Enhancing Human Performance Background Papers, Social Processes (1988) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 88-130
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Culture and Group Cohesion Boaz Tamir and Gideon Runda Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Why do some military units break while others hold their ground? Answers have varied from Freud~s (1936)
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diverse as the USSR, North Vietnam, Israel, and the United States. Perhaps the most common variable used to explain performance, with appeal to both students and practitioners of military organization, is "cohesion." Grounded in the literature on smallgroup behavior, cohesion refers to the quality of the relationships between members of the small group.
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From page 92... ...
Henderson, for example, suggests that the nature of beliefs and values held by soldiers, as well as the external ideologies contained in their social, ethnic, and national groups of origin, mediate the connection between military structure and cohesion. Cultural variables, however, remain vaguely defined, and are often offered as an afterthought or a commonsensical and often tautological retrospective explanation.
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A groups culture is manifested at three distinct levels (see Table 1: Levels of culture and their interactions) : Artifacts, Values, and Basic Assumptions.
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However, as guides to a group's culture, artifacts require careful and knowledgeable interpretation. For example, in the Israeli army, the dress code of the elite paratrooper unit is very different from that of the tank corps.
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Each of the above is a widely known, frequently articulated, shared value in the Israeli army that either guides behavior in combat in ways that might contradict concern for personal safety and advantage, or serves as a shared standard for evaluating behavior. As we will demonstrate there are myths, explanations, stories, and behaviors that illustrate these values; and despite the many documented examples of incongruent behavior (and even alternative values)
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To get at a deeper and more systematic level that would allow us to decipher behavioral patterns) and predict future behavior, a third level of group performance must be understood -- that which is guided by "basic assumptions." 3.
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This basic assumption is expressed in the oftrepeated and now cliched words of a national poet [Alterman] , who sees the "fallen" as the "silver platter that brought forth the state." These basic assumptions, perhaps less widely shared in Israel today, nevertheless serve as a basis for interpreting historical events, and explaining diverse aspects of Israeli political and military life.
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Superficial statements run the risk of losing the very meaning of the concept of culture or trivializing it to the point where the concept becomes no more valuable than the concept of values or norms.5 Schein suggests a number of dimensions along which basic assumptions can be categorized. These are reproduced in Table i ~ Insert table 3 (Schein 1986, p.
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The vertical dimension of authority relationships reveals the way in which organizations, and specifically military units, perceive the uses of power and power differences between the ranks. The differences between the Cohesive Army" and the Noncohesive Army" that Darryl Henderson (1985)
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In the following section we will briefly outline Schein~s view of the dynamics of cultural change. I Culture as a Dynamic Concept Culture, in Schein~s view, is a dynamic process.
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. Nevertheless, Schein suggests a number of mechanisms of social learning that underlie the dynamics of cultural evolution and change.
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LEADERSHIP according to Schein, is probably the most essential variable in developing a culture. Since social learning is fundamentally an anxiety-reduction process, and military units, particularly in combat, are characterized by high levels of anxiety, the role of leadership in the military becomes all the more important.
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But at different levels culture is changeable: while its artifacts and values are much easier to identify and are more malleable, its basic assumptions are much more difficult to change. It is more likely that the artifacts and values are shaped by its basic assumptions.
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Whatever the social grouping, the degree to which it is characterized by shared basic assumptions, i.e., the degree to which it might be said to have a culture -- is an empirical question. In a complex society, members typically have multiple affiliations, and cultures may be seen as either nested within each other, or as intersecting.
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carrying a defined role within its external societal environment, and also an environment to its internal subinstitutions. This analytical framework defines an organizational system in terms of its orientation to goals and assumes a consensus where members share the institutional goals (or overall social functions)
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As de Tocqueville put it: "The remedy of the vices of the army is not to be found in the army itself, but in the country."9 Thus, only a misinterpretation of what Parsons named the ~valuesystem", or an unawareness of the linkage among the three layers of a culture proposed by Schein can lead to the following conclusion: ...there is nothing in the nature of American social values or in the application of technology which, 'ate initio,' precludes the development of both a military structure in general and an officer corps constituted along traditional lines [i.e., cohortI. Further, one has only to examine the British, French, and Israeli systems to see that the doctrines accompanying social democracy need not hinder the development of a highly cohesive, traditionally based, disciplined, and effective fighting force.10 rather than culture in here perceived as a major factor in determining military cohesiveness.
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From page 108... ...
The basic assumptions, values, and artifacts are, in this respect, the principles crucial to understanding the military, like any other organization that shares an interdependency with its external society. Culture differences between societies, in our view, can provide us with an explanation of the sources that led each army to develop 19
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12. For this discussion we should bear in mind that as an exception to most of the Western democratic states, the US pluralistic system embraces the armed forces as integral administration actors.
