no formal academic classes discuss followership concepts. There are few lessons
on how to provide negative feedback to one’s boss when
the boss might be wrong.
Due to many recent senior military leader investigations, ethics is becoming mandatory training, especially for field grade officers. In 2013, ethics classes were
introduced into the Command and General Staff College
curriculum by directive from the Department of the
Army. This provides an excellent opportunity to address
unethical decisions by senior leaders and the actions their
staffs could have taken to prevent them. In the next few
years, ethics training will also become prevalent in junior
70
Many references to bureaucracy relate to how
the employee becomes a part of the organization (or
machine), and the employee’s life is the job. The Army
does this to soldiers by providing for every facet of
life: medical care, housing, social events, and the work
place. A bureaucratic culture in any organization can
stifle creativity, honesty, and constructive criticism.
There are always asymmetric power relations in an
army, a multinational corporation, or a family business,
that result in the vast majority working for the interest
of a select few.20 The Army has a history of military
prodigies who were chosen by current generals to
rule in the future because of their connections, family
lineages, and perceived entitlement of authority. The
theory of the “iron law of oligarchy” is reflected in the
September-October 2014 MILITARY REVIEW