Organizational perspectives on the maneuver warfare movement in the United States Marine Corps: insights from the work of James G. March

Abstract

This article describes a key period in the institutional and organizational history of the United States Marine Corps. Using historical, archival, and interview material, we apply some of the ideas and perspectives of James G. March to understand the organizational dynamics and mechanisms that enabled the maneuver warfare movement and made the modern Marine Corps a more innovative and adaptive organization. We build on and integrate several streams of March’s research, legacies, and interests, including understanding the organizational conditions that help novelty and outlier-ness flourish, finding interest and value in apparent contradictions, and deriving implications for organizational scholarship and for the organization under study.

1. Introduction

Jim March’s interest in understanding the dynamics of organizational adaptation, behavior, and decision making led him to study institutions, including business organizations and universities (e.g. Cyert and March, 1963; March et al., 2000). He often started with an empirical issue or problem, then tried to understand the underlying dynamics (what he sometimes called “little ideas”) that could lead to insights into the issue (even if it meant having to give up a favorite theory or two along the way), before revising or generating a conceptual point. Little ideas, he felt, were often what could help to identify and explore the dynamics and mechanisms underlying decision making and organizational behavior.

Occasionally, March applied his ideas and interests to military organizations. For instance, in the mid-1980s, March (and his collaborator, Roger Weissinger-Baylon) organized workshops at the Hoover Institution and the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) focusing on individual and organizational decision making in political and military organizations. These workshops blended perspectives (and participants) from academia, national security, and military organizations to explore and discuss how academic perspectives on decision making under ambiguity, though developed in a nonmilitary context, might also apply to military organizations and contribute to understanding—perhaps even improving—decision making in military organizations, particularly the United States Navy.¹

Additionally, during the last years of his life, March was interested in exploring some of the dynamics of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) as an organization.² He approached the topic of the USMC with his characteristic combination of curiosity and insight, reading broadly about the USMC, asking questions (including about what questions Marine students at NPS were asking so he could understand how they think, not just what they do and how their organization functions), finding value in empirical issues that seemingly contradicted our scholarly theories (such as the embrace of both novelty and rigidity), yet then quickly turning them into researchable angles for further study.

In March’s approach to understanding Marines and the Marine Corps, he was characteristically driven by both his quest and flair for understanding the world as an integrated system and whole, as well as by the scholarly need to study and analyze it. In conversation, especially if one thought one (finally) had a handle of the analytic underpinnings of an issue or phenomenon, he looked for something to contradict it, challenging our tendency to analyze and break things into parts, as if the world was always a linear system with clear cause and effect. He thereby nudged one to a more synthesizing or integrative approach. However, at the same time, he did not ignore analysis and models as long as one did not take a “model is just a model” approach, but instead knew their value as a metaphor and a language that could improve our understanding about the world, too.³

This article tries to extend March’s interest in the USMC by using some of his ideas to study parts of the organization. In particular, inspired by March’s own interest in and analysis of novelty, creative and innovative individuals and their roles in organizational adaptation, we use Marchian ideas to understand a particular period in USMC history.⁴ Unlike many popular approaches to innovation, March did not find recipes for “how to be successful innovators” particularly useful or interesting, preferring instead to focus on issues such as the roles of novelty, ambiguity, uncertainty, and failure; the tolerance for foolishness and outlier thinking; the organizational aspects needed for innovation to come to fruition; and the many mechanisms working against it. For novelty and outlier thinking to be useful for organizational adaptation, it has to survive. However, because an organization’s reaction to new ideas or novelty is often like an organism’s reaction to a viral infection, organizations have to find ways to buffer new ideas from management’s inclination to suffocate them. March was also well aware (and often made the point) that most novel ideas are bad. Thus, organizations wishing to encourage innovation must either increase their flow or richness or become better able to filter them, selecting which ones will eventually be useful. This, of course, is part of the Marchian view of the adaptive dilemma underlying organizational evolution and adaptation: how to balance competency/mastery/efficiency/stability with novelty/imagination/deviance/innovation.

March was interested in the mechanisms underlying novelty and innovation themselves and also in how novelty, innovative thinking, and organizational aspects occasionally came together in organizations to form a movement that could influence things more broadly and make entire organizations more conducive to innovation and innovative thinking, even though it often did not last (e.g. Augier et al., 2015). For March, such movements can be instrumental in facilitating organizational innovation and adaptation, making it all the more important for organization scholars to study them even if they are difficult, if not impossible, to design, plan, and predict. They are essential, too, for the generation and (somewhat) preservation of novelty and overcoming the many problems associated with maintaining a balance between exploitation and exploration (e.g. Levinthal and March, 1993: 105–107).

One of March’s colleagues, Leavitt (1996), provided a useful mechanism—“hot groups”—through which such movements can form, spread, and transform organizations. Leavitt’s initial discussion of hot groups mentioned the intellectual environment at the old Carnegie Tech Graduate School of Industrial Administration (GSIA) as an “exemplar” of a hot group (another was at MIT)—innovative groups that are exciting, productive, and all consuming (Leavitt, 1996: 288–289).⁵ March was part of the same hot group, and his own interest in them (even if not necessarily explicitly by that label) was undoubtedly influenced by his own experiences in them as well. March noted that the GSIA environment made for an “extraordinary community” where people worked 7 days a week and at night, fostering important developments in economics, organization studies, and strategy and serving as a poster child for reform in business schools and management education. Others, including Herb Simon and Oliver Williamson, have similarly described the environment at GSIA, where people were intensely devoted to ideas and scholarship and worked together across disciplines, backgrounds, and ranks.⁶ March also spent time at another “hot group” place, the RAND Corporation, and later on tried to build similar groups (or at least help to nurture the conditions for them) at Irvine and at Stanford (March et al., 2000). Others who had experienced the GSIA environment also tried to help build ‘hot groups’ at their subsequent institutions.⁷ Thus, March’s interest in hot groups was personal (having experienced the excitement and productive work they could generate), institutional (knowing that organizational and leadership aspects could help or hinder hot groups’ ability to flare), and intellectual (wanting to understand why and how they sometimes emerged, what we might learn from them, and how they are essential for the generation of novelty).

March and Olsen (2011) and Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt (1999a,b) similarly identify the role of crises in the tolerance organizations have for nonconformists and those that want to break rules, a key element that drove the formation of a hot group that proved instrumental to the transformation of the modern Marine Corps during the episode we study here. Hot groups thrive on debate and disagreement and, thus, can serve as a mechanism to bridge the perceived divide between exploitation and exploration and are a natural conceptual outgrowth of March’s own work, in addition to something he personally encountered. It is in this spirit that we discuss the Marine Corps, an institution that seems to have had some success in attracting outliers and nurturing a hot group movement during a period of reflection prompted by crisis following failures in Vietnam.

