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Report Part Title: The Power of Organizational Culture

Report Title: Culture Wars

Report Subtitle: Air Force Culture and Civil-Military Relations

Report Author(s): Jeffrey W. Donnithorne

Air University Press (2013)

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/resrep13816.9

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Chapter 3

The Power of Organizational Culture

The perceptions supplied by an organizational culture some- times can lead an official to behave not as the situation requires but as the culture expects.

—James Q. Wilson Bureaucracy

The rational framework of agency theory aptly models the structural in- centives that inform civilian and military behavior. This chapter complements that top-down approach with a bottom-up analysis of the cognitive dimen- sions of the military’s behavior. Political scientist Elizabeth Kier suggests that “making sense of how structure matters or what incentives it provides often requires understanding the meanings that actors attach to their material world.”1 An organization’s culture supplies that meaning to make sense of its external and internal environment. Furthermore, the potency of organiza- tional culture is particularly strong for military organizations given their unique parameters of entry and advancement.2 As the single port of entry into the military force, basic military training explicitly inculcates new beliefs, assumptions, and language into fresh recruits. Decades later, a portion of these recruits will have successfully navigated the complex shoals of training, operations, and bureaucracy to achieve positions of leadership. Their career success will have been in part a function of their ability to make the organiza- tion’s culture their own, thereby shaping their outlook on future decisions.

This chapter contains three broad areas of emphasis: a brief review of the literature to define organizational culture, the use of organizational culture as a causal variable in security studies, and finally, an overview of the basic as- sumptions that undergird the Air Force’s organizational culture. The first sec- tion weaves together various definitions from the literature in an effort to define terms for the rest of the paper. The second section demonstrates the causal role that organizational culture serves for military organizations, from shaping doctrine to systems acquisition and war fighting. The final section uses this theoretical foundation to survey Air Force history in search of its unique organizational culture. As discussed in chapter 2, this cultural analysis stipulates cultural observations from other published works and then synthe- sizes them into five categories of assumptions. These five tenets will form the

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

basis for assessing the consonance of national security policy with Air Force culture in the case studies to follow.

Defining Organizational Culture

As “an empirically based abstraction,” culture can be difficult to define even though its impact is intuitively clear.3 The idea of culture has been used to describe a wide array of phenomena, and its profusion can dilute its legiti- mate impact. If everything can be attributed to culture, then it lacks utility as an analytical construct. This section presents a select group of definitions from the literature to define more precisely what culture is and what functions it serves for members of an organization.

Definitions

Social psychologist Edgar Schein profiles no fewer than 15 different defini- tions for organizational culture in scholarly literature.4 While each definition spins its own nuance, Schein highlights four elements of culture that persist across the literature: its structural stability, depth, breadth, and integration.5 Together, these elements suggest that culture is stable across organizational generations; it abides at a deep and generally unconscious level; it pervades the organization; and “rituals, climate, values, and behaviors tie together into a coherent whole.”6

Reflecting all four elements, Schein’s formal definition of organizational culture describes “a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved 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 rela- tion to those problems” (emphasis added).7 While Schein articulates a thor- ough sociological definition, other scholars vary the emphasis to provide heu- ristic conceptions of culture. James Wilson describes an organization’s culture as “a persistent, patterned way of thinking. . . . Culture is to an organization what personality is to an individual.”8 Ann Swidler suggests a different meta- phor, emphasizing the functional dimension of culture in supplying an action inventory: “A culture is not a unified system that pushes action in a consistent direction. Rather, it is more like a ‘tool kit’ or repertoire from which actors select differing pieces for constructing lines of action.”9 Finally, Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn invoke a colloquial understanding of culture, representing “how things are around here.”10

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Several threads connect the core elements of each definition: a pattern of assumptions, a historical genesis, persistent durability, and a common basis for action. Therefore, this study will draw from these antecedents to stipulate a composite definition: Culture is the prevailing personality of an organization, rooted in its collective history, enduring over time, and comprised of assump- tions from which it forms a basis for future action.

Manifestation

Schein explains that culture will pervade all levels of an organization, with each level of analysis amplifying a tenet of the root culture. The first level of cultural manifestation is an organization’s artifacts—the visible, sensory phe- nomena such as architecture, language, iconography, and ceremonies.11 These first-level phenomena communicate the priorities and ethos of an organiza- tion and create the first impression for an outside observer. The second level of cultural manifestation comprises the espoused beliefs and values of the or- ganization.12 These espoused beliefs constitute what an organization says it believes, “[its] sense of what ought to be, as distinct from what is.”13 Espoused beliefs that consistently prove effective in solving problems for the organiza- tion ossify into the third level of culture: basic assumptions. These basic as- sumptions form the cultural cortex of the organization, establishing the “theories-in-use” that actually determine the organization’s behavior.14 These theories-in-use may or may not coincide precisely with the organization’s es- poused beliefs. Nevertheless, this root layer of an organization’s culture—its basic assumptions—creates the cognitive “tool kit” for future action.

