Military Organization Structure and Promotion of Innovation

The way how organization is designed contributes to conduciveness in nurturing innovation and creativity. In turn, it would lead to rapid process of change in the organization. Organizational change must take into consideration of its structure to subsequently create the environment that allow the whole change process to take place. It’s almost impossible to decide the most appropriate organization structure that already exist since dinosaur like military, but to understand the way organizations are organize could spare some insight to military commander to exercise his command that could ignite some creativity dynamic. According to Draft (1998) in order to enable growth and seize opportunities in the organization, the managers have to deal with challenges involved in organization design. The six element that involve design decisions are work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, span of control, centralization/decentralization and formalization.

Among the six-key element mentioned above, we often associate military with the tall structure in chain of command. For instance, in Army organization structure, the Chief of Army will be at the top of the hierarchy and commanded the vast operational, training   administrative and logistic division. This conventional setting is prevalent and common in commonwealth defence organizations. But in some flexibility, there are specialized small unit or brigade that directly report to the Chief of Army such as Special Force (Commandos), Quick Reaction Force (Parachute Brigade) and Army Aviation because of their exclusive nature of operations. In another word, the military organization support both span of control, flat and tall structure. Military also noted as its multi-layer work specialization in order to successfully conduct the assigned operational mission. For instance, in Army Brigade consists of different task specializations, the infantrymen (fought the battles as frontlines), Artillerymen (giving fire supremacy and support in the battlefield), Engineers (provide mobility and survivability) and signaler (provide communications). All the different specialization was grouped as sub unit (departmentalization) and formed a Brigade organization structure.

How does the military promote innovation in their original organization structure? From my observation military always maintain its tall regimental structure in its operational and administrative approach. Existed organization structure doesn’t hinder the cultivation of innovation and creativity as long it’s not interfere with defence government control of the service, the chain of command or disciplinary process. Innovation where emphasized throughout the organization levels, new ideas are welcome to be implemented by organizing innovation awards annually. Total Quality Management (TQM) become the key focus in the organization in order to provide Army   with a team that is  solid and balanced in terms of equipment, modern armaments and high technology. At larger scale, National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) is highly implemented, where it’s an inter-government department initiates to work cooperative and strategically to boast national economic outcome.

“The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country”

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.”

- General George S. Patton