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It was used by the American soldiers in Vietnam and consider a major.sign of self destructive phenomena characterizing the US military disintegration in Vietnam war.
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The Palmach was the military arm of the ~Haganan __ the political institution related to the Socialist Zionist political faction in the Zionist movement 15 and was closely related to the Kibbutz movement. Thus, the cohort structure has deep roots in a broader social philosophy; the military patterns of authority are not exceptional.
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Such an artifact reflects strong values and basic assumptions. In a democratic state with open borders it is almost impossible to mobilize an entire society to war without an underlying basic assumption that war is an inevitable result of self-defense.
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: not one actor among others in an pluralistic adminstration. Despite a long tradition of the "Great Muted in May 195B, Ithe French army cast off its instrumental role in an unprecedented (by Western democratic standards ~ military intervention, after its humilia~cion in ache Algeria war.
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.19 The cohesiveness of the IDF was damaged, and it will take years before this social-political trauma will be cured. However, the fragmentation of the Israeli army was never as severe as that of the US army in Vietnam.
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A good military planner would never develop a tactic that is not rooted in a larger strategy; in the same way an army's culture cannot be separated from its external society. Furthermore, if we accept basic assumptions as the centra' axis for the dissemination of cultural values and artifacts, then it follows that army cohesiveness can be achieved through harmony with broader social trends.
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managed. In order to illustrate the weakness of the structural-functionalist explanation for the linkage among military structure, cohesiveness, and performance at the divisional level, we will compare the two competing combat offensive tactics applied during the Golan Heights combat between Syrian and Israeli armored divisions in the 1973 Middle East War.
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The freedom to react and adapt to a changing environment without getting a particular order to do so was an expected norm of Israeli combat tactics. Both of these military offensive tactics reflect a particular pattern of culture.
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The pattern of the Israeli offensive tactics, in contrast, embodies decentralized and informal decision-making processes. Here social cohesion is necessary, and lack of individual innovation and local discretion will prevent the army from achieving its mission.
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Even units which had not been trained as a cohort could keep their cohesiveness. This fighting spirit was bound together by common values and basic assumptions that are rooted in individual commitment, broad skill definition, and a broad national consensus.
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A typical Syrian tank crew as part of an armored division offensive must follow the leading tank into the front line. The rule is that if the leading tank is destroyed, the remaining tanks must bypass it into the front and keep to the offensive.
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In this system of narrow job definitions, nobody in the tank crew can take over if the commander is injured, and his well-being is necessary for the crew to keep operating. When a commander is disabled the crew loses its ability to function and hence the commander must be protected to the same extent as the other crew members.
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From page 122... ...
The artifacts of a Syrian tank crew would, among other things, consist of strict hierarchical bureaucracy to an inflexible response to changing combat conditions, and restricted predefined individual roles based on narrow job definitions. The tight Syrian hierarchical control is marked by a reluctance to be creative or innovative, and by a desire to follow the path of least resistance.
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In other words, within a culture of narrow job definition, the tank driver should listen only to the tank commander: The function of the driver is explicit and as such his radio system should be channeled only to his tank commander. In an Israeli tank, technically each crew member can listen to all channels to which the tank commander is listening.21 The assumption underlying the last two examples is that each Israeli individual in combat should have a large amount of accurate information about the combat, both before and during his unit's operation.
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From page 124... ...
In sum, we can confidently assume that further examination of a military unit's basic assumption that would reveal related behavioral and performance variables. Social cohesion, based on common values and basic assumptions, rather on a particular structure in such a unit is fundamental for implementing the mission.
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CONCLUSION In this essay we used Schein's (1985) model of organizational culture to explore the relationship of cultural variables and military cohesion.
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of the causes of a particular social action is analogous to designing a military unit for an environment characterized by a lack of ambiguity, "plain, n nclean" and specific combat. Such an approach suffers from an overdeterministic view of human behavior.
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suggest successful outcomes. In Schein's view, basic assumptions -- learned ways of viewing the world -- often constrain or enhance organizational performance independently of other variables.
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decisions, as well as those of organizational strategies and policies. For example, an analysis of the new COHORT MANNING system that considers Schein's culture framework will provide both the policy-maker and the military scholar with an important dimension that is missing from the structural-functionalist perspective.
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T relations between structure and performance COHORT is necessary but not sufficient condition for attaining military horizontal-cohesion. Thus, cohesion might disrupted by contradictory basic assumptions.
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socialization in a Cohort unit is designed in an attempt to "break" the individual as a private citizen, and remold him as a member of a cohesive unit. A conflict between the values of a person as a citizen and as a soldier could be developed.
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