Schein invokes these three levels to describe what to look for in an organi- zation to discern its unique culture. Additionally, he details where to look in an organization’s history for the crucibles of cultural formation. Schein iden- tifies two forces that mold an organization’s basic assumptions: “(1) survival in and adaptation to its external environment and (2) integration of its inter- nal processes to ensure the capacity to continue to survive and adapt.”15 There- fore, understanding an organization’s culture involves searching out its arti- facts, espoused beliefs, and basic assumptions as formed during its adaptation to its external environment and reinforced through its internal processes. These categories will inform the final section of this chapter in search of the Air Force’s unique organizational culture.

Impact

The core assumptions of an organization’s culture shape its interaction with its environment. Schein explains, “Culture as a set of basic assumptions de-

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

fines for us what to pay attention to, what things mean, how to react emotion- ally to what is going on, and what actions to take in various kinds of situa- tions.”16 This process of mental filtration and sense-making resembles the cognitive effect of a paradigm within theoretical science.17 Just as a paradigm exerts a causal role on the thinking of those doing “normal science,” an orga- nization’s culture impacts what its members see, ignore, amplify, and dis- card.18 Therefore, an organization’s culture both “guides and constrains” its members and biases the suitability of certain options while blockading the viability of others.19

Because of these powerful cognitive effects, an organization with an estab- lished culture seeks policies that reinforce its core ethos. Cultures provide stability to organizations such that new policies or foreign procedures can appear threatening. In their studies of bureaucracies and policy making, Mor- ton Halperin and James Wilson identify the routine behaviors that organiza- tions employ to preserve their culture.20 “Tasks that are not part of the cul- ture,” Wilson notes, “will not be attended to with the same energy and resources as are devoted to tasks that are part of it.”21 Likewise, he observes that organizations will resist taking on new tasks that appear inconsistent with their cultural assumptions. Halperin concurs: “An organization is often indifferent to functions not seen as part of its essence or necessary to protect its essence.”22 These observations suggest that understanding the behavior of a military service requires a deep appreciation of the culture that shapes its thinking. Therefore, the next section documents the pervasive influence of culture on the military services and national security policy.

The Cultural School of Security Studies

What if military forces were not what we pretend them to be— the military means to political ends—but were, instead, insti- tutional ends in themselves that may or may not serve the larger interests of the nations that support them?

—Carl Builder The Masks of War

Recognizing the impact of organizational culture on military services, scholars increasingly account for these cognitive variables in security studies. This section appropriates the academic discussion of organizational culture into the specific domain of the military services. The goal of this section is to demonstrate clearly that organizational culture comprises the dominant vari-

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

able in shaping a military’s policy preference. This discussion will inform the analysis of the later case studies, as the national security policies are com- pared against the cultural tenets of the Air Force. To substantiate the power of organizational culture for the Air Force, this section advances four interlock- ing precepts: first, there is no single monolithic military culture—each service has its own unique culture; second, military service cultures are uniquely powerful and pervasive; third, the individual military services exert consider- able influence on national security policy; and fourth, the organizational cul- ture of the military services shapes their conceptions of how to structure, equip, and fight the nation’s wars.

Scholars have long considered organizational behaviors in their analysis of national security. For example, two foundational works in the field—Barry Posen’s Sources of Military Doctrine and Graham Allison’s Essence of Deci- sion—incorporate organizational theory as a primary lens of analysis.23 In general, these analyses of military behavior consider the military as a mono- lithic whole with generalized preferences.24 Posen, for example, assumes a military preference for offensive doctrines as well as “predictability, stability, and certainty.”25 A closer view of the military, however, reveals four distinct services, informed by unique cultures and holding unique preferences. Wil- liamson Murray notes, “There is no monolithic American military culture. Rather, the four services, reflecting their differing historical antecedents and the differences in the environments in which they operate, have evolved cul- tures that are extraordinarily different.”26 Stephen P. Rosen’s analysis corrobo- rates Murray’s assertion: “Each branch has its own culture and distinct way of thinking about the way war should be conducted.”27 This awareness suggests the value of studying each military service separately to gain a better under- standing of its contribution to security policy.28 Analyzing a service with a unique organizational culture illuminates preferences with greater specificity and texture than an aggregate military view affords.

