Organizational Communication Information Flow

The United States Army is considered by many as one of the most organized group both in terms of hierarchy and communication networks. This is based upon its traditional code of conduct that every Army unit operates at heart. Most important element in the Army is that it upholds specific chain of command without question, which can be distinguished by rank. Those who violate this primary rulebook and conduct is punished severely and, this is a common practice by the organization. Thus, the top official of the Army, as figureheads of the organization ideology, set tasks and commandeer the entire organization. Their orders trickle down to all their subordinates, which should be taken without question. Moreover, the communication flow in the United States Army runs mono-directionally. To do otherwise would be out of line of the organization’s purpose. It is for this reason that the flow of communication in the United States Army has and always been centralized. Its chain of command has always followed a centralized form of command and control. Centralization means simply as putting the decision-making authority to the top and their command cascades down to the rest of the organization. Nonetheless, the United States Army has historically integrated itself according to the changing environments. This comes from the organization Army leadership training programs. With all the change that occurs within the military and in the world the military exists in, the desire to win and remain a leader in the world has never diminished (Reimer, 1998 cited in Knox, 1998). This is the Army’s response on events when there have been increases in turnover rates. To encourage the Army personal not to leave the military for better jobs, they conduct occasional training periods to properly develop new officers. This practice decreases job dissatisfaction and help the organization retain its personnel. What is communicated during these training is a strong sense of value-based leadership and subordinates get to see that their leaders lead by example, so they are encouraged to the same. Fortunately, these leadership trainings turned out to be useful in this evolving age of faster strikes and faster information flow, especially in the increasing situations of unconventional, urban warfare utilized by terrorist groups. Now, leaders need to be dispersed across the organization. Though centralization is still the key factor in the Army, the time it takes for an official to react in response to an incident has become slow. Decentralization has then become the trend wherein the decision-making power of Army units have been utilized in tandem with the leaders disperse across the board. Decentralization involves consolidating groups to enhance coordination process and prioritization of operations. This eliminates duplication. Moreover, consolidating groups would create a unified strategy focus among government departments that follows a clear set of objectives. Pulling groups together strengthens the effectiveness of incident response departments. The weakness of centralization is that it is too slow and relies too much on a single supervision, rather than rely on the interdependent intelligence among departments. Decentralization then replaces the weakness of centralization by changing the decision making authority from supervisory to on-scene departments. In an effort to become more adaptable and flexible, these departments should employ a “spreading out strategy” to meet the precise need of a particular scenario. Currently, top officials of the United States Army have made use of support tools in pushing through the decentralized flow of communication in all aspects of the army, making way for faster transaction of response activity. This standard of operation, wherein decision making in smaller operational units are activated, could be more beneficial in creating improved communication and situational awareness.

Reference
Knox, D.W. Jr. (1998) the Importance of Informal Leaders in Organizations. Center for Collaborative Organizations (Center for the Study of Work Teams) University of North Texas. Retrieved February 19, 2011, from
http://www.workteams.unt.edu/reports/knox.html