In the early 1970s the slogan of the “new” Army in their recruitment effort was, “We want to join you.” The recruit of the early 1970s was not the same as the G.I. Joe of the forties, fifties, or sixties. He was generally more educated, and had tasted affluence. He was more mobile, and more aware of what was going on in the world through television and the other media. He had grown up in an atmosphere of greater permissiveness and had been exposed to, and perhaps been part of, a movement of dissent against the establishment and the inflexibility of institutionalized behavior.

Rather than altering the man to fit Army regulations, the Army was altered to suit the man. The Army has become more permissive on codes for hair length and dress, and the possession of beer in barracks and on quarters. It has also extended change to the organization and to the levels of responsibility and authority within the system. An all-volunteer army may maintain the same goals and objectives as a volunteer-selective service army, but policies, standards, practices, and structures will have to be reviewed and probably revised to bring it into line with our present society and the norms of the people expected to serve in such an enterprise.

All these changes were made in the belief that if young men were given an environment they could relate to and make a career of-if they were told about the job and the aims of the organization, allowed to exercise judgment and use their training, if they received recognition for a job well done, if they could maintain their identity as individuals, and if they got fair and equal consideration and treatment they would do a far better job in the service than before.

In many ways the military is an enterprise like business. There is competition among branches of the service just as there is in the automotive or the steel industry. Business, like the military, seeks an environment conducive to efficient human endeavor. The behavioral sciences have also been employed in business to provide insights into such areas as motivation, job satisfaction, performance, and leadership. Both have been concerned with organization which takes the human element into consideration. Both are highly structured. Indeed, military organization is the classic example of the authoritarian line or operational and staff or service structure.

Organization is conditioned by the circumstances that give rise to it, and is therefore subject to changes in these circumstances if it is to attain its purposes. Organization should be thought of as dynamic and responsive to changes in objectives and environment. The earliest forms of organization had only one direction and were highly authoritarian, as in the case of the master and the slave, the chief and the tribe, the king and his subjects. The tasks performed in the earliest organizations were simple and repetitious. Preindustrial organization coordinated undifferentiated operations, and the leader or manager could supervise many persons without Master obscuring the line of authority. Below is a simple line organization, with clear authority directed downward? As technology developed and tasks became more complex, or as distance became a factor, more levels were introduced into the organization. A king was the sovereign ruler, but as he added to his sovereignty through conquest or discovery, he could no longer manage his domain. In order to exercise management over an expanded area, the king appointed a number of dukes to officiate over an area and report back to him. This model could be expanded to include barons reporting to dukes and counts reporting to barons, James D.

Mooney called such a system of levels scalar. It has also been called hierarchal. The scalar principle refers to the vertical division of authority and definite assignment of duties to organizational units, and to differences in level commensurate with grades of authority. In the scheme above, the king has authority over the dukes and the peasants while the dukes oversee only the peasants. While the dukes are on the same level, their functions may differ by area, in other words, agricultural, fishing, hunting, or mining. Mooney then described the short and the long scalar system, depending on the number of levels from top to bottom. The present organization of the U.S. Army, a long scalar system, looks somewhat like figured.

These models reflect organizations which were very autocratic in structure. They were authoritarian, and this is still reflected to some degree today in the military, and the industrial firm. The traditional approach has been called the “machine” model. In it, workers are viewed as automatons who must adjust to their jobs and tasks. The worker is a commodity and is hired and fired at management’s discretion. The model implies that orders go down through the organization, and reports of accomplish are the only ward communications. Max Weber, a German social scientist best known for his work with bureaucracy, was concerned with the function and exercise of power in society and believed that there were three major points of influence:

1. The law and traditional taboos of the society

2. Individual leadership, which he labeled charisma

3. The mass of government administrators, the “bureaucracy”

Because Weber viewed organization from a historical perspective, he envisioned an ideal bureaucracy, a large-scale organization and a power in society. Properly set up, this bureaucracy could provide rational solutions to complex modern prob lems. His ideal type would include:

1. Form: emphasis on the form of organization

2. Hierarchy: each lower office under the control and direction of a higher one

3. Specialization of tasks: positions filled on the basis of merit and ability to perform specialized tasks

4. Sphere of competence: the relationships of the various specializations would be clearly known and practiced

5. Norms of conduct: policies would be designed and implemented to eliminate unpredictable activity

6. Records: all actions, decisions, and rules would be recorded to insure predictable performance in the bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy, as Weber saw it, did not involve red tape but was an orderly form of power structure required to achieve rational human behavior. Weber envisioned the ideal bureaucracy as composed of free men organized and directed by a hierarchy of professionals in a society which used money or currency rather than barter, a complex society where many transactions took place among the members of the organization and the society. The Mooney and Reiley scalar concept of formal organization followed much of Weber’s thinking. Included in their model were:

1. Coordination: unity of action in pursuit of a common purpose

2. Scales: levels of hierarchy

3. Functionalism: the concept of specialization

4. Staff and line: the staff providing advice and ideas, the line representing authority.

Let us look at the staff function. When a firm is relatively small, each manager may be responsible for hiring personnel in his department. As a firm grows, it may be more efficient to employ a specialist to hire people for all departments.

While the rest of the organization remains the same, the new personnel director is inserted between the president and the vice presidents of the three operating divisions as shown below. The personnel director is not in the line, since he has no authority except that which is delegated to him by the president. He assists and advises both the president and the vice presidents. The personnel function may grow and the personnel manager become responsible for those in his charge, so that he takes on line authority for those directly under him. But his department still has a staff function for the rest of the organization.

In time, the personnel function may become so important that it is placed on the same level as the original three, so that the vice president of personnel is on a par with the other vice presidents, and has a larger say than in his staff capacity. Personnel would still provide the services required by the other departments, but it would have equal status in the hierarchy of the firm. And personnel would have a stronger influence in planning and implementation. Staff functions in any enterprise are designed to meet the needs of executives and functional operations. The staff provides information and advice, but has no authority or responsibility for implementing its ideas. If a superior wishes the staff function to have authority and responsibility, he may delegate this authority and place the staff function in a line position. Often the place of the staff is unclear, and it takes on responsibility it has not been given.