Understanding the culturally distinct military services is particularly im- portant in light of the uncommon power of their respective cultures. While Schein and others describe the saturating impact of culture for organizations in general, military institutions constitute an extreme case. For example, the military services employ a “closed career principle” with only one way in and one way up.29 Military members enter at the bottom of the hierarchy, reaching the top only with time and steady promotion within the organization. From day one of a military career, the force-feeding of service culture begins. Mili- tary trainers baptize new recruits into their service norms, stripping them of their individuality through regulation haircuts and teaching them new ways to walk, talk, eat, clean, and dress.30 That same culture continues to inform the

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

rest of one’s military career, though the shock of the new is replaced with the transparency of the normal. Because there are no lateral transfers into the up- per ranks, those who survive to lead have embraced the dominant cultural norms. For these reasons, Kier suggests that military organizations “may be the most ‘complete’ societies of any ‘total’ organization.”31 Culture informs the worldview of any organization but appears to dominate the worldview of a military service.

In addition to boasting strong cultures, military organizations carry pow- erful influence in the creation of policy. In fact, Carl Builder asserts that the military services constitute the major players in the formation of national se- curity policy.32 Furthermore, he affirms the uniqueness of each service cul- ture—what he calls “personality”—and the causal impact those personalities have on service behavior. He suggests that these service personalities “will even persist through the trauma of war. They affect how the services, in peace- time, perceive war and then plan and buy and train forces. To understand the American military styles is to understand what is going on and much of what is likely to happen in the national security arena—from Star Wars to the Per- sian Gulf.”33

Since the military services are power players with equally powerful cul- tures, a growing literature highlights the causal role of organizational culture in shaping service behavior. John Nagl’s influential work on counterinsur- gency operations in Malaya and Vietnam highlights the different organiza- tional cultures of the British and American armies.34 These unique cultures, Nagl argues, explain the two armies’ varying capacities to become learning organizations capable of adapting to counterinsurgency operations. Similarly, Jeffrey Legro’s analysis of mutual restraint between Britain and Germany in World War II pits a realist view against an organizational culture view.35 Legro’s organizational culture view “posits that the pattern of assumptions, ideas, and beliefs that prescribe how a military bureaucracy should conduct battle will influence state preferences and actions on the use of that means.”36 To understand phenomena of restraint in submarine warfare, strategic bomb- ing, and the non-use of chemical weapons, Legro argues that the organiza- tional culture lens offers greater explanatory power. For example, after both Britain and Germany executed “accidental” bombing attacks on each other in the spring of 1940, Germany largely brushed off the offense while Britain ea- gerly launched retaliatory campaigns. Legro explains the contrasting re- sponses by citing that strategic bombing was not a part of the Luftwaffe cul- ture, though it pulsed at the heart of Royal Air Force (RAF) culture.37

Elizabeth Kier’s study of French and British military doctrine in the inter- war years sustains a similar line of argument. Kier does not reject the realist

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

framework of self-interest but suggests that cultural lenses inform the content of that interest.38 Builder concurs, observing that a service’s force planning and systems acquisition are largely shaped by cultural preferences rather than ob- jective threat analyses.39 Adam Stulberg and Michael Salomone capably sum- marize the literature: “The common thread to these studies is that military culture represents the intellectual and inter-subjective capacity of the differ- ent armed services to come to grips with the tasks of preparing for and wag- ing war in different strategic, political, and technological settings.”40 This pa- per advances the same conclusion.

This chapter defines and details the impact of organizational culture and its uniquely powerful role in shaping the policy preferences of the military ser- vices. What impact does organizational culture have on civil-military rela- tions? The existing baseline of agency theory models an aggregate military with generic self-interest and a culture of subordination. This work relaxes these assumptions by (1) disaggregating the military and studying one mili- tary service—the Air Force; and (2) analyzing the service’s unique organiza- tional culture that informs its understanding of self-interest—a culture that may or may not prize subordination. Moving from the general to the specific, what cultural assumptions tacitly shape the Air Force’s preferences? To an- swer this question, the remainder of this chapter undertakes a cultural analy- sis of the US Air Force.

The Organizational Culture of the Air Force

Who is the Air Force? It is the keeper and wielder of the deci- sive instruments of war—the technological marvels of flight that have been adapted to war.

—Carl Builder The Masks of War

This section canvasses Air Force history in search of its artifacts, espoused beliefs, and basic assumptions, forged in the fires of external adaptation and internal integration. Recalling the definition of culture stipulated earlier in this chapter, the goal is to uncover the prevailing personality of the Air Force, rooted in its collective history, enduring over time, and comprised of assump- tions from which it forms a basis for future action. The methodology of this section searches out historical and cultural observations from published works and categorizes the recurring themes into five discrete tenets of Air Force culture. This paper does not suggest that these five basic assumptions

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

are the only ones informing Air Force action, nor do these assumptions satu- rate the thinking of every Air Force member. They serve as broad generaliza- tions for the purpose of qualitative analysis in the case studies. These assump- tions attempt to expose the theories-in-use that shape Air Force policies and preferences.41 In the interest of brevity, this section does not provide exacting historical detail, so interested readers seeking more background can follow the research trailheads suggested by the endnotes.