2. Elements of USMC history

“We have two companies of Marines running rampant all over the northern half of this island, and three Army regiments pinned down in the southwestern corner, doing nothing. What the hell is going on?”—Attributed to GEN John W. Vessey Jr., U.S. Army (ret.), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the assault on Grenada, 1983

March’s interest in Marines was not only how they seem to be able to attract people who have perhaps a few more “outlier” qualities than most, but also how the organization itself has evolved as something of an outlier (or underdog) amidst the other, much larger services. And yet, the Marines have still enjoyed some success, sometimes perhaps even more than their larger “siblings,” despite (or perhaps because of) the odds stacked against them, as the quote above illustrates. Indeed, the Marine Corps has historically maintained a somewhat precarious position in the American military establishment as “perennially the smallest kid on the block in a hostile neighborhood” (Krulak, 1984: 3). Due to its small size and its overlap into the domains (e.g. land, sea, and air) of the other services, it has often faced challenges to its existence. According to Lieutenant General Victor “Brute” Krulak, Marines “ha[ve] learned through hard experience that fighting for the right to fight [has] often presented greater challenges than fighting their country’s enemies,” resulting in the often-expressed belief on the part of Marines that, “They’re after us” (Krulak, 1984: 15, 13).⁸ As a result, the Marine Corps has perhaps been more aware of the larger organizational, institutional, and societal forces shaping its coevolutionary organizational adaptation over time and has gone to great lengths to differentiate itself from the other services. Such aspects have imbued the organization with a willingness to adapt both operationally and bureaucratically and made the Marine Corps more accepting of outlier qualities, because the organization has viewed differentiating itself a matter of survival.

The USMC traces its roots to at least 1739 and the American colonies’ formation of four regiments that served under the command of the governor of Virginia with the British fleet in its war with Spain. The first Marines in 1775 derived their duties from English custom, serving as soldiers of the sea that fought aboard, but did not sail, the ships to which they were assigned. Comprised of members of Philadelphia’s semiskilled and unskilled laborers, they were largely recruited from the city’s taverns, including (famously) Tun Tavern, and were ignorant of not only naval warfare, but also the seafaring lifestyle. Though pay was similar to that in state navies, life in the infant Corps was more arduous. Additionally, service with privateers offered the potential for greater pay, leading to recruiting problems and a certain outlier-ness quality from the beginning.

After years of organizational confusion concerning the Marines’ relationship with the Navy, the Marine Corps gained its first semblance of institutional stability under the leadership of Archibald Henderson, who served on active duty as a Marine officer for over 52 years and as Commandant of the Marine Corps for over 38 years (1820–1859; Alexander, 2004: 73). When Henderson took over as Commandant, the Marine Corps was in disarray, but under his stewardship, the Marine Corps more than doubled in strength (from 922 Marines in 1820). In the face of repeated bureaucratic threats to the Corps’ existence, Henderson developed an extensive network of allies (most notably, senior line officers in the Navy) and managed to defend the existing roles and mission of the Marine Corps, which he viewed as serving “on board the Ships of War in distant seas for the protection of our widely extended commerce”—namely as ships guards protecting the ship’s captain from his crew and as sharpshooters ready to form boarding or landing parties—and as sentries at navy yards (Millett, 1991: 58–59, 69; Alexander, 2004: 63).⁹ Under his leadership, the Marine Corps adapted to emerging requirements and conducted extended land campaigns with the Army for the first time during the Indian wars and Mexican War. Similarly driven by a desire to demonstrate the Corps’ utility, Henderson’s Marines also became involved in domestic peacekeeping incidents on four occasions from 1851 to 1858 (Millett, 1991: 85). Henderson, thus, expanded the scope of the Corps’ duties while also beginning to push needed administrative reforms to professionalize the force—years before the military reform movement in the 1870s and 1880s. He urged the authorization of a retired list for older or infirm officers so they could make way for younger officers, strict examination of officer candidates’ educational and moral fitness, more education, artillery training to project power ashore, and the possibility of assigning West Point graduates to the Marine Corps (Millett, 1991: 84; Dawson, 1998: 747–748).¹⁰

As modern warship technology advanced and the professionalization of the Navy bluejacket improved, the Navy increasingly looked at the Marines’ ships guard function as obsolete and not suited for the United States’ more expansive foreign policy (e.g. Rodgers, 1888; Fullam, 1896). Additionally, following new territorial acquisitions resulting from the Spanish War, the Navy needed some means to enable its new short-range battleships to operate across long stretches of open ocean, requiring either permanent bases in potential overseas areas of operation or an extensive string of temporary, “stepping-stone” bases to supply and repair vessels. Lacking the imperial prowess of its European rivals, the stepping-stone option was the only realistic solution for the American Navy. At their first meeting, the General Board, established in March 1900 to “consider questions relating to the efficient preparation of the fleet in case of war and for the naval defense of the coast” (Clifford, 1973: 6) and to advise the Secretary of the Navy on war plans, bases, and general naval policy (Spector, 1977: 101), recommended that the Marines “would be best adapted and most available for immediate and sudden call” in the defense of a naval advance base (Clifford, 1973: 8). The Commandant agreed to set about establishing and properly equipping a one-thousand-man expeditionary force capable of operating independently as an advance base force (Cosmas and Shulimson, 1983: 122; Millett, 1991: 271–272).¹¹

Following service in World War I, the Marine Corps developed an amphibious assault capability from this initial advance base force concept. Earl Hancock “Pete” Ellis, hailed as the prophet or father of amphibious warfare, most especially in Marine Corps lore, was an outlier. He was a loner who suffered from neurasthenia and alcoholism and for the first part of his career lacked a political or senior officer sponsor. However, in penning the report, Advanced Base Operations in Micronesia, Ellis not only recognized that advanced bases were required to support the fleet, but since Japan occupied the former German holdings in the Marshalls, Carolines, and Palaus, Ellis also made a radical leap from established doctrine by identifying the requirement for forced entry. He subsequently emphasized the importance of feints, maneuver, and surprise; laid out a task-organized landing force; and presciently described the sequence of events of the major fleet action that decided the war in the Pacific (Ballendorf and Bartlett, 1997: 119–122).

Following the war, the Marine Corps again had to fight for its survival in defense unification battles. Demonstrating its penchant for adapting to a changing bureaucratic environment, the Marine Corps (which had recruited professional newspapermen in Washington, DC to serve as combat correspondents and increase the Corps’ public profile during the war) did not let its public relations infrastructure atrophy after the war, but rather adapted the Marines’ image of hardened, dedicated warriors to peacetime by leveraging the “language of the American family life” (O’Connell, 2012: 85). For example, the Marines created programs such as Toys for Tots in 1947, built alliances in Hollywood, and provided unmatched support and cooperation for war films such as Sands of Iwo Jima, all of which helped to soften the Corps’ image and quell concerns associated with demobilization and the lingering effects of war. The USMC also became actively engaged in sending veterans into politics, orchestrating congressional support, and building grassroots networks of support (O’Connell, 2012).

