A former Army officer and Gulf War veteran takes a critical look at the adverse effects of downsizing on the U.S. Army. Though executed with compassion and precision, downsizing undermines morale and threatens the Army at its core. David McCormick demonstrates how the Army's experience in downsizing is instructive for all organizations--government, corporate, and nonprofit alike.

An Industrial Age model continues to shape the way the Army approaches its recruiting, personnel management, training, and education. This outdated personnel management paradigm—designed for an earlier era—has been so intimately tied to the maintenance of Army culture that a self-perpetuating cycle has formed, diminishing the Army's attempts to develop adaptive leaders and institutions. This cycle can be broken only if the Army accepts rapid evolutionary change as the norm of the new era. Recruiting the right people, then having them step into an antiquated organization, means that many of them will not stay as they find their ability to contribute and develop limited by a centralized, hierarchical organization. Recruiting and retention data bear this out. Several factors have combined to force the Army to think about the way it develops and nurtures its leaders. Yet, Vandergriff maintains, mere modifications to today's paradigm may not be enough. Today's Army has to do more than post rhetoric about adaptability on briefing slides and in literature. One cannot divorce the way the Army accesses, promotes, and selects its leaders from its leadership-development model. The Army cannot expect to maintain leaders who grasp and practice adaptability if these officers encounter an organization that is neither adaptive nor innovative. Instead, Army culture must become adaptive, and the personnel system must evolve into one that nurtures adaptability in its policies, practices, and beliefs. Only a detailed, comprehensive plan where nothing is sacred will pave the way to cultural evolution.

For more than 40 years, U.S. defense policy and the design of military capabilities were driven by the threat to national security posed by the Soviet Union and its allies. As the Soviet Union collapsed, analysts wondered what effect this dramatic change would have upon defense policy and the military capabilities designed to support it. Strangely enough, this development would ultimately have little effect on our defense policy. Over a decade later, American forces are a smaller, but similar version of their Cold War predecessors. The author argues that, despite many suggestions for significant change, the bureaucratic inertia of comfortable military elites has dominated the defense policy debate and preserved the status quo with only minor exceptions. This inertia raises the danger that American military capabilities will be inadequate for future warfare in the information age. In addition, such legacy forces are inefficient and inappropriately designed for the demands of frequent and important antiterrorist and peace operations. Lacquement offers extensive analysis concerning the defense policymaking process from 1989 to 2001, including in particular the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. This important study also provides a set of targeted policy recommendations that can help solve the identified problems in preparing for future wars and in better training for peace operations.

Healing the Downsized Organization is for managers and employees who must make sense of dramatically changed workplaces after reengineering, restructuring, or downsizing. Here are "best practices" from those who are successfully reinventing their organizations and re-creating healthy workplaces. Documented examples from executives, managers, and employees who have bounced back from this challenge reveal how they minimized pain during downsizing and discovered promising possibilities for changed employer-employee relationships. Dramatic profiles of four organizations--representing manufacturing, media journalism, education, and health care--provide lessons you can practice today, whether downsizing is unfolding now or whether it looms in the future. From interviews with CEOs, managers, and employees, you will understand how individuals at all levels have handled the tension between personal and organizational goals, managed the human struggles, and achieved victories as they cut costs and redeployed resources to face competition or changing market conditions. You will learn how these companies and individuals coped with downsizing, including: ¸ how "survivors" regained momentum, focus, and job satisfaction after downsizing ¸ what kinds of company-employee interactions allowed trust to be rebuilt ¸ how managers succeeded in balancing the concerns of those who left and those who stayed ¸ ways to be an effective leader in the transitional period ¸ approaches to forge a new employer-employee social contract for the emerging workplace Healing the Downsized Organization is the recovery book for the downsizing of America.

This accessible handbook is the first of its kind to examine the sociological approach to the study of the military. The contents are compiled from the work of researchers at universities around the world, as well as military officers devoted to the sector of study. Beginning with a review of studies prior to contemporary research, the book provides a comprehensive survey of the topic. The scope of coverage extends to civic-military relations, including issues surrounding democratic control of the armed forces; military culture; professional training; conditions and problems of minorities in the armed forces; an examination of structural change within the military over the years including new duties and functions following the Cold War.