[转载] 解构军队领导（军事评论杂志2004年度最佳）
Deconstructing Army LeadershipColonel Christopher R. Paparone, U.S. Army
Instructor, U.S. Army War College
entists tend to forget that they are and that they are
value-laden and not objective.)2
The key to this critical discourse is to identify underlying
assumptions that might be taken as fact and
then argue for alternative assumptions.3 The
deconstructive process “look for those spaces
where the text is more likely to be submerging ‘its
other.’ It is there that the text is attempting to construct
its own ‘truth’—where it can be shown to
omit, ignore, or devalue its opposite—and where it
is likely to contradict its own claims.”4
Two types of outcomes are possible after
deconstruction. One is that the Army’s current leadership
paradigm will be strengthened because the
paradigm held up well to attack. If so, deconstruction
will be a reinforcing process, and only incremental
changes to the Army’s theory will be necessary.
We can make quality improvements to understanding
the problems at hand within the limits of an
incrementally improved theory of effective leadership.
The second outcome is realizing that the Army’s
assumptions about leadership are myths (or are at
least socially interpretable and based on conflicting
values), and that transcendence to a higher plane
of thinking is required to make new sense of the
world.
Part of the greater societal paradigm is that we
routinely process information to remove paradox;
that is, we eliminate “contradictory yet interrelated
elements . . . that seem logical in isolation but absurd
and irrational when appearing simultaneously.”5
But, when we conceptualize what the paradox is,
the act of conceptualization can serve as a transcendental
mechanism—through a healthy dose of organizational
dissonance. Transformational change
can result from dissonance and incommensurability.
We can reach new ways of framing the problems
of paradox through synthesis and dialectical reasoning
or by accepting paradox as a normal state of
organization.
Mirror Images and Circular Logic
The Army’s leadership construct, rooted in the assumption
of hierarchy, is an example of the stratified
systems theory (SST) proposed by psychologist
Elliott Jaques.6 The essence of the SST is that
hierarchy is the best way to organize for accountability
and control. Discovering what makes leaders
at the top of the hierarchy successful allows
one to train and educate successors in those same
qualities.7 The theory espouses that strategic leaders
at the hierarchy’s higher echelons have frames
of reference that are more—
l Interconnected, sophisticated, and actionoriented.
l Likely to anticipate second- and third-order
effects because their frames of reference contain
complex adaptive systems (networks).
l Oriented on the organization’s external environment.
8
The academe has commented unfavorably on hierarchical
theories of leadership because empirical
evidence has led scholars and practitioners away
from assumptions about performance based on age
and experience and the need for hierarchical accountability.
9 Indeed, the information available to
people who occupy high positions gives them significant
advantages over those who do not have access
to that information, which produces information
asymmetry. Thus, studies confirm that strategic
leaders make better decisions, but such studies rely
on circular logic; for example, the reason strategic
leaders make better decisions is because they are
better informed, and they are better informed because
they are strategic leaders.
Because the Army is hierarchical, it is suitable to
theorize about leadership along these lines of thought.
This is the reality that SST deals with as a normative
and descriptive theory of “what is,” but postindustrial
organizations do not have much in common
with bureaucracies, with their layers of management
and stovepiped functional arrangements.
In the 21st century, it is no longer acceptable to
assume that a leader’s influence on effectiveness
is attributable to his position or rank. An understanding
of leadership requires a much broader, more complex
view of organizational effectiveness. Perhaps
the Army’s hierarchical view of leadership blinds us
to other interpretations. Gary Yukl, a leadership theorist,
makes the point that “viewing leadership in terms
of reciprocal, recursive influence processes among
multiple parties in a systems context is very different
from studying the unidirectional effects of a
single leader on subordinates, and new research
methods may be needed to describe and analyze the
complex nature of leadership processes in a social
system.”10
Studies confirm that strategic leaders
make better decisions, but such studies rely on
circular logic; for example, the reason strategic
leaders make better decisions is because they are
better informed, and they are better informed
because they are strategic leaders.
DECONSTRUCTING
ARMY LEADERSHIP
4 January -February 2004 l MILITARY REVIEW
Having invested heavily in its hierarchical interpretation
of leadership, in the late 1980s the Army
sponsored studies of the characteristics and traits of
three- and four-star generals. The studies defined
effectiveness in terms of the characteristics of “successful”
leaders who had been promoted. In the
same tradition of research, the USAWC surveyed
general officers periodically to determine if officers
who were its graduates were effective as a result
of the college’s efforts to mold them into strategic
leaders.11 Because of this closed-loop thinking, the
Army generated a theory of leadership with an obvious
mirror-image problem. A leader is said to be
effective to the extent that he displays the characteristics
of those who are in positions of power (and,
therefore, presumed to be effective); this is clearly
a case of circular logic.
Army Field Manual (FM) 22-100,
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