Abstract
This article is a response to a recent publication by Hasselbladh and Ydén in this journal, entitled “Why Military Organizations Are Cautious About Organizational Learning?” Through their use of dichotomous logic, the authors argue continuous learning poses a threat to the functioning of military organizations. The following commentary argues for a necessary coexistence between the mainstays of the traditional bureaucratic military organization presented by Hasselbladh and Ydén and continuous learning required by military organizations to compete and cope with technological advancements and gray zone challenges afforded by the modern operating environment.
In their recent article “Why Military Organizations Are Cautious About Learning?” Hasselbladh and Ydén (2020) represent military organizations and the way they learn and operate as a fait accompli. The authors argue that military organizations, like traditional bureaucratic organizations, adopt a rationality that is amenable to routine, consistency, and predictability—as a means to impose order on chaotic or disorderly settings and situations. This is a very structural-functionalist argument which on the surface does hold some validity. After all, routine, consistency, and order are valuable mechanisms that enable organizations to function, and this is especially the case for high-reliability organizations (Weik & Sutcliffe, 2007), wherein the management and mitigation of risk is paramount. To this end, it is sensible for military organizations to be cautious—but not overly cautious. However, the authors adopt a simplistic dichotomous logic to support their argument. Military organizations are viewed as being antithetical to learner-centric organizations which are characterized as being agile, flexible, adaptive proponents of continuous learning. With their organizational preferences for reproducing stability and imposing order on external environments, the authors argue military organizations are better placed to operate within conditions of disorder, uncertainty, and unpredictability. In contrast, capacities for continuous learning and adaptation pose a threat to the functioning of military organizations and, as such, should be treated with caution.
There are, however, some obvious problems with applying this dichotomous logic. Namely, this logic presents an oversimplified view of entities, systems, processes, and people, in the process demarcating “worlds into relatively static, mutually exclusive, either-or options” (Berlin, 1990) limiting possibilities for agency. Rather than locking military organizations into fixed states of being which privilege standardized thinking and practice which limits the potential for learning and adaptation, a somewhat more pragmatic response would be to embrace dialectic thinking—a coexistence perspective whereby structural arrangements which produce conformity and certainty can operate alongside agile/learning arrangements. It then becomes more of a case as to when and where these arrangements come to the fore. A certain level of conformity and consistency is necessary for military organizations to function, particularly during operations, whereby conformity and consistency may be a source of stability, unification, and comfort in challenging times. However, although not every aspect of a military organization needs to constantly change and adapt, requirements for specialization, integration, strategic thinking and planning, and rapidly changing threat environments do necessitate capacities for learning and adaptation. Moreover, certain capabilities within the military such as information warfare and psychological, special, and influence operations all require capacities for adaptation, creativity, and agility. Hasselbladh and Ydén (2020) argue that traditional military organizations promote robustness and resilience in the face of uncertainty, but the same can be said for learning which also promotes robustness and resilience in ways that can assist organizations to better navigate successful outcomes in conditions of uncertainty. Would a loss of agility be a better option?
For a recent article on organizational learning in military organizations, the authors seem heavily focused on the traditional structure and function of military organizations—structures and functions which enable militaries to meet and dispense lethal force and secure territorial occupation as part of kinetic conflict. Hasselbladh and Ydén (2020) state, “[w]ar implies killing in a controlled manner and correspondingly be exposed to similar risks” (p. 479). Other than the International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan example, the article makes little if any comment on modern conceptualizations of the exigencies faced by today’s military organizations. The changing geopolitical context and increasingly complex operational environment necessitate a greater focus on learning and adaptation. This is especially the case for influence operations and disruptive “gray zone” activities—activities that occur below the threshold of conflict. The gray zone refers, in part, to a contested information space where multiple entities, state and nonstate actors alike, compete to maintain control over ideas, messages, and information (Matisek, 2017; Morris et al., 2019; Pettyjohn & Wasser, 2019). With their emphasis on cultural reproduction and certainty generation, the rigid military structures favored by Hasselbladh and Ydén (2020) promote rigid thinking. Agile and novel thinking, however, is required to combat/counter malign influence activities and blunt the efficacy of misinformation and disinformation campaigns—not “cognitive rigidity” (p. 476).
The authors also associate notions of military success with control over temporal considerations and places. For example, “[s]uccess is invariably conditioned on the ability to occupy or avoid certain spaces and on coordinating resources to achieve superiority at a particular place and the ability to impose your choices of time and space on your adversary” (Hasselbladh and Ydén, 2020, p. 482). What if superiority or control can’t be achieved? The goals of gray zone activities and, for that matter, irregular warfare and information operations activities are primarily concerned with shaping the ideas, feelings, and behaviors of others. Gray zone activities can also involve generating chaos out of order across online and off-line spaces. These activities foster distrust and threaten social cohesion. It is a context in which time and space become blurred and cause and effect relationships are hard to establish and are less important to some extent. Thus, the “logic of external conflict” (Boëne, 1990, in Hasselbladh & Ydén, 2020, p. 481) takes on new forms within gray zone spaces as disruptive activities may originate from internal and external sources alike, within and across nation-state boundaries, from multiple actors with disparate motivations and targets. Moreover, authority-based sensemaking that follows universal laws and antiquated “institutional habits” (Kay, 2016) will only get you so far. These spaces demand adaptability. Military organizations need to be able to instill and promote new ways of thinking and operating within its personnel to effectively deal with these challenges.