Technology Centered

Without question, the most consistent and pervasive description of the Air Force is its core connection to technology. As Builder frankly suggests, “The Air Force could be said to worship at the altar of technology.”42 The service’s love for technology, however, is not a disembodied one; rather, the Air Force prizes the human connection to technology as manifest in the airplane. An observer’s first impression of the Air Force, rendered through its visible arti- facts, illuminates an organizational passion for the airplane. Nearly every Air Force base showcases airplane monuments, often right at the entrance to the base. As a point of comparison, the parade ground at the US Military Acad- emy at West Point is flanked by monuments to some of the Army’s great gen- erals: Washington, Patton, and MacArthur. The Terrazzo at the US Air Force Academy is cornered by the Air Force’s sleekest airplanes: the F-15, F-16, F-4, and F-105.43 Walking through the halls of the Pentagon yields similar conclu- sions, as dramatic paintings and pictures of aircraft dominate the Air Force’s corporate territory. This fascination with the airplane stems from the earliest days of the Army Air Corps. Perry Smith notes the visceral connection these early flyers had with their machines: “To him the airplane was not just a new and exciting weapon; it was what carried him miles behind enemy lines and brought him back; it was a personal possession which was given a personal, usually feminine, name, kissed upon return from a mission, and painted with a symbol for each enemy plane shot down or bombing mission completed.”44

This love of technology—particularly as expressed in the airplane—illumi- nates much about past and present Air Force behavior. Richard Hallion notes, “Generally speaking, the technology tail has wagged the Air Force dog.”45 The history of the Air Force’s acquisition of both the intercontinental ballistic mis- sile (ICBM) and remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) suggests an institutional resis- tance to these disembodied technologies.46 Historian David MacIsaac avers, “However much the official spokesmen of the air services may deny it, [RPAs] are not considered an appropriate topic for discussion by most pilots, among whom it is an article of faith that a manned aircraft can perform any mission

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

better than an unmanned aircraft.”47 Although the Air Force certainly ad- opted these unmanned technologies into the service, the bias for manned sys- tems constitutes an abiding element of the service culture.

The Air Force’s institutional passion for technology and airplanes trans- lates into a consistent prioritization of quality over quantity. For example, the Air Force historically laments the age of its aircraft fleet rather than the num- bers within that fleet.48 Builder aptly observes that to an Airman, “To be out- numbered may be tolerable, but to be outflown is not. The way to get the American flier’s attention is to confront him with a superior machine” (empha- sis added).49 This observation echoes convincingly with current Airmen whose service has labored mightily to procure the F-22 and F-35 to stay ahead of foreign competition. Perry Smith agrees that aircraft superiority is the prism through which many Airmen view national security.50 Ultimately, this fascination with technology and airplanes bleeds into nearly every corner of Air Force culture; in fact, several of the forthcoming tenets of Air Force cul- ture are derivatives from this technological core.51

In light of these observations, the following basic assumption informs Air Force organizational culture: The Air Force exists because of technology, and its ongoing superiority is sustained by the ascendance of its technology. As the first and most important machine, the manned airplane is the building block of the force. While unmanned technologies have their place, the complexities of com- bat require an actual—or virtual—human presence over the battlefield.

Autonomously Decisive

The technological DNA of the Air Force informs the next tenet of its cul- ture: an abiding desire for politically unconstrained, uniquely decisive opera- tions. Forged in the crucible of World War II, and spurred by a desire for service autonomy, an unflinching commitment to strategic bombing domi- nated the early decades of the Air Force.52 Even before World War II con- cluded, the Army Air Corps commissioned a strategic bombing survey to generate empirical evidence for its decisive impact.53 Neither tactical aviation nor theater airlift motivated a postwar survey as strategic bombing did.54 Robert Jervis notes that an organization absorbs lessons most acutely when its structure is altered or formed to learn a particular lesson from an event.55 The Air Force’s history supports Jervis’s assertion; after the publication of the US Strategic Bombing Survey, the doctrine of strategic bombing became the the- ology of Strategic Air Command and, by extension, the Air Force as a whole. Morton Halperin observes, for example, the curiosity of the Air Force’s blithe treatment of the Berlin airlift.56 At a time when its public image was at its ze-

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

nith—having shown the world that America was both mighty and good—the Air Force chose not to invest in or publicize its airlift capacity.57 Airlift seemed a distraction from its principal focus on strategic bombing.58

