Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 5, No. 3: 345-376 (1995)
© 1995 Public Management Research Association
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Coping, Copying, and Concentrating: Organizational Learning and Modernization in Militaries (Case Studies of Israel, Germany, and Britain)
University of Arizona
This article provides a more nuanced understanding of the interaction of complex machines and military organizations. Western nations are currently turning to conventional advanced technologies as alternatives to nuclear weapons as well as solutions to manpower and budget constraints. Yet the long term structural effects are not well understood. Using empirical evidence of organizational learning and changes in the ground forces of Israel, Britain, and Germany, this effort explores the general phenomenon in which complexity in machines drives the directions of organizational adaptation, making the capabilities of military organizations less clearcut. These findings demonstrate that, through support requirements, the knowledge demands of new complex technologies induce uncalculated but rational behaviors at different organizational levels. Fundamental organizational changes result and proceed largely unnoticed. At the senior level, perceptions of promises and costs of technologies produce imitative rationality that is imposed on the rest of the organization, while at the lower levels experience or adaptive rationality generates pressures for more control. As a result, actors at either level can foresee less accurately the organizational consequences of decisions involving these machines. In the longer run, declining control over organizational learning and design can, especially in militaries, set in motion potentially dangerous processes.
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