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[转载] 解构军队领导（军事评论杂志2004年度最佳）

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发表于 2005-9-5 16:50:00 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

Deconstructing Army Leadership Colonel 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[s] 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,