Why World War II Was the End of Bureaucratic Strategies

Malcolm Brady published an article in 2011 that merits attention for several reasons. Here is the abstract:

Purpose – The merit of improvisation over command and control as an organizational approach is the subject of much debate in the management and emergency literatures. The purpose of this paper is to examine tactics employed by the two leading protagonists at the Battle of Stalingrad – Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus on the German side and General Vasily Chuikov on the side of Russia – and seek to identify the reasons for Chuikov's victory over Paulus and draw lessons from this for practicing managers.

Design/methodology/approach – The research project examined over a dozen publicly available texts on the battle, in the light of the crisis management and strategy literatures.

Findings – The paper shows how Chuikov improvised to meet the demands of the situation, relaxed the command and control structure of the Russian 62nd Army and developed a collective mind among Russian troops and that this triple approach played a significant role in his victory over Paulus.

Originality/value – The case provides support for the view that improvisation is important in crisis response and can be applied within a hierarchical command and control structure. The paper puts forward a framework for managers to respond to crisis based on two continua: mode of response (improvised or planned) and means of control (via the hierarchy or via rules embedded in a collective mind).

(1) After several trips to see the museums and cemeteries in Normandy while I taught at HEC Paris from 1994-2000, I started arguing that June 6, 1944, was the end of the bureaucratic era (the command-and-control bureaucracy imposed by Rommel on the German Atlantic Wall) and the beginning of the network era (the loosely coupled, flexible, multinational invading forces proceeding under a general plan designed by Eisenhower). I cited the book The Longest Day to make this point, but Brady's article looks like a more rigorous scholarly attempt to make a similar point.

(2) I like the emerging theme in the HRO literature that suggests that the way out of a potentially catastrophic situation is not simply reducing complexity and reducing coupling; the use of cross-functional teams to create innovations or improvisations that overcome "failures of imagination" is a very different organizational tool. Brady's article seems to suggest that improvisation is a way to reduce the likelihood of catastrophes; that is a theme that sounds like Eric Abrahamson's wonderful book, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder.

(3) I also like the possibility that the 107 case studies that the Project on National Security Reform commissioned can now be supplemented by other cases. The study by Brady is not likely to say anything -- directly -- about the U.S. national security system, but it could add to the argument I've been making about organizational resilience as the direction forward for High Reliability Individuals, High Reliability Teams, High Reliability Organizations, High Reliability Networks, and High Reliability Systems

Stay tuned for links to more of the 216 articles citing "high reliability organizations" that have been published -- sor far -- in 2011.