In addition to adjusting to these bureaucratic battles, the Marine Corps had to adapt its amphibious base-seizure mission given the advent of the nuclear age. Following a series of Navy-directed nuclear tests in the summer of 1946, the Marine Corps appointed a Special Board to reconcile amphibious operations with nuclear weapons. The “vertical envelopment” concept developed by the Board entailed flying forces in via helicopter from well-dispersed carriers. These forces would land behind initial beach defenses in order to prevent nuclear strikes, then close with the enemy and open the beaches for reinforcements and heavy equipment, which would be brought in via landing craft and large seaplanes. Demonstrating an impressive amount of foresight, the Board developed the concept even though such troop-carrying helicopters and seaplanes did not yet even exist (Millett, 1991: 451–454).

Service in the Korean War marked the Corps’ last amphibious assault and the Corps’ transition to a “force in readiness” thereafter. In Vietnam, the small percentage of Marines that served in Combined Action Platoons (CAPs) have, in retrospect, been heralded as another example of the Corps’ ability to adapt, especially in comparison to the Army’s search-and-destroy tactics and bombing strategies (Krepinevich, 1986: 172–177; Dell and Querubin, 2018).

The stories the organization tells its members further reflect this openness to ideas and change. Krulak (1984) identifies six traits of Marines: thinkers, innovators, improvisers, penny pinchers, brothers, and fighters. The first four imply a degree of adaptability, resourcefulness, and openness to ideas that manifested themselves as the Marine Corps, driven by the failures of (and inability to adapt soon enough in) Vietnam, moved toward a more adaptive and flexible warfighting philosophy. It was not until these failures and the resulting maneuver warfare movement that adaptiveness was explicitly incorporated into the organization’s official documents and way of thinking and fighting. This movement evolved in ways quite similar to other “hot groups” and had characteristics similar to March’s outliers.

3. The case of maneuver warfare as a hot group and the flaring of outliers in USMC history

An interesting affinity between the maneuver warfare movement and March’s perspectives is the acceptance and embrace of uncertainty and ambiguity. An important theme in March’s work since at least March (1978) was to understand, accommodate, and embrace ambiguity (and other limitations to human rationality), rather than repress it or assume it away as many theoretical models and perspectives do. Like March used ambiguity to build fruitful concepts and insights around organizational learning, intelligence, risk taking, and organizational identity, so did the Marines come to embrace, rather than repress, the presence of uncertainty and ambiguity, especially in the maneuver warfare movement and their conception of warfare. This stood in marked contrast to the more static (i.e. attritionist) conception it replaced.

The development of the maneuver warfare philosophy in the Marine Corps, which eventually resulted in a complete organizational transformation, grew out of the failures of Vietnam. Misguided body count strategies and fluid battles that revealed the limitations of centralized decision-making and Marine Corps doctrine prompted many returning officers, relatively junior in rank at the time, to demand change (Wyly, 1993). For example, in reflecting back on his time as a second lieutenant during the 1960s when Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara strengthened centralized decision-making routines by implementing systems engineering techniques (themselves examples of exploitation of the status quo) to manage the war in Vietnam, Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (ret.), an early advocate of maneuver warfare who later became the first president of Marine Corps University, identified the need to break from these established routines of attrition warfare: “We took those systems, which had good if not great utility in the acquisition of weapon systems, to the battlefield, where they were totally inappropriate. The computers in Saigon said we were winning the war, while out there in the rice paddies we knew damn well we weren't winning the war” (NOVA, 2004). Furthermore, even though the Marine Corps’ use of CAPs in Vietnam was retroactively lauded, only a very small percentage of the total number of Marines were actually employed in this capacity (Krepinevich, 1986: 174), meaning a great many had experienced the limitations and failures of centralized attrition warfare firsthand.

These young officers gradually coalesced around the strategic leadership of General Al Gray, who, knowing he faced a lot of resistance, ignored the “Marine Corps way” of doing things and sheltered the maneuver warfare movement from established doctrinal processes and the top of the organization, which he felt would have crushed it.¹² The organization placed a new emphasis on fighting “smart,” which stood in marked contrast not only to recent operations in Vietnam, but also to Marine Corps operations made famous (and that made the Marine Corps famous) in the Pacific during World War II, where the Corps prioritized speed when conducting an amphibious assault even if it meant pushing through the enemy’s strength.

In contrast to the then-pervasive emphasis on body counts and centralized decision making, maneuver warfare is “a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a series of rapid, violent, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which he cannot cope” (USMC, 1989: 59). As such, maneuver has a temporal as well as a spatial element and is based more on defeating the enemy psychologically than is the more firepower-attrition based approach, which focuses more on the enemy’s physical destruction (Wilson, 1981), as was the case in Vietnam. In order to generate the requisite operational tempo and cope with the uncertainty and chaos of combat, decision making must be decentralized and must not take place at headquarters or back in Washington, DC. Decentralized decision making requires the use of mission-type orders, or assigning a subordinate a mission but leaving “the manner of accomplishing the mission to the subordinate, thereby allowing him the freedom and establishing the duty to take whatever steps he deems necessary based on the situation” (USMC, 1989: 70). Rather than rely on a centralized chain of command to make decisions, maneuver warfare philosophy trusts that “a competent subordinate commander who is at the point of decision will naturally have a better appreciation for the true situation than a senior some distance removed” (USMC, 1989: 62), thus increasing the pace at which units can adapt to changes in the operating environment.

To capture some of the dynamics of the institutional and organizational change that enabled maneuver warfare to emerge, we focus on five larger organizational and leadership elements that helped to cultivate, nourish, and enable the movement. The first element is a sense of urgency as a source of change. The second is the importance of informal mechanisms as opposed to bureaucratized structure. The third is attracting and enabling outlier thinkers through a bottom-up approach, while the fourth is a belief that people and ideas matter more than rank and titles. A final element is the importance of critical thinking and broadening minds. Each contributed in its own way, resulting in change that was evolutionary and organic but guided by a bit of design. The movement was assisted by converts at the grassroots level and fresh inputs from non-Marines, which generated a broad base of enthusiasm that enabled the maneuver warfare philosophy to become embedded in Marine Corps fighting, thinking, and education. Combining elements of March’s interest in the flaring of innovative thinkers and novelty and Leavitt’s “hot groups” argument, we can perhaps better understand some of the mechanisms underlying and enabling the flaring of the maneuver warfare movement in the Marine Corps.

3.1 Sense of urgency

The quest for change in the Marine Corps was driven not only by the failures of Vietnam, but also by a host of geostrategic, domestic, and bureaucratic challenges, including a rising terrorist threat, an inflation-ravaged economy, and the transition to the All-Volunteer Force (Millett, 1991: 612–613). Most importantly, military thinkers were (again) beginning to question the future of the Marine Corps and the need for an amphibious capability, this time vis-à-vis a burgeoning Soviet threat in the Nuclear Age (e.g. Binkin and Record, 1976). The Marine Corps was in crisis.

