The primary structural characteristics of the phalanx formation are its width, its depth and its density, while there are many other secondary ones - structural, functional, psychological - and of ...extreme importance nonetheless: weaponry, shock/striking weight, flexibility, mobility, coherence, durability, collective protection and cost. The interaction among all these features produced the winner in symmetric confrontations (phalanx against phalanx, of similar or different type and tactics) and the verdict in asymmetric ones (like hoplites against tribal warriors). This paper, based on primary sources so as to avoid the haze of later interpretation, aims to review the identity of the phalanx formation focusing on various aspects: the creation, function and comparative weight of the mechanics/dynamics, the importance of the initiative, the phases of struggle, the individual combat skills and the G-factor (generalship).
On the eve of the Civil War, the Regular Army of the United States was small, dispersed, untrained for large-scale operations, and woefully unprepared to suppress the rebellion of the secessionist ...states. Although the Regular Army expanded significantly during the war, reaching nearly sixty-seven thousand men, it was necessary to form an enormous army of state volunteers that overshadowed the Regulars and bore most of the combat burden. Nevertheless, the Regular Army played several critically important roles, notably providing leaders and exemplars for the Volunteers and managing the administration and logistics of the entire Union Army. In this first comprehensive study of the Regular Army in the Civil War, Clayton R. Newell and Charles R. Shrader focus primarily on the organizational history of the Regular Army and how it changed as an institution during the war, to emerge afterward as a reorganized and permanently expanded force. The eminent, award-winning military historian Edward M. Coffman provides a foreword.
The modern US Army as we know it was largely created in the years between the two world wars. Prior to World War I, officers in leadership positions were increasingly convinced that building a new ...army could not take place as a series of random developments but was an enterprise that had to be guided by a distinct military policy that enjoyed the support of the nation. In 1920, Congress accepted that idea and embodied it in the National Defense Act. In doing so it also accepted army leadership’s idea of entrusting America’s security to a unique force, the Citizen Army, and tasked the nation’s Regular Army with developing and training that force. Creating the Modern Army details the efforts of the Regular Army to do so in the face of austerity budgets and public apathy while simultaneously responding to the challenges posed by the new and revolutionary mechanization of warfare. In this book Woolley focuses on the development of what he sees as the four major features of the modernized army that emerged due to these efforts. These included the creation of the civilian components of the new army: the Citizen’s Military Training Camps, the Officer Reserve Corps, the National Guard, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps; the development of the four major combat branches as the structural basis for organizing the army as well as creating the means to educate new officers and soldiers about their craft and to socialize them into an army culture; the creation of a rationalized and progressive system of professional military education; and the initial mechanization of the combat branches. Woolley also points out how the development of the army in this period was heavily influenced by policies and actions of the president and Congress. The US Army that fought World War II was clearly a citizen army whose leadership was largely trained within the framework of the institutions of the army created by the National Defense Act. The way that army fought the war may have been less decisive and more costly in terms of lives and money than it should have been. But that army won the war and therefore validated the citizen army as the US way of war. This book is published as part of the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Nowadays, the existence of an effective appraisal system, notwithstanding surprising transformation in the knowledge management area, is undeniable. The lack of evaluation for various dimensions of ...an organization including evaluation for utilization of resources and possibilities, employees, goals, and strategies is known and putative as the organizational syndrome and illness. European Foundation for Quality Management(EFQM),in the two recent decades, was one of the techniques that has been begun in the Europa and is subjected to the country administration area. Therefore, the purpose of the present research was the performance appraisal within an army organization in the basis of European Foundation for Quality Management(EFQM).Present research is a descriptive survey that evaluates organizational excellence in an army organization in1395.Research population includes193persons of commanders, vice commanders, and managers in an army organization that are selected by systematic random sampling method. In order to collecting data, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM)47items questionnaire was used that its reliability supported by calculating0.96Cronbach's alpha. The data, in addition to analyzing by descriptive statistical indicators, so analyzed by inferential statistical indicators including one-sample-T and structural equation modeling(SEM).Structural equation modeling-based results showed that the presented model with fitness indices values(RMSEA=0.058andNFI=0.96 andGFI=0.96)is supported. The results of one-sample-T test also supported that among main components of European Foundation for Quality Management, performance component in the enablers' area has relative desirability,but performance component in the results area has not desirable status. Aggregately, organizational performance also has not desirable status according to European Foundation for Quality Management(EFQM).
Pierpont Stackpole was a Boston lawyer who in January 1918 became aide to Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett, soon to be commander of the first American corps in France. Stackpole's diary, published ...here for the first time, is a major eyewitness account of the American Expeditionary Forces' experience on the Western Front, offering an insider's view into the workings of Liggett's commands, his day-to-day business, and how he orchestrated his commands in trying and confusing situations. Hunter Liggett did not fit John J. Pershing's concept of the trim and energetic officer, but Pershing entrusted to him a corps and then an army command. Liggett assumed leadership of the U.S. First Army in mid-October of 1918, and after reorganizing, reinforcing, and resting, the battle-weary troops broke through the German lines in a fourth attack at the Meuse- Argonne—accomplishing what Pershing had failed to do in three previous attempts. The victory paved the way to armistice on November 11. Liggett has long been a shadowy figure in the development of the American high command. He was "Old Army, " a veteran of Indian wars who nevertheless kept abreast of changes in warfare and more than other American officers was ready for the novelties of 1914–1918. Because few of his papers have survived, the diary of his aide—who rode in the general's staff car as Liggett unburdened himself about fellow generals and their sometimes abysmal tactical notions—provides especially valuable insights into command within the AEF. Stackpole's diary also sheds light on other figures of the war, presenting a different view of the controversial Major General Clarence Edwards than has recently been recorded and relating the general staff's attitudes about the flamboyant aviation figure Billy Mitchell. General Liggett built the American army in France, and the best measure of his achievement is this diary of his aide. That record stands here as a fascinating and authentic look at the Great War.