The Airman’s love of technology and aircraft, coupled with an organiza- tional commitment to strategic bombing, forged a focus on means instead of ends. Historian Michael Sherry details this phenomenon in the context of World War II: “The leaders and technicians of the American air force were driven by technological fanaticism—a pursuit of destructive ends expressed, sanctioned, and disguised by the organization and application of technologi- cal means . . . In practice, they often waged destruction as a functional end in itself, without a clear comprehension of its relationship to stated purposes.”59 Muting the Clausewitzian ideal of subordinating the violence of war to its political purpose, Air Force leaders focused instead on the lethality of their means. Sherry suggests that among the Air Force leadership of World War II and the Cold War, “The task, not the purpose, of winning governed.”60 Mark Clodfelter extends this trajectory into the modern era of precision-guided weapons, noting the temptation such weapons might offer. He suggests that the precision revolution creates “a modern vision of air power that focuses on the lethality of its weaponry rather than on the weaponry’s effectiveness as a political instrument.”61

One manifestation of this focus on means over ends is the Air Force’s dis- comfort with political constraints. Paradoxically, the centralized control and flexibility of airpower make it particularly malleable to nuanced political pressure; however, the Air Force as an institution is acutely resistant to such perceived interference. The nearly unconstrained political environment of to- tal war in Germany and Japan molded an expectation for the right way to use airpower. For Air Force leaders like Gen Curtis LeMay, “Politics (except for the scramble for resources) ended when war began.”62 In future conflicts, the precedent of a free political hand continued to inform Air Force expectations in the straitjacket of limited war. During the Korean War, “Senior Air Force leaders ‘chafed under the prospect of political constraints’ that reduced the decisiveness of air power and surrendered initiative to the enemy.”63 Similarly, after the frustrations of Vietnam, Air Force leaders insisted they could have been more effective if they had been “free from political restraints.”64 More recently, this discomfort with political constraints climaxed during the coer- cive air campaign of Operation Allied Force. Subjecting every target list to the political sensitivities of each country in the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza- tion (NATO) spurred no shortage of frustration for senior Airmen.65 After the war, Gen John Jumper commented on such politically constrained gradual campaigns: “We hope to be able to convince politicians that is not the best

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

way to do it, but in some cases we are going to have to live with that situa- tion.”66 Reflecting the consensus view throughout Air Force history, Jumper’s remarks convey the idea of an air war as an autonomous military endeavor with a “best way to do it,” rather than an inherently subordinate extension of political activity.

In sum, the Air Force’s mastery of technology has motivated a desire to unleash the full potential of that technology. The promise of airpower grips an Airman’s imagination and motivates a passion to showcase that promise. His- torically, therefore, Airmen have sought to master the means of war, unshack- led from the tangled politics of its purpose. This is not to say that all Airmen are uninterested in the political purposes of war, but it indicates a trend that shapes the prevailing personality of the service. A basic assumption inform- ing Air Force organizational culture is this: The Air Force has the power to change the face of the earth. It can do what no other service can do. To realize its true potential, the Air Force should be employed kinetically, offensively, over- whelmingly, and with minimal political interference.

Future Oriented

The Air Force’s technological core predisposes a forward-looking orienta- tion. As the youngest of the services, born from technological breakthrough, the Air Force “identifies the past with obsolescence, and for the air weapon, obsolescence equates to defeat.”67 Historian Tami Davis Biddle also detects this tendency in Air Force thinking, noting “too great a readiness to focus on the future without rigorously considering the past. This is an endemic prob- lem in air forces, which develop their institutional identity around claims to see and understand the future more clearly than other services do.”68 An orga- nizational commitment to looking ahead pervades the Air Force culture.

The technological orientation of the service, however, fosters unintended consequences. While the Air Force looks forward, its investment in high- priced systems with long development times creates a counterintuitive con- servatism. The service builds its doctrine and force structure around the ma- chines and systems in its inventory; however, when emerging technologies enable new doctrines or strategies, they threaten the viability of the Air Force’s posture. Builder explains, “In fostering technology, even for its cherished in- struments, the Air Force is necessarily instigating new concepts and capabili- ties that challenge the form and preferences of its institution.”69 Mike Worden notes a similar vulnerability for any service’s commitment to its doctrine. During the golden age of Strategic Air Command’s dominance, the Air Force’s commitment to strategic bombing stymied consideration of alternatives. “The

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

intense single-minded focus on their mission and their enemy advanced a monistic perspective in an increasingly pluralistic world. Ironically, the senior leaders had become steadfast conservatives in a service that professed to be always forward looking.”70

Despite this discomfiting tendency for “adverse yaw,” the espoused belief of future-orientation informs Air Force culture across the service.71 Conse- quently, the third basic assumption of the Air Force’s organizational culture is this: Technology and potential adversaries change quickly, and the Air Force must orient forward to the unknown future instead of the forgotten past. The Air Force must pursue next-generation systems today to be ready for tomorrow.

