ORGANIZATIONAL RESTRUCTURING OF ARMY - AN
ANALYSIS
The Romans said, “ If you would have peace, you must be prepared for
war”. And while we pray for peace, we can never forget that
organization, no less than a bayonet or an aircraft carrier, is a weapon of
war. We owe it to our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen and our marines
to ensure that this weapon is lean enough, flexible enough and tough
enough to help them win if, God forbid, that ever becomes necessary.
From the opening statement by Congressman
Nicolas House Armed Services Committee on the
reorganization of the Department of Defence, USA,
19 Feb 1986.
INTRODUCTION
The next twenty years are likely to see very substantial changes in the nature of all
organizations, whether civilian or military. One important factor facilitating and, to
some extent, driving these changes will be information technology (IT), whose
relentless advance--it is said that the performance/price ratio of Central Processing
Units (CPUs) doubles every 18 months--is not expected to abate any time in the
foreseeable future. As in previous technological revolutions, however, the second-
and third-order effects of the changes will not be felt until organizations adapt and
learn how to take advantage of new capability. We cannot predict how these
changes will evolve, but we can extrapolate from recent trends and argue by analogy
from earlier revolutions in information technology. Although discussion of the
"revolution in military affairs" has centered around the impact of technology on
weapon systems, there are reasons for thinking that more fundamental
improvements in military effectiveness will require, along with doctrinal changes, the
use of aappropriate organizational structures.Technological advances of the
previous decades—tanks, aircrafts capable of giving close air support and mobile
radios-- it also required certain organizational characteristics. Front line Panzer units
could request air support directly from the Luftwaff without having to go through
higher Army echelons. Many of the organizational characteristics of the German
Army –“mission orders” or Auftragstaktik , the assumption of initiative and
responsibility by lower echelons, streamlined administrative and reporting systems--
predated blitzkrieg were consonant with it and were important elements in
contributing to its success. Changes in the ways that commercial organizations do
business have already been tremendous. To an ever-increasing degree, the
economy is moving from an industrial-age model, in which machines and natural
resources are used to produce material product, to the "information-based
organization". Companies as a whole will become smaller; that large, vertically
integrated corporations will either flatten their managerial hierarchies or else evolve
into networks of smaller, more agile firms; that low-skill labour will continue to be
devalued and replaced by work with greater skill and cognitive requirements; and
that self-organized teams will displace individual effort. All corporations will have to
operate in a much more uncertain and chaotic environment and will therefore place a
premium on flexibility, learning, and adaptability..The question is how to structure