During the Cold War, the Marine Corps was likely to be called upon to conduct amphibious operations or fight the Soviets and would thus likely be outnumbered in either instance. As a result, the Marine Corps needed to place an emphasis on fighting “smart,” or avoiding enemy strengths and focusing on enemy weakness to reduce casualties and yield decisive results (USMC, 1989: 74). Moreover, in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exercises during the mid-1970s, which served as a proving ground to European theater commanders, Marine ground combat elements were consistently assigned only lesser roles due to a lack of mobility and firepower, oftentimes bypassed by more mobile opposing forces, or simply isolated, and ultimately contributed little to these exercises beyond serving as a symbol of US strategic deterrence (MAGTF Instructional Group, 2015; Turley, 2017: 12). Critics also questioned the caliber of the Marine officer. For example, in the February 1978 issue of Marine Corps Gazette, Lind and Record wrote a critique of Marine officers, observing a lack of new tactical or operational concepts introduced therein, which they attributed to an inadequate knowledge of theory and history and a promotion system that did not emphasize theoretical ability. Much like Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt (1999a,b) identify the propensity for crises to lead to the formation of hot groups and a culture of optimistic urgency played a role in the flaring of intellectual outliers at RAND (Augier et al., 2015), these factors resulted in a real desire among the junior and midgrade officer corps, who had confronted the limitations of Marine Corps tactics, hardware, and doctrine firsthand, to demand change.¹³

One such officer was Colonel Michael Wyly, USMC (ret.), who proved instrumental in introducing maneuver warfare philosophy in a formal educational setting in the Marine Corps for the first time. As a lieutenant colonel, Wyly was named Head of Tactics Instruction at Amphibious Warfare School (AWS), a career course for captains, for the 1979–1980 school year. Colonel Wyly had previously served two tours in Vietnam. When he returned from these tours, he felt he had not tried hard enough to explain the limitations of current tactics and strategy, which he had experienced firsthand, to senior officers (Wyly, personal conversation). With war against the Soviets seemingly on the horizon, he committed himself to trying harder to do the right thing so that more people did not continue to die due to a lack of effort on his part. Embodying the hot group hallmark of intensely passionate, “captivated” members (Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt, 1999a: 66), Wyly spent his evenings in the library at Marine Corps Base Quantico. So frequent were his visits, the librarians gave him his own key so he could study after hours. Wyly enrolled in graduate studies at George Washington University to whet his appetite for professional study, and he drew on archival material at the Marine Corps Historical Center and interviewed foreign officers to support his research. Wyly recalls, “I found my intellectual curiosity on fire. I was inspired” (Wyly, 2019). His boss, then Major General Bernard Trainor, provided Wyly with top cover protection from institutional mechanisms that could derail his effort, turning him loose to redesign the curriculum, unencumbered by current doctrine.

Of course, organizational changes rarely take place in a vacuum and are often nudged along by larger trends. Like Leavitt’s story about GSIA as a hot group being nested within the larger context of the era of reform in business education (and GSIA being a poster child of the kind of change that the larger movement sought, as well as being the institutional home for important new work in organization studies and other fields), the story of change in the Marine Corps was nested within a larger (and complementary) military reform debate. This arose particularly from Vietnam and from what some feared was runaway Cold War military spending.

According to Senator Gary Hart and Bill Lind, military reform was “an effort to make all our defense policies and practices—from the infantry squad through the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Congress—serve the purpose of winning in combat” (Hart and Lind, 1986: 17). This reform debate focused on doctrine, procurement, and force structure and emphasized the distinction between a more effective defense and a more expensive defense. As superiority in resources against the Soviets seemed impossible, the US military needed to identify “how to fight outnumbered and win” (Lind, 1980), necessitating an emphasis on fighting smarter than the enemy and on the importance of people. Developing an officer corps that could make the right choices and that was not inclined to conformity was thus also deemed a priority (Oseth, 1984: 49–52).

Lind, an outspoken legislative aide first to Senator Robert Taft, Jr. and later Senator Hart, as well as an author and military historian, recognized the need for the Marine Corps and Department of Defense writ large to change its routines and ways of thinking. He leveraged his placement on Capitol Hill and access to key lawmakers to help spur the movement. He also joined forces with other reformers, most notably retired Air Force colonel, fighter pilot, and influential military theorist, John Boyd, to form the intellectual engine of the reform movement. Boyd began presenting his now famous “Patterns of Conflict” lecture to a generation of Pentagon reformers. Thus, the movement for reform and change was not unique to the Marine Corps but was embedded in larger movements for reform at the time, and the people and ideas overlapped.¹⁴ The core group of Marine officers striving for change also directly sought the assistance of many of these like-minded outsider outliers/reformers to inform their own efforts, leading to the creation of a rather eclectic mix of reform-minded politicians, military theorists, staffers, and officers from other services that joined forces with the Marine maneuverists to identify solutions to what had failed in Vietnam and in the larger defense establishment. These Marine maneuverists, themselves outliers, remained open to the ideas of other outsiders, including those who had never experienced combat. This sense of urgency, interacting with a mix of diverse, interdisciplinary thinkers spurred by crisis, provided the initial shock necessary to break the Marine Corps from routines that were no longer effective on the battlefield.

3.2 The importance of informal mechanisms

Many of the mechanisms that helped enable the maneuver warfare movement were informal, and while some were the product of more design than others, they certainly were not bureaucratized. Rather, enthusiastic individuals eager to passionately debate their ideas organically coalesced into groups as they searched for solutions to vexing problems. These groups proved far more influential than their size or the rank of their members might have initially suggested.¹⁵

In his position as Head of Tactics Instruction, Colonel Wyly introduced a new generation of officers to the maneuver warfare philosophy and facilitated ways for students to self-select into additional forms of study. As he redesigned the curriculum at AWS, Wyly resolved to deemphasize instruction in manuals and doctrine, which he felt became ends in themselves. Instead, he began incorporating historical battle studies and exercises that required students to make decisions, while also eliminating the prescribed solutions that instructors had previously relied on during these exercises. He even deviated from established norms and curricula by taking his students to the field for tactical exercises without troops (Damian, 2008: 73–78; Wyly, 2019).

Wyly invited Lind down during a week-long war game between the Marine captains at AWS to show him that the Marine Corps was in fact changing how it was teaching tactics—something Lind had been pushing for on the Hill, as well as in many military professional journals. Rather than instinctively resisting the criticisms of an outsider, Wyly welcomed this outside thought, which helped feed the movement. During the war game, Lind helped Wyly get in touch with John Boyd, whom Wyly invited down to Quantico to give his “Patterns of Conflict” lecture. The conversation sparked by this lecture led to the creation of an afterhours discussion group that formed part of the initial nucleus of the maneuver warfare movement. Members passionately debated how best to fight in future wars (Wyly, personal conversation), a fixation similar to the “temporarily monopolizing” tasks of hot groups that captivate “every heart and mind to the exclusion of almost everything” (Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt, 1999a: 66).