Occupationally Loyal

The Air Force’s technology-focused DNA replicates itself in the hearts of its members.72 Builder asserts that the history of the Air Force is steeped in an individual passion for flying more than an abiding loyalty to the institution. He contends, “The air force identifies itself with flying and things that fly; the institution is secondary, it is a means to those things. A brave band of intrepid aviators, bonded primarily in the love of flight and flying machines, may have a clear sense of themselves, but it is not so much an institutional as it is an individual sense of self. And it is not focused so much on who they are as it is on what they want to do.”73 Builder cites the volunteer aviators of the Lafayette Escadrille, the Flying Tigers, and the RAF Eagle squadrons as examples of noble men who served honorably but were motivated by their love of flying: “The prospect of combat is not the essential draw; it is simply the justification for having and flying these splendid machines.”74

Within the Air Force, this phenomenon gives rise to a “fractionated con- federation of subcultures rather than a cohesive military service.”75 In his study of Air Force cultural cohesion, James Smith notes the high level of oc- cupational versus institutional loyalties, particularly among pilots.76 Because the service is built around a visceral connection with unique machines, loyal- ties migrate to those machines—and one’s experience of them—rather than to the larger institution.77 Throughout the Air Force’s history, “People found themselves in an institution because that was the place to do what they wanted to do—to fly airplanes, to work on rockets, to develop missiles, to learn an interesting or promising trade, etc.”78 A recent advertising campaign by the Air Force reinforced this idea by showing young people pursuing their pas- sions—snowboarding, bicycle racing, flying remote-controlled airplanes— and then announcing, “We’ve been waiting for you.”79 The Air Force markets

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

itself as a venue for doing what you love—but higher, faster, and with a grander purpose.

This occupational orientation often inspires loyalties to subgroups within the larger Air Force. Because the Air Force maintains a diverse mission port- folio in several war-fighting domains, unique subcultures have developed within insulated commands. Then–Chief of Staff of the Air Force Merrill Mc- Peak lamented, “People built loyalties around their commands—intense loyal- ties in fact—rather than loyalties to air and space power as a whole, to a broader, more comprehensive mission.”80 Air Force officer and historian Ed- ward Mann observes the same about the service in 1990: “We were a conglom- erate of specialists with greater loyalty to machines and sleeve patches than to any single unifying theme or to the Air Force itself. . . . Over the years, we in the Air Force had cloistered ourselves in occupational monasteries, efficiently performing the rites of our orders with no sense of the church’s mission.”81 These dynamics suggest a hierarchy of overlapping motivations within the Air Force culture; desires to serve the country, lead Airmen, fly an airplane, build secure cyber networks, and control satellites all collide in a mosaic of motiva- tions. Consequently, a basic assumption persists: The Air Force is an honorable and patriotic means to practice a desirable high-tech trade. Loyalties to the trade, machine, and subculture often outweigh loyalty to the institution.

Self-Aware

As the youngest of the military services, and one that fought hard for its organizational autonomy, the Air Force is uniquely self-aware of its institu- tional legitimacy. During its infancy as an organization, the Air Force’s adap- tation to its external environment required fierce defense of its turf. Assigning roles and missions among the services spawned fractious debate and bureau- cratic wrangling.82 These dynamics imbued the Air Force with a sensitivity to its rightful place in the pantheon of established military services. Builder claims, “The Air Force . . . has always been most sensitive to defending or guarding its legitimacy as an independent institution.”83 In fact, as recently as December 2009, the chief of staff of the Air Force was seeking fresh articula- tions of “why we need an independent Air Force.”84 Such a rhetorical exercise indicates the service still suffers an unsteady conviction of its own institu- tional legitimacy.

This self-aware posture subjects the service to periodic bouts of identity crisis. In 1989, an unpublished white paper entitled “A View of the Air Force Today” circulated throughout the Air Force. Its authors articulated an array of concerns about the state of their service and ultimately concluded “the Air

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Force seems to have lost its sense of identity and unique contribution.”85 Two years later, the stunning success of Operation Desert Storm seemed to resolve the crisis for the Air Force as it proved its decisive worth in dramatic fash- ion.86 The institutional self-confidence, however, was short-lived. In a study published by the Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessments in September 2009, Thomas Ehrhard concludes, “Today’s Air Force is experiencing an insti- tutional identity crisis that places it at an historical nadir of confidence, repu- tation, and influence.”87 Symptomatic of this crisis of confidence, Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., likewise avers that many Airmen feel unappreciated by the other services.88

These phenomena underscore the final basic assumption of Air Force orga- nizational culture: Major combat operations are the best setting to showcase the full potential of the independent Air Force. In any other venue, the Air Force serves an essential supporting role in which it is largely taken for granted. Dur- ing these times of invisible contribution, the Air Force must actively articulate its relevance to the nation and itself.

