66 March-April 2008 MILITARY REVIEW
Colonel Christopher R. Paparone, U.S. Army, Retired, Ph.D.
and Colonel George Reed, U.S. Army, Retired, Ph.D.
Christopher R. Paparone, Colonel,
U.S. Army, Retired, is an associate
professor in the Army Command and
General Staff College’s Department
of Logistics and Resource Opera-
tions at Fort Lee, Virginia. He holds
a B.A. from the University of South
Florida; master’s degrees from the
Florida Institute of Technology, the
U.S. Naval War College, and the Army
War College; and a Ph.D. in public ad-
ministration from Pennsylvania State
University. On active duty he served
in various command and staff posi-
tions in the continental United States,
Panama, Saudi Arabia, Germany,
and Bosnia.
George E. Reed, Colonel, U.S. Army,
Retired, is an associate professor at
the University of San Diego’s School
of Leadership and Education Scienc-
es. He holds a B.S. from Central Mis-
souri State University, an M.F.S. from
George Washington University, and
a Ph.D. from Saint Louis University.
As a military police ofcer, COL Reed
served in a variety of command and
staff positions. In his nal assignment
on active duty, he was the director of
Command and Leadership Studies at
the U.S. Army War College. COL Reed
coined the well-known concept “toxic
leadership” in an article of the same
name in the July-August 2004 issue
of
Military Review
.
_____________
PHOTO: by U.S. Air Force, TSGT
Adrian Cadiz.
V
OLATILITY, UNCERTAINTY, COMPLEXITY, AND AMBIGUITY
characterize the contemporary operational environment (COE), requir-
ing military professionals to continuously reflect on the roles, norms, and
values of their craft.
1
An apparent accelerated rate of change in the security
environment makes it increasingly difficult to predict national security
opportunities and threats, and the skills and capabilities needed to address
both.
2
Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom have demonstrated
the need for rapid change in tactics, techniques, and procedures and our
overall approach to campaigning. They have proven that the more complex
the COE, the more the body of professional military knowledge must remain
in a state of purposeful instability.
One can define “professional knowledge” as information that members of
the profession believe provides meaning and value in promoting understanding
of how things work in their field.
3
A profession constructs and shares its unique
body of abstract knowledge through social processes. Over time, the existing
body of knowledge and the ongoing socio-professional processes that create and
maintain it come to constitute paradigmatic thought, a model of effectiveness.
4
As theorist Donald Schön has observed, the network of experts and organi-
zational leaders and the clients they serve who accept this model believe the
paradigm to be so unique that laymen can neither understand nor apply it.
5
Don Snider of the U.S. Military Academy deserves credit for renewing
interest in the notion of the Army as a professional institution. Snider rightly
raises a number of questions about the state of the profession. In two editions
of The Future of the Army Profession, Snider and his co-authors express
concern over the degree to which bureaucratic hierarchy is supplanting
professionalism.
6
Through these edited works we are reacquainted with
the essential elements of professions, specifically, that they are “exclusive
occupational groups applying somewhat abstract knowledge to particular
cases.”
7
It is hard to overemphasize the importance of abstract knowledge to
professions. Snider argues that healthy professions deliberately control and
develop their bodies of knowledge to service their clients and to compete
for dominance in a professional jurisdiction.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the rst time.
—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
