Civilian and Military Organizational Competencies This Essay

Civilian and Military Organizational Competencies

This essay examines instances of planning for and implementation of information technology in civilian and military organizations that require similar organizational competencies.

When the military adopted A-staff restructuring, it not only implemented standard business practices to improve communications and efficiency, it also communicated the news as many businesses would. The Air Force Print News website provided details of the realignment to the A-staff structure, much as a business' newsletter would communicate a similar organizational change. The article discusses the Air Force adoption of the organizational structure that closely mirrors the Army's G-staff, the Navy's N-staff and the joint J-staff. According to Brig. Gen Sabol, the effort helps the Air Force optimize internal communications as well as helps them communicate more efficiently with other services (Lopez, 2006).

The affected Air Force functions were to be re-named and realigned so that similar functions at all levels were referred to by the same name. According to Lopez, those same functional groupings would closely match other services and the joint staff. Similar functions at all levels were to be re-mapped to nine standardized A-staff areas of responsibility. The A-8 level designates Strategic Plans and Programs, which includes financial management. General Sabol stressed that the reorganization would make it easier for Airmen to do their jobs, both within the Air Force and the joint environment. By adopting the staff structure, the Air Force eliminated the difficulty sometimes encountered when leadership at one headquarters attempted to contact functional counterparts at another headquarters (Lopez, 2006).

Price's article also discusses the Air Force realignment of internal processes in terms that are particularly similar to business process realignment. The goal of realignment activities is to create more efficient operations in staff and field activities by improving internal organizations and processes. One of the ways that the reorganization achieves this is by making key staff relationships more visible The article focuses on financial management functions, and it could well be describing the finance unit of any large corporation: working capital, costing, systems and technology, financial services, analysis and budgeting (Price, 2004).

Like any good business manager, Price effectively makes the case for the proposed changes to achieve the buy-in of stakeholders and others. He cites the need for American taxpayer support for defense budgets, and explains how the A-staff organization is specifically designed to promote warrior-oriented decision making. The article also describes the effect the realignment will have across organizations, and given that the A-staff structure could be implemented Air Force wide, this is a strong selling point (Price, 2004).

Price also spells out the benefits of the changes. Implementing the A-staff structure will keep like functions aligned within the Air Force comptroller community. Having professional comptrollers in A-8 leadership positions will allow them to play a leadership role in reengineering MAJCOM staff organizations. The result will be a warrior-oriented structure with solid financial management expertise in every level of the A-8 team. The information that Price discusses underscores that civilian and military management best practices for optimizing financial management are very similar in this instance.

"Managing Supply Chains" (2003) also highlights best practices for both civilian and military organizations, focusing in particular on what the different organization types could learn from each other. Supply chain management, as defined by BusinessDictionary.com, requires the commitment of supply chain partners to work closely to coordinate order generation, order taking, and order fulfillment. As a result, supply chain partners create an extended enterprise spreading far beyond the producer's location ("Supply Chain Management," 2011).

Following the 9/11 attacks, it was critically important to streamline the military's supply-chain system, exploit information technology and slash costs by adopting business practices from the corporate world. About the same time, business leaders recognized that there was something to be learned from studying the military, for which logistics there is no parallel in the commercial world.

According to "Managing Supply Chains," the Department of Defense has long funded major research to improve logistics. Over the past 15 years, the commercial world has developed innovations in supply-chain management, including methods that exploit information technology systems to streamline and monitor business processes. The article quotes William Pagonis, Sears logistics executive and retired Army logistics expert "IT technology has jumped so dramatically in the last 20 years and particularly in the past five years that the DoD is finding it better to go out and get technology from the civilian sector" (2003). Borrowing technology between civilian and military managements shows the convergence between the two.

The military has looked to the commercial world for ideas on efficiency and continuous process improvement in other logistical areas as well, resulting in the Army's adoption of Lean and Six Sigma, two independently developed improvement tools. Army Materiel Command officials first used the tools developed at Toyota and Motorola respectively to better wage the global war on terrorism and enable transformation (Reese, 2006).

Another aspect where basic competencies between civilian and military organizations are similar is the way in which the military and companies like Wal-Mart approach sustainability and supply chain management. According to military logistics experts, the specialized military supply-chain consists of three tiers:

The first tier supports movement of commodities such as food, medicine, and clothing (the equivalent of Wal-Mart's operations)

The second tier supports transport of major components such as weapons systems that require maintenance over time