Youssef discusses military stress

Nancy Youssef at Nukes and Spooks takes on the increasingly relevant topic of stress in the military:

It was supposed to be that the U.S. Army would refit as they call it once the forces starting coming home from Iraq, but now with the Obama administration’s push into Afghanistan, the stress of the force will continue for at least another year. Indeed, to meet the president’s order for 17,500 combat troops plus 4,000 trainers, the Untied States military must draw down in Iraq.  But violence has been ratcheting up in Iraq; more than 75 people were killed today.

What happens if the Iraqi government asks the U.S. forces to stay longer in places like Mosul? That is, given the stress on the force as Chiarelli described, and the surge of troops headed into Afghanistan, isn’t the biggest worry now that Iraq might disintegrate slowly, enough to require more U.S. troops to stay in Iraq even as Army is surging in Afghanistan? At that point the United States could find itself with a sizeable force still in Iraq and a growing one in Afghanistan. Imagine the stress on the force in that scenario?

Stress in organizations has a fairly solid body of knowledge and perhaps a less solid body of practice.  The excellent book Theories of Organizational Stress, edited by Cary (not Gary) Cooper, begins with this nugget from Studs Terkel:

work is, by its very nature, about violence–to the spirit as well as to the body.  It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about shouting matches as well as fistfights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around.  It is, above all (or beneath all), about daily humiliations.  To survive the day is enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us.  [emphasis added]

Grim stuff.  Theories offers a range of views, including a comprehensive meta-model theory of organizational stressin which Terry Beehr posits that “organizations which are characterized by environmental uncertainty will make it difficult for people to achieve their objectives, as well as maintaining any sense of personal well-being.”  A more recent paper, “Stress in Organizations”, treads some of the same ground but has some useful insights.  The problem, as with so much theory, is that many organizations lack the will, discipline, ability, or awareness of the research to do anything about organizational stress.

Pundits often note that the current US forces are the greatest fighting force in human history, and it’s hard to refute that point.  It would be a disservice to damage that force beyond repair.  There are no easy answers, but the literature provides some good guidelines for where to start.

MORE:  For those with passing familiarity with some of the theory-practice arguments, Karl Weick’s piece “Theory and Practice in the Real World” in the Oxford Handbook of Organization Theory is a good place to start.  The first sentence in particular highlights the tense relationship between academe and management.