Meticulously gleaned from the 128 volumes of the great reference work commonly referred to as the Official Records, the The Army of the Cumberland is meant to serve as a unique resource that ...hopefully will be a useful tool for those who wish to delve deeper into the structural and statistical history of the great Union army that served primarily in Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
There has been no systematic measurement of the parameters affecting the organization’s efficiency of the
physical training of the Hellenic Army’s Physical Training (APT). The purpose of this study ...was to evaluate the
competency of the five different types of “Physical Training (PT) Instructor” within the Hellenic Army Units Training
Cycles (HAUTCs), which influences the APT program’s organizational efficiency in the Hellenic Armed (HA) forces.
Two thousands eight hundred sixty four (2864) survey questionnaires (5 point
Likert type scale
) were selected.
Participants came from a wide spectrum of Greek Permanent Army Personnel in HA. Five (5) different types of the PT
Instructors were tested, measured along three (3) dimensions (a) contribution to implementation, (b) frequency of
implementation and (c) effectiveness/adequacy of implementation, which evaluate their competency in performance of
APT programs (15 dependent variables).
ΑΝΟVA and Bonferroni
post comparisons were calculated for the total of the
dependent variables among the three HAUTCs (A΄, Β΄ and C΄) (3 independent variables). The probability of statistical
significance was set at
p
≤ 0.05. The results showed that the “Officer” (OFC) contributes, applies and suffices the APT
programs mainly in HAUTCs A΄ and B΄, whereas “Permanent Commissioned Officer” (PCOF) applies APT programs
more often in HAUTC C΄. In HAUTCs B΄ and C΄ the “Physical Education Graduate” (PEG) seems more capable,
efficient, and suitable when ordered to perform the PT programs. The results evaluated the duty of the PT Instructors’
competency according to HAUTCs’ requirements and introduce the necessity of its improvement in some cases.
Colonel Pat Proctor's long overdue critique of the Army's preparation and outlook in the all-volunteer era focuses on a national security issue that continues to vex in the twenty-first century: Has ...the Army lost its ability to win strategically by focusing on fighting conventional battles against peer enemies? Or can it adapt to deal with the greater complexity of counterinsurgent and information-age warfare?In this blunt critique of the senior leadership of the U.S. Army, Proctor contends that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. Army stubbornly refused to reshape itself in response to the new strategic reality, a decision that saw it struggle through one low-intensity conflict after another—some inconclusive, some tragic—in the 1980s and 1990s, and leaving it largely unprepared when it found itself engaged—seemingly forever—in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The first book- length study to connect the failures of these wars to America's disastrous performance in the war on terror, Proctor's work serves as an attempt to convince Army leaders to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Organization and Organizing Czarniawska, Barbara; Putnam, Linda L; Latour, Bruno ...
2013, 20130502, 2013-05-02
eBook, Book
This collection addresses central issues in organizational communication theory on the nature of organizing and organization. The unique strength of this volume is its contribution to the conception ...of materiality, agency, and discourse in current theorizing and research on the constitution of organizations. It addresses such questions as: To what extent should the materiality of texts and artifacts be accounted for in a process view of organization? What part does materiality play in the process by which organizations achieve continuity in time and space? In what sense do artifacts perform a role in human communication and interaction and in the constitution of organization? What are the voices and entities participating in the emergence and stabilization of organizational reality? The work represents scholarship going on in various parts of the world, and features contributions that overcome traditional conceptions of the nature of organizing by addressing in specific ways the difficult issues of the performative character of agency; materiality as the basis of the iterability of communication and continuity of organizations; and discourse as both textuality and interaction. (HoF/text adopted) Contents: Part I. Theoretical Developments (1. Czarniawska, Barbara: Organizations as Obstacles to Organizing. - 2. Putnam, Linda L.: Dialectics, Contradictions, and the Questions of Agency. A Tribute to James R. Taylor. - 3. Latour, Bruno: "What's the Story?" Organizing as a Mode of Existence. - 4. Tsoukas, Haridimos: Organization as Chaosmos. - 5. Nicotera, Anne Maydan: Organizations as Entitative Beings. Some Ontological Implications of Communicative Constitution. - 6. Brummans, Boris H. J. M.: What is an Organization? Or: Is James Taylor a Buddhist? - 7. McPhee, Robert/Iverson, Joel O.: Activity Coordination and the Montreal School). - Part II. Empirical Explorations (8. Vasquez, Consuelo: Spacing Organization: Or how to be here and there at the same time. - 9. Piette, Isabelle: Restructuring Identity through Sectorial Narratives. - 10. Chaput, Matthieu: Organization by Debate. Exploring the Connections between Rhetorical Argument and Organizing. - 11. Sergi, Viviane: Constituting the Temporary Organization. Documents in the Context of Projects. - 12. Taylor, James R.: Organizational Communication at the Crossroads).
A prominent theme in the HRM literature is the organizational impact of configurations or “bundles” of human resource practices, mostly researched in business firms. A recurrent empirical finding ...here is that configurations of high performance HR practices generally have a more positive effect on employee attitudes and behavior and on organizational performance than configurations of traditional HR practices. In this paper this research is extended beyond business firms to include army organizations. Specifically it is argued, first, that these two configurations are exemplified in respectively the German Army and the US Army in World War II and second, that these configurations can be reasonably related to a relatively more effective battlefield performance of the German versus the US Army, even in spite of final defeat.
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