To address these challenges, the Australian military seeks to develop the “intellectual edge” in its personnel. This edge entails, in part, enhancing the creative and critical thinking capacities of personnel so that they are able to “outthink and outplan” their adversaries (Ryan, 2020). Operating in tandem with training and education regimes designed to improve individual cognitive performance are a variety of institutional mechanisms, technological innovations, and cultural incentives, which not only support individual learning but also organizational learning and adaptation (Ryan, 2019 a, 2019b). Similarly, traces of this intellectual edge can be found in Kay’s (2016) notion of “smart growth”—the nurturing of intellectual strength and cognitive capacities through tailored officer training and development programs to assist personnel to navigate successfully within gray zones. These observations connote a somewhat different mindset to the one afforded to cautious military organizations. Both Kay and Ryan are calling for a less reactive and retrospective stance toward individual and organizational learning in favor of a more proactive, anticipatory/sensing, and imaginary stance. Learning will also come to the fore as the desire for humans to work alongside machines and technology in symbiotic ways increases. This is particularly the case in instances where there are perceived benefits for artificial intelligence and human–machine interfaces to assist the decision-making capacities of military personnel (Ryan, 2020).
The sheer size of a military capability, the associated concentration of force, and technological superiority enabling rapid and massive precision strikes are often associated with operational success—winning battles through “might.” However, battles are also won through the element of surprise, deception, generating paralysis inducing confusion, and through understanding societal vulnerabilities which render populations defenseless without the necessity for outright force (Sirén, 2013). To this end, the intellectual edge may prove to be an equalizer of sorts in those instances where combatants lack the weapon and technological superiority of their adversaries. Whatever the case, fostering this edge in personnel will require an organizational commitment to continuous learning and development and reflexive practice. Again, this learning and development would not be applied in a unilateral manner but tailored to meet the emergent needs of relevant roles and functions.
Routine, enculturation, socialization, standardization, formalization, stability and conformity, or the “reproducing mechanisms” Hasselbladh and Ydén (2020) refer to are essential for efficiency and survival in military contexts. For the authors, these mechanisms are not only a response to complexity but also represent a pragmatic response to a series of historical constraints faced by military personnel. In this respect, the authors represent continuous learning as an impediment to the performance of long-standing military tasks: …the number of distinctly different tasks that a single organization can be expected to handle in a professional manner (including “lessons learned” processes) should not be overestimated. If tasks within organizations start to differ significantly, the standard organizational response is specialization and division of labor, not expecting existing staff or units to possess a near limitless capacity to learn and unlearn as they go along. (p. 483)
The codification of knowledge and the formalization of learning promote organizational memory and the reproduction of organizational values and norms. As Hasselbladh and Ydén note, military organizations do have rigorous processes in place to identify, collect, store, and disseminate information/lessons. It is when these lessons are used to inform thinking and are applied in a timely and consistent manner to improve the performance and adaptive capacities of organizations that organizational learning occurs. To this end, effective organizational learning processes would enable military organizations to better respond to unpredictable operational environments faster than an adversary or competitor (Garvin et al., 2008).
Hasselbladh and Ydén argue that military organizations struggle with instituting learning due to inconsistencies in documenting experiences over time. Cultural preferences for certainty, stability, and routinized practice also suggest a bias toward retrospective learning in traditional military organizations. When coupled with an action orientation that promotes leaping to solutions and action, single-loop learning predominates. This results in lesson systems that are out of step with the activities of personnel and repeating what has been done before (including mistake making) rather than double-loop learning—challenging the underlying assumptions and values underpinning practice (Argyris & Schon, 1996). In this respect, we concur with Soeters’s (2020) observations vis-à-vis the continuous improvement opportunities afforded military organizations by organizational learning. Indeed, we contend that organizational learning provides military organizations with a competitive advantage enabling them to stay one step ahead of an adversary who doesn’t play by the rules.
Conclusion
Hasselbladh and Ydén present continuous learning as inherently risky and hazardous to the health of the military organization and, as such, something which needs to be treated with caution. To make their point, the authors identify several flaws associated with the conservative learning practices, values and expectations observed in military organizations, but view these flaws as being more desirable to the supposed disruptive qualities afforded to continuous learning. By arguing for the status quo, the authors present an overly negative bias with respect to the learning capabilities inherent to military organizations, downplaying military capacities for learner-driven adaptation. In doing so, they represent military organizations as unchangeable entities that are impervious to the challenges posed by the external environment. Such a stance flies in the face of strategic thinking and planning and associated force structure reviews that seek to modify military practice in accordance with learning from operations, emergent priorities, and threats.
Ironically, through their pleas for caution, Hasselbladh and Ydén highlight the limitations of military functionalism and the imposition of order on disorder (and possibly risk aversion) in the process presenting a compelling case for continuous learning and agility. More importantly, rather than being viewed as antithetical states, learning and continuity should be regarded as complimentary pursuits allowing military organizations to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
