Military Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility

Introduction: Pressures on the Modern Manager and Commander

The modern business and social climate places a myriad of pressures on managers to achieve their objectives. While an organization's defined purpose — its mission statement — is meant to keep the organization on track toward justifying its existence and achieving its goals, the modern manager is also a leader who must exercise concern for how the organization reaches those goals. The most basic motivation of keeping one's job is not enough to build and maintain a career.

The manager who tells the boss only what he or she wants to hear, juggles figures, shortchanges customers, cuts corners on quality control, or exploits workers may believe he or she is getting ahead — but the long-term effects of such behavior produce a career that lacks the integrity and honor upon which an organization can rely. An individual who does not show long-term commitment to results is a candidate for reassignment or, at minimum, an arrested career. Such a person leaves an ominous and unanswered question hanging over his or her record: "Is this person's organization going to do the right thing, and will it remain effective and combat ready?"

The commander of a carrier group is responsible for four basic areas of supervisory and leadership oversight:

The Four Areas of Command Responsibility

The realities of the changing climate of business, society, and personnel must all be balanced within the context of the group's core purpose. The billions of dollars of hardware and technology over which the commander has responsibility exist for a single — and often controversial — reason: to effectively deter the advancement of military force by hostile political organizations. Effective deterrence requires:

Nothing within the scope of the commander's operations falls outside the path toward those three goals. Because the carrier group commander's responsibilities extend beyond the use and disposition of war machinery to the governance and leadership of the human assets who must successfully execute any deterrence or war effort, the commander must also focus on managing staff and enlisted personnel in order to keep them in a constant and thorough state of readiness. In this respect, the manager is looked to as a leader who provides both a moral compass and day-to-day operational direction for the entire organization.

There are five functions of leading that place equal value on managing people and materials as on the broader leadership aspect of bringing a large organization to bear in the prosecution of a war effort. They are: planning, organizing, leading, controlling, and establishing a moral code or expectations.

The Five Functions of Military Leadership

Planning consists of setting goals and deciding on courses of action, developing rules and procedures, creating operational plans, and forecasting. All of these activities must take place within the larger context of orders received from the commander's superiors.

Organizing involves identifying jobs to be done, selecting and training people to do them, delegating authority to subordinates, establishing a chain of command, and coordinating the work of subordinates. This system of leadership would remain ineffective without a corresponding bottom-up ladder of accountability requiring everyone in the carrier group to fulfill no more and no less than his or her respective role.

Leading means influencing other people to get the job done, maintaining morale, and managing conflicts and communication. Within the military, much of this function is effectively established through the training of new recruits — boot camp — and the enduring traditions of military service. The idea of establishing a corporate culture is more clearly understood in this context as maintaining the high standards of the United States military and leaving behind a reputation for success, honor, and integrity consistent with those who have gone before.

Controlling is the management function that involves setting standards for operations and for the outcomes of a mission.

Conclusion: The Commander's Ultimate Accountability

Within the military, corporate social responsibility means defending the lives and property of its citizens from others who do not have the moral boundaries that outlaw the destruction of another people's culture, property, or lives in order to further their own desires. The world is, in many respects, governed by the aggressive use of force, and the carrier group commander stands at the top of that ladder of responsibility.