In sum, these five attributes capture much of the prevailing personality of the Air Force, rooted in its collective history, enduring over time, from which it forms a basis for future action: technology centered, autonomously deci- sive, future oriented, occupationally loyal, and self-aware of its legitimacy. Given the power of organizational culture to shape and sustain preferences, these five tenets are hypothesized to inform past and future Air Force policies. It should be noted again, however, that a distinctive feature of Air Force his- tory and culture is the prominence of its subcultures. As Mike Worden dem- onstrates, the first half of the Air Force’s life witnessed a dominant bomber subculture, while the second half has been dominated by the fighter culture.89 These dominant tribes exerted powerful influence on the service’s culture writ large, but the five features described above appear to be consistent across both eras of Air Force history. Despite the inherent subculture differences within the service, in matters of substantive policy the Air Force speaks—and has spoken—with one voice.90 Consequently, these five assumptions subsume the variations of the subcultures, and they are postulated as enduring elements of the Air Force’s organizational culture.

In the following case studies, the analysis will test various policy decisions for their consonance with these five enduring assumptions. The working hy- pothesis of this paper suggests that policies consistent with the Air Force’s basic assumptions will engender working, while policies counter to Air Force cultural assumptions will set the conditions for shirking.

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Conclusion

This chapter established the theoretical basis for considering organiza- tional culture as an explanatory variable in shaping a military service’s deci- sion to work or shirk. As organizations adapt to their external environment and manage their internal processes, a pervasive culture develops to make sense of “how things are around here.”91 Like a paradigm in research science, organizational culture provides a mental model for viewing the world, largely determining what questions are asked, what answers are given, and what data are determined to be outliers. For insular military organizations, the impact of service culture is uniquely potent and pervasive. A service’s culture affects how it is structured, what it buys, and how it fights. In the context of civil- military relations, organizational culture shapes a military service’s calcula- tion of self-interest, informing its decision to work or shirk. While agency theory provides the top-down rational framework, this chapter demonstrates the power of organizational culture to inform a service’s bottom-up concep- tion of its own interest and policy preferences.

The foundation for case study analysis has therefore been laid. The theory of civil-military relations explored the dynamics of two-tiered delegation in a democracy and the imperatives of military subordination. Agency theory supplied a rational framework for considering the context of incentives, creat- ing a useful continuum of working and shirking. The theory of organizational culture demonstrated the power of culture to shape a military service’s policy preference within that rational framework. Finally, this chapter concluded with five basic assumptions of Air Force culture, suggested by its artifacts and espoused beliefs, and forged in its adaptation to the external environment. With this unique culture in view, the following two chapters present case studies of the Air Force between 1990 and 2008, testing the explanatory power of Air Force culture to shape its decision to work or shirk the civilians’ na- tional security policy.

Notes

1. Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 3.

2. James M. Smith, “Air Force Culture and Cohesion: Building an Air and Space Force for the Twenty-First Century,” Airpower Journal 12, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 40–53.

3. Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 2004), 7.

4. Ibid., 12–13. 5. Ibid., 14. 6. Ibid., 15.

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

7. Ibid., 17. 8. James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New

York: Basic Books, 1989), 91. The idea of organizational “personality” is also the dominant metaphor throughout Carl H. Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

9. Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (April 1986): 277.

10. Kim S. Cameron and Robert E. Quinn, Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Cul- ture: Based on the Competing Values Framework (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1999), 14.

11. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 25. 12. Ibid., 28. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 31. Schein attributes the expression “theories-in-use” to the work of Chris Argyris. 15. Ibid., 87. 16. Ibid., 32. 17. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chi-

cago, 1996). This connection between organizational culture and scientific paradigms is made explicitly in Jeffrey W. Legro, “Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II,” International Security 18, no. 4 (Spring 1994):116.

18. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 10. 19. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 8. 20. Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: The

Brookings Institution, 1974), 39. Halperin speaks of organizational “essence,” which is similar to this study’s definition of “culture.” See also Wilson, Bureaucracy, 101.

21. Wilson, Bureaucracy, 101. 22. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 39. 23. Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between

the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984) and Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, 1999).

24. Jeffrey W. Legro, “Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II,” 110. 25. Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 46. 26. Williamson Murray, “Does Military Culture Matter?” Orbis 43, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 34. 27. Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca,

NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 19. 28. For further commentary on the need to disaggregate the military into its culturally

significant components, see Theo Farrell, “Figuring Out Fighting Organisations: The New Or- ganisational Analysis in Strategic Studies,” Journal of Strategic Studies 19, no. 1 (1996): 122–35; Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 14; Adam N. Stulberg and Michael D. Salomone, Managing Defense Transformation: Agency, Culture and Service Change (Burlington, VT: Ash- gate, 2007), 20; and Jeffrey Legro, Cooperation under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint during World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).

