Managing complex situations under uncertainty: flexibility or rule compliance? Evidence from the eighteenth-century naval battles of Chesapeake and Saintes

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study is to identify a resilient mode of management for a leader driving a system composed of different units (e.g., a fighting system) in a context where the complexity of a situation, time pressure, uncertainty, and the risk of irreversible errors constrain the possibilities of action. From a theoretical framework on reliability – the Highly Reliable Organization (HRO) and the Sensemaking approaches, which are close to each other but diverge in compliance with rules in degraded situations – we seek to analyze the factors supporting the reliability of different systems. To drive this analysis, we studied the behavior of leaders during two naval battles between the French and British fleets in the 18th century. The results, derived from the analysis of the logbooks, underline that a flexible approach – through procedural improvisation – is more relevant than compliance with rules in this specific context. From a theoretical point of view, the results provide a hierarchy of sources of reliability developed by the Sensemaking approach. Our findings also highlight that dynamic coupling (coupling/decoupling) can be a resilient management mode for systems composed of several units.

KEYWORDS:

• Decision-making process
• leader
• interactions
• resilience
• coupled system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The 3 other sources of reliability are ‘respectful interactions’, ‘attitude of wisdom’, ‘a well-functioning system of roles’

2. “ If we chose to study De Grasse’s decision-making process more specifically, this should not evade the controversies after the battle at the Chesapeake, dealing with the consequences that could have been different if de Grasse had blocked the British fleet on the spot, a debate supported in particular by the historians such as Chadwick (1916) and Larrabee (1964). Indeed, other analyses gave broader interpretation of the event other than the sole prism of De Grasse’s study. For example, from a British point of view, discrepancies also existed between officers within the English fleet, that were likely to influence the Flagship way of command (Hood was subordinate to Rodney, with whom he did not get on well and who also had to collaborate with Drake). Criticism between the flagship and his subordinates was sharp: Rodney was quick to criticize Hood in letters sent to London and, when the defeat of the Chesapeake battle set them against each other, Graves did not hesitate in 1783 to denounce the escape of Hood’s ships, which had been chased for three days by the French. If Hood’s point of view is the one that has prevailed in British historiography, his behavior during the battle also drew strong criticism. Breen’s (1980) article in ‘The Mariner’s Mirror’ pointed to Hood’s inaction, and prompted a response from Sullivan in the same journal, a controversy recently still developed by Duffy in 2009.

3. The Saintes is a group of islands located between Guadeloupe and Dominica in the West Indies.

4. Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763–1783): Tome 1, L’instrument naval, (2013), publié sous la dir d’Olivier Chaline, PUPS Marines de la guerre d’indépendance américaine (1763–1783): Tome 2, L’opération navale, (2018), publié sous la dir d’Olivier Chaline, PUPS

5. After having collected testimonies from more than three hundred survivors of the battle and deliberated for three months, the council of war finally ended with the condemnation of Bougainville. This judicial condemnation of Bougainville was coupled with the moral condemnation of de Grasse, at least in France.

6. Especially for the French fleet

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sophie Le Bris

Dr Sophie Le Bris, a teacher & researcher at the French Naval Academy since 2005, works in the LEGO laboratory (University of Western Brittany). Her researches focus on decision-making processes, resilience and reliability in context of crisis. In 2018, she founded the Resilience & Leadership Chair which she has led eversince with the support of the French Naval Academy, the University of Western Brittany, Rennes 1 University and its partners, Naxicap, Safran and BFM.