Air University Review, July-August 1981

Military Professionals and Civilian Careerists
in the Department of Defense

In the policymaking and administrative processes of the defense establishment, the relationship between "armed bureaucrats" and civilian bureaucrats" constitutes an important dimension influencing the effectiveness of the defense organizations as well as on the quality of the national security environment. However, the preponderance of literature and commentaries on civilian-military relations in the defense community deals mainly with the higher political levels of analysis. The nitty-gritty of management techniques, procedural innovations, and administrative concerns in the defense community tends to be overlooked by academics, policymakers, and politicians who want to describe and analyze only at the very highest theoretical levels of concern. Therefore, an effort needs to be made to home in on the operational and managerial levels of the policymaking process in order to highlight the managerial innovations and the bureaucratic tensions between career officers and career civil servants.

The Tension Factors

Military leaders’ perceptions of civilian executives, and vice versa, are often grossly inaccurate, obviously questionable, and certainly one-sided. However, some are quite accurate. They stem from different provisions of law, regulations, manner, tone, training, culture, and varying perceptions of differential treatment. In fact, the dynamics of civil-military relations create multiple and damaging tension points at the management/executive levels throughout the Defense Department.² Therefore, it is necessary to analyze, describe, and demonstrate the problem areas as well as to suggest some techniques or adjustments that can remedy these areas of potentially ineffective management in the defense establishment. Realizing the importance of Carl Jung’s observation that perception is probably 90 percent projection, I suggest that the following factors (extracted from constant interactions with military officers and career executives during the past five years) are relatively constant tension variables; they hold fast for civil-military relations in the management of the defense community at the highest executive levels. It is my contention that too many of these tension factors have existed far too long without proper attention in the post-World War II defense environment because of academic neglect, personal ego needs, and policy-making indifference.

The fundamental tension point relates to the concept of professionalism. Professions can be thought of, in part, as frameworks of specialized skills, knowledge, behavior, and values. And, as Samuel P. Huntington has made clear, the military is a professional body in terms of expertise, social responsibility, and corporateness.³ In addition, as John P. Lovell and others have demonstrated, the military profession is undergirded by a value socialization process that is galvanized into reality most clearly at the service academies.⁴ While the value component is the most elusive of the professional undergirdings, it probably provides the best clues to fundamental differences between professions. In effect, the military person is clearly identified with a profession. On the other hand, the defense civilian executive is not a member of a unified, overarching profession but may be a lawyer, engineer, or physicist; he does not identify with his civilian colleagues in the same professional sense as his military colleagues do.* Hence, this professional unity of the military, especially in terms of similar value preferences, makes it appear as a power phalanx compared to the diversity and confusion that exists among civilian executives. As one of the supergrades at the Federal Executive Institute (FEI) said, "The bastards all know each other. They think alike, act alike, and talk alike. The ‘ring-knockers’ hang together, while we civilian executives always seem to hang alone."

*Although I gladly acknowledge and support the growth of the number of women in the management processes of the defense establishment, for the sake of linguistic simplicity. I shall use the singular pronoun he and his throughout.

To be successful in the management process, one must have a clear understanding of the demands of his role. As one rises in the organization, those roles demand different skills, styles, performances, and perspectives. In fact, the movement from middle management into the executive role demands a major change. New expectations are added to an individual’s capabilities. As David Gray has demonstrated, an executive must forgo certain skills and perspectives at the executive level that he used extensively as a manager (see accompanying chart).⁵

Attributes of Managerial and Executive Roles

The military professional has made this adjustment much better than his civilian counterparts. Hence, the predominantly managerial perspective of civilians conflicts with the clearer executive perspective of the military. In fact, the specialist orientation of civilians leads them to cast aspersions on the more generalist orientation of the military executives, who constantly come and go. (In order to gain a better perspective on this, one should note that 80 percent of the supergrade civilians have had their careers totally within one agency.)

The tensions between the military and civilians are particularly notable in the decision-making process, centering on three aspects of the process:

• The civilians believe that the military executives want to do things too quickly in order to make a mark for themselves during the short time they are in their organizational executive slots; while the military are convinced that the civilians "drag their feet" and have too much of a lethargic "civil servant perspective" in terms of production.
• There tend to be different perspectives relative to each other’s competences: The military are convinced that the civil service has too much deadwood because of the seniority system; while the civilians believe that too many military will rush to decision in order to avoid the second half of the "up-or-out" syndrome.
• The civilians are certain that the short-range perspective of the "three year military executive" leads to dysfunctions in the incrementalism necessary for sound decision-making; while the military is convinced that the civilians do not want to work the long hours at night and on weekends to accelerate what the officers perceive to be a sluggish decisional process.

