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Work Fulltime At An Active Air Force Base

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I currently work fulltime at an active Air Force base in Madison, WI. It has an organizational culture very different from that of most civilian employers; honoring thy basic tenets of “Duty, Honor, and Country.” That being said, I work in a tightly organized establishment with strict standards in structure, professionalism, and appearance. In general, the military emphasizes discipline and hierarchy, and even has its own governing body of law (the Uniform Code of Military Justice). The “group” always takes precedence over the “individual” and loyalties are developed to the specific branch one resides in. Of the four major theories of organization discussed over the course of the semester, bureaucratic formal organizational theory best describes the military and my organization. Plainly stated, the military operates around specific goals and operations with several interrelated groups (subsystems) governed by clearly defined and enforced rules and norms. While formal organizational theories may seem dated, the military has strong roots in its development. German Sociologist Max Weber created a bureaucratic model with five key components that strongly interrelates with military life and structure. In fact, the military was his prototype. The first element of Weber’s theory is that of labor division and functional specialization, where he divides jobs into fixed categories based on competence and functional specialization. In the military, you are placed into a specific

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