29. James Smith, “Air Force Culture and Cohesion,” 41. 30. Larry R. Donnithorne, The West Point Way of Leadership: From Learning Principled

Leadership to Practicing It (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1994), 20–22. 31. Kier, Imagining War, 29. 32. Builder, The Masks of War, 3.

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

33. Ibid., 5. 34. John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Ma-

laya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 35. Legro, “Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II.” 36. Ibid., 117. 37. Ibid., 126. This case is made at length in Legro, Cooperation under Fire. 38. Kier, Imagining War, 38. Zisk undertakes a similar cultural analysis of Soviet doctrinal

development in Kimberly M. Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Mili- tary Innovation, 1955-1991 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

39. Builder, The Masks of War, 6. 40. Stulberg and Salomone, Managing Defense Transformation, 24. 41. Chris Argyris, quoted in Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 31. 42. Builder, The Masks of War, 19. 43. Smith, “Air Force Culture and Cohesion,” 13. 44. Perry M. Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace, 1943-1945 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hop-

kins Press, 1970), 18. 45. Quoted in Carl H. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the

Evolution and Fate of the U.S. Air Force (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 162. 46. There were pockets of enthusiasm for both systems, but the institutional inertia weighed

against them. The story of Air Force corporate resistance to the ICBM is detailed in Neil Shee- han, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon (New York: Random House, 2009). For a discussion of resistance to both systems based on organizational identity, see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

47. Quoted in Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 163. 48. Builder, The Masks of War, 22. For a current lament on the age of Air Force aircraft, see

Thomas Ehrhard, An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2009), accessed 18 Feb 2010, http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/ PubLibrary/R.20090917.An_Air_Force_Strat/R.20090917.An_Air_Force_Strat.pdf.

49. Ibid., 22. 50. Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace, 52. 51. For additional observations of the primacy of technology, see Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.,

“Understanding Airmen: A Primer for Soldiers,” Military Review, September–October 2007; and Michael Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals: The Problem of Air Force Leadership, 1945- 1982 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1998), 36.

52. Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace, 17. 53. David MacIsaac, Strategic Bombing in World War Two: The Story of the United States

Strategic Bombing Survey (New York: Garland, 1976). 54. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 17. 55. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, 239. 56. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 31. 57. Andrei Cherny, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s

Finest Hour (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008), 511. 58. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 31. 59. Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 251–52. 60. Ibid., 180.

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THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

61. Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989), 203.

62. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, 180. 63. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 43. 64. Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and

American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 299. Echoed in Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 169.

65. Dag Henriksen, NATO’s Gamble: Combining Diplomacy and Airpower in the Kosovo Crisis, 1998-1999 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007).

66. Quoted in Paul C. Strickland, “USAF Aerospace-Power Doctrine: Decisive or Coer- cive?” Aerospace Power Journal 14, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 13–25.

67. Dunlap, “Understanding Airmen,” 127. 68. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, 291. 69. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 161. 70. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 145. 71. “Adverse yaw” refers to an aerodynamic property in which an aircraft’s rolling motion

in one direction creates a yawing motion in the opposite direction. 72. The discussion of this tenet does not impugn the patriotic motives of any Air Force

member but paints a broad outline of historic trends across the service. 73. Builder, The Masks of War, 37. 74. Ibid., 23. 75. Smith, “Air Force Culture and Cohesion,” 22. 76. “Occupational” orientation refers to a primary loyalty to the task or occupation,

whereas an “institutional” orientation gives chief loyalty to the institution itself over the task performed within that institution.

77. For greater historical background on the genesis of this subculture phenomenon, see Builder, The Icarus Syndrome.

78. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 35. 79. Melanie Streeter, “ ‘We’ve Been Waiting’ Campaign Returns to Television,” Airman, No-

vember 2004, 9. 80. Quoted in Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 235. 81. Edward C. Mann, Thunder and Lightning: Desert Storm and the Airpower Debates

(Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1995), 163. 82. For a full discussion of this time period, see Jeffrey G. Barlow, Revolt of the Admirals:

The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945–1950 (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1998). 83. Builder, The Masks of War, 27. 84. Greg Jaffe, “Combat Generation: Drone Operators Climb on Winds of Change in the Air

Force,” Washington Post, 28 February 2010, accessed 1 March 2010, http://www.washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703754.html.

85. Quoted in Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 5. 86. Ibid., 10. 87. Ehrhard, “An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul,” 28. 88. Dunlap, “Understanding Airmen,” 126. 89. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals. 90. This assertion is intended to clarify a useful level of analysis. While studying civil-

military relations at the service level adds value to the literature, parsing the Air Force even further (to the subculture level) would unhelpfully complicate the analysis.

91. Cameron and Quinn, Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture, 14.

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