Ignorance of the other’s personnel, promotion, and pay systems is close to tragic. Individuals on both sides perceive the other side with various distortions based on myth, prejudice, and folklore. In essence, mostly because of a lack of knowledge, each side seems to feel that they are treated as "second-class citizens" relative to the other. Anthony Wermuth makes this point in relation to pay systems by quoting Lieutenant General Leo E. Benade after a December 1977 meeting of the President’s Commission on military compensation:

If there is one thing that seems to make people in uniform climb the wall, it is to be compared to civilians. In fact, the reaction is almost emotional in my judgment. You have to recognize it and allow for it. And they bitterly resent any attempts to compare and to talk comparability in pay. If I could give one recommendation to the Department of Defense, it would be to drop from their lexicon this word "comparability." It makes far more enemies than friends.⁶

At the same time, relative to President Carter’s 1981 budget submitted to Congress, the FEIAA Newsletter notes:

Specifically, the 1981 budget provides a 6.2% pay raise for federal civilian employees and 7.4% raise for military personnel. In effect, a distinction is being made by the Administration between military and civilian personnel, with an apparent nod towards the military.⁷

Of course, pay is only one specific example, but there are many others, and the civilians are loudest in proclaiming their "rigged structural inferiority" vis-à-vis the military executives in the Department of Defense.

The world view of the military executive seems to be more sophisticated in every respect than that of his civilian counterpart. The military professional enters a systematic training and developmental program that prepares him for dealing with the "big picture" as he moves into an executive role; while the civilian executive’s development tends to be haphazard, sporadic, and somewhat too technical in preparation for executive positions or perspectives. For example, Fred Malek reports that "the military services spend about eight times the amount in improving the managerial effectiveness of the officer corps as is spent on civilian managers."⁸ In addition, most of the supergrades who have attended the Federal Executive Institute in the past five years report that it constitutes the

first real opportunity they have had to spend an extended period of time on management training during their entire careers. Sadly for these generals and admirals of the civil service, it sometimes comes too late in their careers to make a difference.

More specifically, in the matter of providing higher education at the war colleges for its people, Anthony Wermuth reports that the

Department of the Army sends about 250 military officers to war colleges each year; and the Navy and Air Force send comparable numbers. Up to 1964 the number of Army civilian employees sent by the Army to war colleges was zero. In 1964, one DA civilian was sent to the Army War College, then one each year through 1971, three in 1972, two in 1973, three in 1974 and 1975, two in 1976, and one in 1977. Total military executives sent to war colleges by the Army between 1950 and 1977: about 6750. Total civilians sent, same period: 22.⁹

The military executive thus is educated to attain a much broader perspective than his civilian counterpart in strategic, managerial, and political concerns.

An Air Force civilian executive reported to me: "Hell, I run my agency. The colonel is simply a figurehead who’s here for a short time. And after him, there will be another colonel who I will educate, train, and command." At the same time, a military officer in charge of a U.S. Navy research and development shop reported a concurring opinion: "The civilians really run the shop. I am here for too short a time to have a lasting impact. Sure, I will affect some things. but hell, the civilians will be here forever and if they want to, they’ll change it back again."

Yet, on the line, there are many civilians who believe they "work for the military people." No matter how capable they are, they believe that the best jobs are too often "saved for the military." "After all," said one of the civilians, "I do work in the Department of Defense."¹⁰ And, of course, this power position of leadership is strengthened by a group of officers who believe that they possess the penultimate command leadership capabilities, undergirded by the belief that they are the professional experts in the "management of violence," which, to them, is the bottom line of what the Defense Department is, and ultimately what it does.

There is an implicit hint from many military executives that civilian employees are considered to have basic interests more in common with other civilian employees of the federal government than with their military colleagues. On the other’ hand, many civilian executives are convinced that military people have more in common with other departmental national security executives, think-tank entrepreneurs, and strategic academic consultants than they do with their civilian colleagues. Some civilian executives are convinced that the military’s linkages outside the immediate management team are calculated on the "up-or-out" system. The focused retirement framework of the military is credited by some civilian executives with encouraging military executives to seek second careers at the expense of agency or project commitment. In essence, the military are accused of establishing linkages with universities, consulting firms, and even with other federal agencies in order to smooth the way for "meaningful work" after retirement.