Two of Wyly’s students, GI Wilson and Bill Woods, received orders to 2nd Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, NC and wanted to continue their studies there. They started their own study group despite admittedly not really knowing what they were doing. Woods recalls, “When you don’t know where to start, you just start” (Woods, personal conversation). The group held a handful of meetings before General Al Gray (then a Major General) checked in as the Commanding General. Wyly knew that General Gray had already met Boyd and Lind on multiple occasions and encouraged Woods and Wilson to meet him. Woods and Wilson met with General Gray to discuss what they had been working on. General Gray subsequently declared their study group the 2nd Marine Division Maneuver Warfare Board and maneuver warfare the official doctrine (and way of thinking) for the division. General Gray later met with Colonel Wyly, leading Gray to make regular visits to speak to the students at AWS. This created a sense of momentum behind the maneuver warfare movement such that students realized they had better learn it (Wyly, personal conversation; Woods, personal conversation).

Both this group at Camp Lejeune, as well as the group that formed earlier at Quantico, were self-initiated, relatively small, and driven by a particular task—the study of maneuver warfare and winning future wars. Lieutenant General Trainor did not wait for formal curriculum reviews to change the curriculum at AWS, and the initial meeting between Gray, Wilson, and Woods also certainly did not follow proper protocol. Rather, Trainor and Gray challenged and empowered their Marines and provided them the freedom to act and implement changes within the bounds of their commander’s intent. This was indicative of the decidedly bottom-up approach by which the maneuver warfare movement won grassroots converts.¹⁶ These informal mechanisms also highlight how organizations might facilitate organic flaring guided by a bit of design (in this case, a formal schoolhouse), an important theme concerning March’s outliers and the formation of Leavitt’s hot groups, as well as how these individuals and groups can have an outsized impact on organization’s ability to adapt and change.¹⁷

3.3 Attracting and enabling innovative thinking through a bottom-up approach

Many of the ideas of the maneuver warfare movement were conceived, socialized, tested, and implemented from the bottom up as opposed to by fiat from the top down. Even key leaders, like General Gray, who supported the movement exhibited a decidedly bottom up mentality and leadership style. Gray, for example, had a reputation for being out of his office spending time with his Marines (e.g. Otte, 2015: 13, 47–48). This generated enthusiasm for the movement and enabled it to become embedded more broadly and deeply in the organization and withstand the natural inclination of bureaucracy to stamp out change.

Before arriving at 2nd Marine Division, General Gray had already adopted maneuver thinking and had previously begun implementing and testing maneuver principles first on the battlefields of Vietnam and then while Commanding General of 4th Marine Amphibious Brigade (MAB) in the mid- to late-1970s. Despite senior Marine leadership remaining skeptical, under his leadership, 4th MAB embraced mission-type orders over conventional warfare doctrine during NATO exercises, and 4th MAB’s operational performances consistently received high marks from the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and European allies (Turley, 2017: 12–15). This not only won him converts at the grassroots level within his own command, but he could also explain away his lower units’ straying from conventional tactics as junior officers not knowing any better (Wilson, personal conversation). Gray thus served as the movement’s senior patron who supported and protected maneuver warfare from meddling while also testing it at some of the most strenuous levels possible short of actual combat. Gray made his Marines part of the learning and development process, and as a result they felt “engaged in an important, even vital, personally stretching, ennobling mission” and derived meaning from their work (Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt, 1999a: 66).¹⁸

As part of his bottom-up approach to implementing maneuver warfare, Gray nurtured an open and collaborative environment that broke down traditional notions of hierarchy, which he deemed essential to critical and creative thinking. A tireless operational critic, General Gray insisted on holding after action reviews (AARs) following war games and field or command post exercises. Discussions took place without rank insignia being visible, thus encouraging open dialogue and emphasizing the merit of ideas over rank (Augier and Guo, 2016: 279; Wilson, personal conversation). Maneuver warfare required thinking at all levels, so Gray was always more concerned about why a Marine did what he did (and what he thought) than what he did (MAGTF Instructional Group, 2015).

Gray challenged his Marines to make decisions in exercises that emphasized “free play” in lieu of following scripted scenarios. In doing so, his Marines discovered the merits of the maneuver philosophy first-hand, creating disciples (Gray, personal conversation). General Gray leveraged his command positions to adopt and implement maneuver warfare in increasingly larger units, which he commanded for unusually long periods of time. This fostered a broad-based, bottom-up change that ultimately enabled him to bureaucratically outmaneuver his maneuver warfare opponents.¹⁹

Being a hot group in a cold organization, however, can be difficult. Organizations (and people in them) often have bureaucratic layers that want to repeat actions that have led to success in the past, even at the expense of sustaining the experimentation and novelty that hot groups pursue. Thus, they are inclined to promote those perceived as successful and who feel their abilities are most relevant to organizational outcomes (Levinthal and March, 1993). The Marine Corps’ adoption of maneuver warfare was far from a foregone conclusion, and it took people who were devoted to the cause, not their careers. Colonel Wyly was later fired from his position at AWS and reassigned to the Pentagon after Lieutenant General Trainor was transferred to a new position and was replaced by an attrition-minded successor (Wyly, personal conversation). General Gray himself was anything but a member of the Marine Corps establishment and was a surprise selection to become the 29th Commandant, having already submitted his retirement papers 4 months earlier.²⁰ Woods, Wyly, and Wilson demonstrated how the bottom-up approach enhanced Marines’ commitment to, and identification with, the organization and engendered an obligation to serve the organization and the people in it—even at great personal sacrifice. These Marines embodied a warrior’s version of March’s (2003: 205–206) conception of the scholar’s quest, “one based not on anticipations of consequences but on attempts to fulfill the obligations of personal and social identities and senses of self.”

