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.

March-ing to the beat of a Maverick Drummer: insights from John Boyd to inform behavioral perspectives

“…Boyd became a major figure in the military reform movement, which recognized that the unnecessary complexity of weapons systems was destroying the defense budget. His insights from his study of ground warfare from the beginning of time to the present, coupled with pent-up resentment resulting from body count strategies and centralized decision-making in Vietnam, also helped spur the embrace of maneuver warfare, perhaps, most notably in the US Marine Corps (Augier and Barrett, 2019) and US Army. This approach to warfare was credited with making the 1991 Gulf War a success (Coram, 2002, pp.…”

“…Boyd himself was an "outlier" who was rejected by his own organization (i.e. the US Air Force), but he influenced a few others like the US Marine Corps, who remained open to new ideas, even those coming from outsiders (Augier and Barrett, 2019).…”