Processing the Lessons of War: Organizational Change and the U.S. Military

Salt, Alexander Gordon

Processing the Lessons of War: Organizational Change and the U.S. Military

dc.contributor.advisor	Terriff, Terry
dc.contributor.author	Salt, Alexander Gordon
dc.contributor.committeemember	Cameron, Gavin
dc.contributor.committeemember	Osinga, Frans
dc.contributor.committeemember	Ferris, John
dc.contributor.committeemember	Stapleton, Timothy
dc.date	2023-11
dc.date.accessioned	2023-09-28T17:42:06Z
dc.date.available	2023-09-28T17:42:06Z
dc.date.issued	2023-09-21
dc.description.abstract	Failing to understand the lessons of war can cause militaries to repeat past failures, leading to increased costs in terms of resources and causalities in future conflicts. Modern Western militaries faced a range of difficulties on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan that they struggled to address, and they need to learn and institutionalize the lessons of their experiences if they are to succeed in future conflicts. This dissertation addresses this by asking: to what extent has the battlefield experience of the U.S. military influenced post-war organizational change? The various service branches of the U.S. military have needed to adapt at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of war. However, what remains to be understood is if, and more importantly how, such battlefield adaptations and the lessons of military operations were actually learned and thus influenced the overall organizational changes of the U.S. military. This dissertation examines whether battlefield adaptations of the U.S. Army, Air Force (then the Army Air Force), Navy and Marine Corps during the Second World War influenced the process of post-war organizational change within the military in the aftermath of that conflict. In particular, this dissertation explores the role of junior and midlevel officers in the change process, which is an area of focus that has been largely undervalued by much of the existing literature on military change. Building on archival research, this dissertation develops a framework to explain the process of how the lessons of combat become institutionalized in a post-war period.
dc.identifier.citation	Salt, A. G. (2023). Processing the lessons of war: organizational change and the U.S. military (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1880/117209
dc.identifier.uri	https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/42051
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	strategy
dc.subject	United States
dc.subject	Innovation
dc.subject.classification	Military Studies
dc.title	Processing the Lessons of War: Organizational Change and the U.S. Military
dc.type	doctoral thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Military & Strategic Studies
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudent	I do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.