3.4 Focusing on people and ideas

Led by General Gray, the maneuver warfare movement valued people and ideas more than ranks and titles. As such, the movement was assisted, in particular, by inputs from many non-Marines—outside outliers. Bill Lind, for example, proved to be a key contributor to the debate concerning, and the conceptual development of, maneuver warfare. Well-meaning, well-versed in the history of warfare, and a frequent contributor to the Gazette, he at times came across as arrogant or a crank, leading some (especially senior) Marines to try to marginalize him. Gray, however, was always willing (and eager) to speak with anyone who had ideas and wanted to help (Gray, personal conversation). Inviting outsiders to contribute helped the Marine Corps avoid becoming a closed system and fostered innovative thought. Gray’s emphasis on ideas and de-emphasis of rank is also in keeping with Leavitt’s hot group discussion, as well as March’s own experiences at GSIA, where he often noted that ideas, not titles, mattered.²¹

After hours maneuver warfare discussion groups at Camp Pendleton, inspired by those at Lejeune, insisted that participants, regardless of rank, refer to one another as “Sir,” thus placing everyone on the same level and an overriding emphasis on the merit of ideas (Ezerzer, 2016). The conceptual debates in the Gazette were not inhibited by a deference to rank either. Instead, the Gazette provided a public forum in which the merits of maneuver warfare were debated by both insiders and outsiders. These debates began in the late 1970s and early 1980s and developed the intellectual foundation for—and the eventual organizational embrace of—maneuver warfare. A longitudinal look at Gazette articles discussing maneuver warfare reveals a very clear evolution in the clarity of thought that resulted from these debates and highlights the useful role critics can play in the change process.²²

Following Lind’s February 1978 article in the Gazette, subsequent articles discussing maneuver warfare, including one of Lind’s own, initially seemed to blur the distinction between maneuver warfare as a philosophy and the related mobility and mechanized capabilities necessary to fight like a maneuverist (Lind, 1978; Miller, 1978; Miller, 1979a). In October 1979, Miller, a junior officer, authored the first part of a formative two-part series in the Gazette titled “Winning Through Maneuver.” Miller (1979b) cited historical examples of outnumbered forces winning in battle by focusing their strength on the enemy’s weakness and using surprise to their advantage. Key to such a concept is retaining the initiative via decentralized control.²³

Maneuver warfare critics also joined the debate in the Gazette. Batcheller (1982: 22) argued that the “cookbook recipes” dismissed by the maneuverists were in many instances required because a sufficient level of competence cannot be assumed to exist down to the small unit level. He went on to characterize maneuver warfare as a “freewheeling approach” that focused too much on the Corps’ tactical mobility—which could lead to more mechanization that could detract from the Corps’ strategic mobility—and not enough on destroying the enemy’s (Batcheller, 1982: 22). Voigt (1982) argued that maneuver warfare did not give enemy commanders enough credit. After all, “it should not be assumed that enemy commanders will lose control of the situation and their forces disintegrate when faced with rapidly changing situations” while Marine commanders somehow remain unaffected (Voigt, 1982: 20). Mission-type orders that relaxed command and control were not only deemed inappropriate, but if maneuver warfare was based on the assumption of an enemy superior in numbers and materiel, the philosophy could not also assume there would be weak points to exploit.

The debates in the Gazette and elsewhere were indicative of a movement focused on helping Marines learn how to think better about complex issues (not what to think) and reinforcing the importance of learning as a lifetime activity. The embrace of outside sources and deviant thinkers like Lind and Boyd, as evidenced in the Gazette and in lectures at Quantico, helped similarly broaden minds.²⁴ The institution and its leaders provided media, such as a professional journal, AARs, and study groups, to facilitate the exchange and sharpening of ideas, based on the premise that it was the ideas that mattered more so than the rank of the individuals who held them. This emphasis on critical thinking drove an intellectual renaissance that permeated the organization.

3.5 Critical thinking and broadening minds

General Gray sought to combat the anti-intellectual current in the Marine Corps at the time by making reading and serious self-study an expectation. Gray wanted to ensure his Marines were as mentally ready to fight as they were physically. Similar to the impetus for Colonel Wyly’s redesign of the curriculum at AWS, Gray felt education required more than memorizing facts or becoming academic historians.²⁵ Rather, professional military education under Gray’s leadership was intended to serve as a vehicle for sharpening judgment and war-fighting capabilities (Turley, 2017: 270), both operationally on the battlefield and organizationally in a time of crisis: “Through education we can equip ourselves to make sound military judgments even in chaotic and uncertain situations. The ability to make clear and swift judgments, amidst chaos, is what sets the warrior apart intellectually. Though practice in the field and in wargames is important to improving military judgment, its development remains anchored to education about war.”²⁶ This emphasis on education was reiterated in FMFM 1, which emphasized every Marine’s responsibility to study the profession of arms on his or her own, putting self-study on par with physical training (USMC, 1989: 51).

General Gray facilitated after working hours debates that generated enthusiasm by placing an equal value on the ideas of more junior officers (Ezerzer, 2016). He leveraged command post and field exercises to evaluate the effectiveness of his guidance, as well as of his units as they explored the concept of maneuver warfare. He eventually incorporated computer simulators into these war games, consolidated a packet of readings on maneuver warfare for his Marines to read,²⁷ and leveraged the Maneuver Warfare Board to serve as a professional study group (Turley, 2017: 126–127, 131). He challenged all of his Marines to think, for maneuver warfare depended on the ability to think faster than the enemy at all levels. In doing so, Gray empowered his Marines to conduct “small experiments with wild ideas, while retaining the possibility of diffusing those that prove to be good ones” (March, 2006: 210) and fundamentally changed his Marines’ perception of risk by emphasizing the need to learn from failure and eschewing a “zero defect” mentality in order to recalibrate the balance between exploitation and exploration. Much like Charles Hitch at RAND and Lee Bach at GSIA, Gray fostered an environment in which his Marines could think outside the box and was prepared to protect them and their continued hard work.

As Commandant, General Gray ordered his Marines to read and published a manual, Book on Books, to introduce and explain the professional reading program he institutionalized as the Commandant’s Reading List, helping to improve the organization’s ability to learn and continuing the process of learning to learn, which is so valuable for organizational adaptation (Leavitt and March, 1988).²⁸ Gray institutionalized the intellectual renaissance undergirding maneuver warfare through a variety of means, including by revising various curricula, publishing the aforementioned reading list for all Marines, increasing educational opportunities for enlisted Marines, and founding Marine Corps University to serve as an umbrella under which all educational programs in the Marine Corps would fall. First by generating the necessary enthusiasm, and then by challenging his Marines and honing their ability to think broadly and critically, Gray set the conditions to challenge the status quo while also protecting the hot group enough for it to take off.

4. Cooling

Though not embraced by all, there can be no doubt that the maneuver warfare movement was indeed quite successful. For example, the quick victory on the battlefield in Operation DESERT STORM has been credited by many to maneuver warfare (e.g. Romm, 1991; Wilson, 1991). As we know from March (and others) that successful and innovative movements in organizations usually do not last, it is relevant now to ask about the downsides of this innovative movement in the USMC. How did it cool, and how can Marines learn from this period of innovativeness and try to buffer exploration in the organization? While the full answer would warrant (at least) another paper-length exploration, let us briefly mention some elements March would have undoubtedly seen as signs of “decline,” while also pointing to some further conceptual parallels between March and the USMC that one could study.

4.1 Bureaucratization, growth, and endurance

As organizations age and grow, March and others have noted how they usually come to value predictability and reliability at the expense of innovativeness, outlier-ness, and variety. Leavitt (1996) also notes that hot groups tend to cool; it is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the same heat, energy, vigor, and excitement.²⁹ In some ways, one might expect this feature to be stronger in military organizations than in business ones because they cannot go out of business. In contrast to the maneuverist mindset, attritionists and bureaucratic managers in these organizations often attempt to create a false sense of certainty by creating processes, check lists, policies, and procedures that slow communication and thus the unit’s ability to respond immediately and effectively (Gray and Otte, 2006: 80, 94, 103). Such obstacles typically multiply as organizations age, further reducing chances for novelty to emerge and survive. That the Department of Defense has oftentimes become its own worst enemy and values processes at the expense of effectiveness is far from a unique insight. Reflecting on his time as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates (2014: 116) writes, “The very size and structure of the department assured ponderousness, if not paralysis, because so many different organizations had to be involved in even the smallest decisions. The idea of speed and agility to support current combat operations was totally foreign to the building.”

Another factor contributing to bureaucratization is sheer growth, especially in the Flag Officer (FO) and General Officer (GO) ranks. In World War II, there were only twice as many GO/FOs as there are today even though there were 10 times as many active duty troops (McCarthy, 2017: 77). Each general has his own staff, leading to a “brass creep” (e.g. Gansler and Lucyshyn, 2014: vii–viii) across the force, or a growth in the “administrative class” that often tends to view their roles in organizations as jobs rather than vocations.³⁰ For example, military and civilian positions at geographic combatant commands increased by about 50% from fiscal years 2001 through 2012 (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2013), and the tooth-to-tail ratio (combat vs. noncombat elements) in Army deployments decreased 5% from 1991 to 2005 (McCarthy, n. d.: 80). Although the Marine Corps has the lowest percentage of officers among the services, the percentage of commissioned Marine officers as a percentage of end-strength increased 38% from 1968 to 2015 (McCarthy, 2017). As a result, many more layers (and people who can say “no”) have been added between the warfighter or action officer and the ultimate decision maker.

With more people to manage, more rules and routines are needed. Officers, especially, become so bogged down with administrative and training requirements that they are less able or likely to serve as an advocate for ideas working their way up from the bottom. Sometimes, they even opt to evade these requirements entirely (and arguably, at times, out of necessity) by “lying” to themselves and the institution (Wong and Gerras, 2015). With less time to get to know the members of their unit, commanders are less able to build a broad base of support and become prone to leading by fiat and implementing even more rules.³¹ These side effects of growth breed a culture of compliance (instead of exploration) that saps the enthusiasm necessary for any kind of novelty or hot groups to flourish.

4.2 Competence, confidence, and careerism

Confidence and competence were also themes March often talked about when discussing organizational issues. Many will recall him musing that “people and organizations often gain confidence before they gain competence,” often noting its possibly destructive implications for novelty and hot groups in organizations. While Leavitt (1996) notes that self-confidence was a key element in igniting the hot group at GSIA, March and others have warned that confidence, sometimes resulting from previous success, can lead to less risk-taking and less exploration in general (March, 1991; Kahneman and Lovallo, 1993). At RAND, this kind of competency trap manifested itself, for instance, in the wide adoption of systems analysis as the dominant analytical framework (Kahn and Mann, 1957; Marshall, 1991). While systems analysis was useful as a method for understanding and analyzing relatively well-structured problems, it was not suited for more ill-structured ones. Thus, applying systems analysis to situations under ambiguity and uncertainty soon led to a narrowing of the mind and a trained incapacity for strategic thinking (Marshall, 1991), because the ability to understand the world cannot be reduced to what fits certain tools.

Similarly, the DoD oftentimes puts an undue amount of faith in technology at the expense of understanding the nature of war. As a result, war games have devolved into set piece, “proofs-of-concept” for technology. In reflecting back on the Millennium Challenge 2002 war game exercise in which he served as the “enemy” force commander, Lieutenant General Van Riper, observes, “They want to apply the technology without the brainpower … My experience has been that those who focus on the technology, the science, tend towards sloganeering” (NOVA, 2004). Van Riper used unconventional tactics to sink 16 American ships and communicate with his subordinate commanders in a manner that flummoxed the American military’s ability to collect intelligence. For the USMC in particular, the cost and acquisitions timeline of their amphibious ship investments, and the institution’s desire to differentiate itself, are so great that the USMC is prone to exploiting its extant Amphibious Readiness Group/Marine Expeditionary Unit construct rather than exploring new operational concepts.

A final issue that has evolved as a barrier to reigniting the hot group mentality in the USMC is the issue of careerism. As even the DoD’s most senior officers have largely escaped accountability for their performance on the battlefield in recent conflicts (e.g. Ricks, 2013; Gates, 2014), the officer corps’ ability to abide by policies and rules has come to fill part of the void as a means of evaluation. This fosters a “zero defect” mentality that inhibits any experimentation, as well as the individual and the organization’s ability to learn, because people become prone to cover up mistakes (Inspector General, 2010).³² The resulting risk aversion from this emphasis on rules and processes is reinforced by a personnel management system that largely treats individual officers as interchangeable cogs in a machine and rewards those that abide by the “cookie cutter” career path (e.g. Vandergriff, 2002; Kane, 2013), undermining the sustenance of deviants in a manner similar to how RAND tended to hire those who conformed to a predefined research agenda as it continued to grow.

5. Marchian managerial lessons for USMC

So far, we have discussed aspects of the USMC using some perspectives and ideas from March to illustrate how the Marine Corps has evolved and adapted, as well as how the maneuver warfare movement evolved. What might be some Marchian lessons from our March-inspired organizational analysis of the USMC in general, and for the generation and management of innovation, hot groups, and outliers in particular? Though one cannot perfectly plan or design innovative hot groups, one can nurture and grow them and try to protect them from the rest of the organization. The mechanisms and managerial tactics March himself recognized include trying to increase innovation, avoid myopia, encourage identities rather than incentives, and buffer exploration. With regards to the first two, he noted that organizational identification and a logic of identity, which is something the USMC should be able to do quite well, may help extend the time and space horizons for organizational members.³³

5.1 Organizational loyalty and logic of identity rather than incentives

The Marine Corps has carefully cultivated a reputation for being an elite organization that challenges its members mentally, physically, and spiritually, thus facilitating the self-selection of those inspired by this identity. The USMC takes great satisfaction in being uniquely charged by Congress to be “the most ready when the nation is least ready” (USMC, 2014: iv; U. S. Marine Corps Readiness, 2016: 3), and the organization is committed to a demanding, explicit warrior code, anchored in history, wherein personal objectives are subsumed by pride in—and an almost religious dedication to—one’s country, the Corps, and one’s unit (Warren, 2005: 13).³⁴ The famous “We don’t promise you a rose garden” poster featuring Drill Instructor Sergeant Charles A. Taliano was the first in a series of posters with the slogan “The Marines are looking for a few good men,” a campaign which ran from late 1971 until mid-1984 (Brofer, 2006). The poster was paired with a public service announcement (PSA) for the Marine Corps Recruiting Service that challenged men who were not “afraid of tough physical training or tough technical skills” to “earn their membership in an elite force” (Audie Murphy American Legend, 2013). The PSA made no promises other than to make the viewer a Marine—“one of the few and one of the finest” (Audie Murphy American Legend, 2013). The PSA embodied the sense that to be a Marine is a vocation in which an individual recognizes that he is part of something larger than himself, and his life is imbued with a sense of purpose (cf. March, 2003). Those that self-select into the Marine Corps are drawn to the challenge—physical, mental, and otherwise—of what it takes to be a Marine.

During the transformation process at boot camp, recruits spend countless hours on rigorous physical training, weapons handling, drill, uniform inspections, and lessons on history and tradition. Whereas members of the other services tend to identify more closely with their particular branch or those who do a similar type of work, Marines share a common identity as riflemen first and foremost. The Marine Corps lists as its first principle, which it claims helps define the cultural identity of Marines, “Every Marine a Rifleman. Every Marine—regardless of occupational specialty or status—is first and foremost a disciplined warrior” (U.S. Marine Corps, 2008b: 8).³⁵ This identity has always led the Marine Corps to stress the human dimension in war and focus on the individual Marine—the rifleman, not weapons, technology, or systems—as its “number-one priority,” its “most important warfighting asset,” and as the foundation for its ability to fight and win wars (USMC, 1997: 3–14; USMC, 2008a: 1; USMC, 2008b: 14; O’Connell, 2012: 9). That all enlisted Marines attend boot camp at one of two places, Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) Parris Island or MCRD San Diego, and that all officers, including future aviators, attend a 6-month basic rifle platoon commander training course at The Basic School (TBS) in Quantico undoubtedly results in shared experiences that foster this unique identity. Despite a reverence for tradition and the past, this emphasis on identity rather than incentives encourages Marines to think more of the organization than of themselves.

5.2 We-leadership

Part and parcel of this identity is the concept of we-leadership. Emphasizing the group (i.e. “we”) more than the individual (i.e. “I” or “me”) engenders an obligation to serve people in the organization and enhances followers’ commitment to, and identification with, the organization (Gray and Otte, 2006). As leaders forge a connection between followers and the organization, followers’ values more closely align with that of the organization, thus making them more likely to take actions that benefit the organization and speak up when the organization is running off course. In contrast, the DoD’s emphasis on “ticket punching” and the resulting need for career management encourages the individual to focus inward on his own self-preservation and advancement. This mindset concerned early maneuverists like Wyly, Wilson, and Gray (Professional Military Education, 1988; Wyly, 2008; Wilson, 2011; Otte, 2015: 27). Gray himself was known for saying, “Never say “I” unless you are talking about a mistake” (Otte, 2015: 30). Wyly in particular embodies the ethos of the Marine who put the well-being of the organization above his own career. Recent changes to the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act are an encouraging step toward easing the cookie cutter career path approach that could afford Marines the time and opportunity to take chances that could benefit the organization. As this careerist mindset is eased, Marines might become more inclined to view their service as a vocation.

5.3 Buffering exploration

The operational tempo of the DoD and the proliferation of annual training and administrative requirements leave little “slack” for exploration and possibly even undermine mission accomplishment. The DoD, for example, has been criticized as being “too busy to learn” (Scales, 2010). Driven by a declining dwell-to-deployment ratio from when the Marine Corps was deploying (seemingly nonstop) to Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as by the growth in these requirements, training became increasingly standardized at the institutional level to alleviate some of the logistical and administrative burdens associated with training. Infantry battalions conducted largely the same training schedule, and as a result, platoon and company commanders no longer had to find creative ways to train with a limited budget. Exercises were scripted to afford infantry battalions the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to accomplish the dictated “mission essential tasks” so they could deploy, which in many ways became more important than effectiveness once on the battlefield. In recognition of this continuing reality and in a hopeful first step, in a July 21, 2017 memo, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who himself grew up in the Marine Corps during the maneuver warfare movement, ordered the review of mandatory training not directly related to core tasks (Copp, 2017).³⁶ Marine Corps leadership has also expressed a desire to incorporate more force-on-force training (Harkins, 2018; South, 2018), which could encourage creativity to win a game that results in winners and losers.

6. Closing

This article has discussed aspects of USMC institutional history through the lens of some ideas and works of James G. March. In particular, his interest in novelty, organizational adaptation, and outliers (and their roles in enabling hot group movements in organizations) can be usefully applied to the history and unfolding of the maneuver warfare movement in the USMC. In addition to improving our understanding of the organizational dynamics underlying the role of the movement and the greater organizational transformation of the USMC in the 1970s–1980s, one can also draw lessons from March’s emphasis on the need to protect and buffer exploration and novelty through, for instance, identity-based decision making and we-leadership. These lessons are possibly useful to the Marine Corps in the future as it struggles to find its way back to the maneuver warfare way of thinking.

In addition to lessons for the Marine Corps, there are at least two other possible implications or avenues for further exploration. First, scholars interested in further refining their understanding of the dynamics of organizational change across different types of organizations might find such (and other) Marchian perspectives useful as starting points for understanding the dynamics of routines and change in military organizations more generally. March often remarked that if one wanted to study the dynamics concerning routines, military organizations (and churches) would be good candidates. Applying March’s ideas to military organizations could possibly complement the several decades of research on organizational change and the insights developed regarding issues such as organizational learning, strategic renewal, and collaborations within and across teams.

Second, scholars might also find the application of March’s ideas to military organizations useful in exploring the limitations of one’s favorite theory or perspective. Why, for instance, is it that the military organizations not only seem to have a very strong hierarchy and order, but also in some sense, room for very decentralized decision making? How can they emphasize both rigidity and innovation? What is it in their organizational DNA (or, some might say, culture) that explains their adaptiveness and (sometimes) competitive edge? If organizations live these apparent contradictions, how might we revise or refine our concepts to better capture this? While these last issues might lead to more questions than answers, it would be quite in the spirit of what March saw as central to the field: to explore the little ideas and understand the dynamics they entail, and maybe to draw a useful insight or two for the field. And that, as he would say, wouldn’t be entirely bad.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the editors and reviewer for comments on previous versions, as well as to General Al Gray, USMC (ret.); Colonel GI Wilson, USMCR (ret.); Colonel Mike Wyly, USMC (ret.); and Lieutenant Colonel Bill Woods, USMC (ret.) for taking time to talk with us about the US Marine Corps. We are also grateful for the comments from an unnamed referee. Any remaining errors were produced without help. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the US government.

References