Civilian career executives manifest a distinct jealously of the constant media attention given to their military counterparts. They claim they do all the "trench work," while the colonels, generals, and admirals do all the "public relations and visibility work." The civilian executives are convinced that most "Americans don’t even know who we are; while the military officers are equated to presidents, senators, and ambassadors." In addition, the civil servants believe the military executives "play to the grandstand," at the expense of the hard, nitty-gritty work that needs to be done internally at the Defense Department. And though these accusations may be skewed or overblown, it is clear that the study by David Moore and B. Thomas Trout supports the contention that visibility is an absolutely essential ingredient for success in a military career.¹¹ Furthermore, the military has been written about, researched, and portrayed at a much higher level of interest, sophistication, and importance than any of their defense civilian career colleagues.

Tensions between civilian careerists and military executives are exacerbated in the current post-Vietnam period because the military profession itself is going through three extremely rancorous debates in search of its own identity.

1. Some segments of the military are searching for new tasks and missions to carry the armed forces through the perceived lean years of the post-Vietnam period included are questions of inflation, comparative analysis, and cut-back management, the 1981 defense budget requests notwithstanding. At the same time, others want to eliminate nontraditional tasks and missions so that the military professional can return to more fundamental fighting-man tasks. This latter group wants to overturn or debunk many of the management tasks and civilianization styles that the military undertook during the McNamara years and since. This debate within the military will have tremendous impact on the training, developments and cultivation of the future leaders in the defense establishment.
2. In the post-World War II environment a military prototype identified as the "managerial soldier" has emerged. This is the person who rises to the institutional apex of the military profession by becoming a military executive competent in all the managerial, methodological, and statistical techniques. In effect, managerial expertise is thought to be more essential to success than the degree of command capability identified with the more traditional fighting-man role. This prototype is being challenged by those military professionals who contend that the military man is becoming too much of a manager.

(3) A contemporary debate of major import has evolved concerning leadership styles. For approximately 30 years, the military leader still had a draft that it could depend on to produce tremendous amounts of manpower. However, in the all-volunteer military environment of today, women and minorities are entering the ranks of the services at an accelerated pace, and unionization is a much discussed topic. This has produced a question of what kind of leadership style is most appropriate to the changing followership that has evolved in the all-volunteer service.

These in-uniform dialogues have had dramatic systemic impacts on the overall framework of the defense establishment by causing role conflicts, role ambiguities, and conflicting signals to the military’s civilian colleagues. Some say that the military must rekindle the basic values of its traditional command structure. Others are demanding a new leadership style to lead troops from different cultures, groups, genders, and races. In effect, a much more participatory leadership stance is encouraged.

The political/career interface, which causes problems in all federal agencies, leads to even "muddier and madder" civil-military relationships. It leads to a tripartite conflict among the military officers, civilian careerists, and political appointees, with each group sometimes playing power games in order to get its way in the management process. It thus creates shifting coalitions, questions about who is in charge, and it sometimes even leads to a transference of dislike to all civilians by military officers. As one officer said to me, "Since McNamara and his ‘whiz kids,’ I’ll do all I can to make sure that strategically, theoretically, and operationally the civilians never dominate the Defense Department again as they did (or as we let them) from 1961 to 1975." This overlay of the political/career interface needs to be factored into the civil-military equation before certain basic institutional relationships can be expected to change for the better.

What Needs To Be Done?

What does all of this mean? Several operational conclusions can be drawn from this analysis.

• Since there is such a dearth of quality research at the operating levels of the Department of Defense, it appears incumbent on academics and policymakers alike to "elevate their guns a little lower," in order to create or uncover systems, techniques, and management styles that will make the Department of Defense operate more effectively on a day-to-day basis in the 1980s.
• It is essential that we come to grips with the problems of military executives and civilian executives and do something concrete and practical about ameliorating the negative, destructive stereotypes in order to take advantage of the positive, creative tensions that the civil-military interface also produces. These stereotypes need to be confronted openly in order to reduce unnecessary frictions. If it is a "real problem," then we must deal with it!
• It would be beneficial for the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) to create a "Section on Defense Administration." Since ASPA is the overarching professional organization for public managers and executives, it could (and maybe should) serve as an intellectual forum for dialogues between civilian careerists and military executives on ways to improve their cooperative performance and leadership skills in the management of the defense segment of the federal government.¹²
• There needs to be a visible effort to improve the training and development of the civilian careerists in the Department of Defense. At the same time, there should be more opportunities for dialogue, education, interaction, and training among officers and civilian careerists. The leadership demonstrated in this area by the Naval Aviation Executive Institute should be shared with and emulated by other subgroups in the Department of Defense.
• The military profession must come to some definitive conclusions as to what its officers are going to look like in the future. In effect, until the debates within the military are settled in some consensual manner, the tensions in civil-military relations at executive levels will continue to be overly confused, complex, and conflictual due to basic role and leadership ambiguities on the part of the military professionals themselves.¹³

