New sources of military change – armed forces as normal organizations

Abstract

The literature on how European states have adapted to the post-cold war security environment ffocuses invariably on different understandings of military transformation, a process which is seen as inherently different from other forms of organizational change. However, as this paper argues, new management practices, going back to the introduction of so-called New Public Management (NPM) reforms throughout Europe in the 1980s, have eventually penetrated also the last bastion of the old state – the defense sector. Taking a critical approach to the idea of military transformation and existing theories of military change, the paper demonstrates how other international developments have pushed towards what may be seen as a “normalization” of Europe’s defense sectors. This has important implications for how we approach and understand change in contemporary defense organizations.

Keywords:

• Defense reform
• New Public Management
• transformation
• innovation
• military change

Funding

This work was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Defence.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The use of the term “defence organization” is a conscious choice and incorporates the whole of the defense sector. The term “military organization” tends to be too narrow, and suggests a dated and largely artificial separation between policy-makers, military professionals, defense bureaucrats, and the like.

2. For an overview of the debate, see Norheim-Martinsen (2013, pp. 79–82).

3. On the relationship between the RMA, transformation and military innovation, see Adamsky and Bjerga (2012).

4. According to Huntington, officers and soldiers ought to represent apolitical servants of the state. Their sole purpose is to fight and win the nation’s wars, which is the “functional imperative” or criterion by which the quality of the armed forces ought to be measured, not the political end for which it fights. Huntington’s answer to the question of how to create effective armed forces under proper civilian control is, therefore, a strict division of labour between political decision-making and military implementation. He calls this “objective control.”

5. According to Janowitz, proper civilian control and effective use of the armed forces can only be achieved by political integration and education of the officer corps. This cannot be achieved by separation, because of the inevitable political and social impact of the military establishment on civil society.