The brightest prospect for a positive impact on civil-military relations at the executive level within the Department of Defense is the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) of 1978. The act established a Senior Executive Service (SES), which stipulates that: civilian executives are different from civilian managers; training and development are now required for all who want to enter the Senior Executive Service; and executive competencies are now considered as essential as functional/specialist competencies in the climb to the top of the career civil service ladder. Hence the education, development, and perspectives of civilian executives in the future will become more cosmic in strategic, managerial, and political concerns. The CSRA has begun to generate a professional perspective as well as a mutual protection assertiveness on behalf of those currently in the SES.

It is becoming increasingly an accepted organizational tenet that behavioral techniques such as intergroup confrontation meetings, team building, leadership workshops, and organization development are essential ingredients for the effectiveness of the modern, massive, multiethnic and multicultural corporate structures of the 1980s.¹⁴ Since these techniques require personal cooperation, lateral bargaining capabilities, and interpersonal behavioral skills, they should impact on the Department of Defense in such a way as to lead to transformed and effective relationship patterns at all levels ad in all contexts, without necessarily destroying situational necessities and beneficial competitions in the defense establishrnent.¹⁵ For at the base of efforts to improve civil-military relations is the eternal quest to balance America’s limited resources as effectively as possible among the ever-present three competing priorities: near-term readiness, midterm modernization, and long-term sustainability¹⁶ and to do all this as cost effectively as possible.

1. Thomas P. Murphy, Donald F. Nuechterlein, and Ronald J. Stupak, Inside the Bureaucracy: The View from the Assistant Secretary’s Desk (Boulder, Colorado, 1978), p. 177.

2. My special thanks to Anthony L. Wermuth for his excellent observations in An Armored Convertible: Shuffling Soldiers and Civilians in the Military Establishment (Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania: Strategic Studies Institute, October 1979); and in "Civil-Military Relations in the Department of Defense: Perspectives, Perceptions, and Proposals," The Bureaucrat, Spring 1980.

3. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (New York, 1964), chapter 1.

4. John P. Lovell, Neither Athens Nor Sparta? The American Service Academies in Transition (Bloomington, Indiana, and London, 1979).

5. David E. Gray, Vice President for Administration, California State University, Long Beach, California, prepared the comparative checklist as a member of Class 6 at the Federal Executive Institute.

6. Wermuth, The Bureaucrat, pp. 3-4.

7. "Pay Proposals Pose Problems and Confusion," FEIAA Newsletter, March 1980, pp. 1-2. It should be noted that this area of economic concern could become even more raucous if the tenets of "cut-back management" become imbedded in defense spending.

8. Frederick V. Malek, "The Development of Public Executives," Public Administration Review, May/June 1974, p. 231.

9. Wermuth, The Bureaucrat, p. 9.

10. Though this was said to me by a civilian supergrade, Wermuth reports that the same thing was said to him by a military officer; Ibid., p. 16.

11. David W. Moore and B. Thomas Trout, "Military Advancement: The Visibility Theory of Advancement," The American Po1itical Science Review, June 1978, pp. 452-68.

12. ASPA President Patrick J. Conklin made the establishment of a "Civil-Military Section" one of the goals for his 1980-81 term of office.

13. See Ronald Fraser, "The Captain As Manager," The Bureaucrat, Spring 1979, pp. 14-21.

14. Donald A. Schon, Beyond the Stable State (New York, 1971).

15. David Katz, "The Network Overlay in Defense: Helping Large Bureaucracies Do Things Better," The Bureaucrat, Fall 1980.

16. General Edward C. Meyer, "Toward a More Perfect Union in Civil-Military Relations," Parameters, June 1979, p. 83.

Contributor

Ronald J. Stupak (B.A., Moravian College; M.A., Ph.D., Ohio State University) is Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Affairs at the Federal Executive Institute, Charlottesville, Virginia. Previously, he was a professor of political science at Miami University. He has published books on foreign policy, decision-making, and policy analysis: The Shaping of Foreign Policy, American Foreign Policy: Assumptions, Processes, and Projections, and Understanding Political Science. Dr. Stupak is an authority on time management and executive leadership both the public and private sectors.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor