Reserve Personnel Management Officer Evaluations Research Paper

Reserve Personnel Management Systems Division: Officer Evaluations

This paper engages in a thorough assessment of the culture, organization and technology of the reserve personnel management that operates as a branch within the Personnel Service Center of the United States Coast Guard: specifically the Officers Evaluation Systems. The method used to assess this particular branch relies heavily on ethnographic skills and related techniques. According to the official website of the U.S. Coast Guard, this is the division which handles "boards, panels, promotions, evaluations, advancements, retirements, resignations, discharges and separations for all reserve officer, chief warrant officers, and enlisted members" (uscg.mil, 2013). This is the division which deals with assignments, copies of records, medical issues and disability, individual ready reserve, promotions, separations, reserve retirement requests, policy waives and a host of other connected factors.

By scrutinizing closely factors like culture, organization, technology and related issues, one is able to obtain an accurately precise snapshot of the trends which keep this the division running smoothly, or which hinder it. One is able to capture a better ethnographic picture using qualitative means of how this particular branch of the coast guard operates, on paper and in reality. Ultimately, the finding demonstrated to the fact that aside from their adversarial view of technology, this was an ethically responsible and proactive division.

Culture

As MacKenzie explains, culture is simply what people do. It the behavior of individuals within a group, or pockets of groups within society as a whole. As MacKenzie has found, financial markets have their own culture, and the examination of what that culture is can help us to understand the fluctuations and vagaries of financial markets as whole -- as one will be able to understand the factors which are influencing them. MacKenzie's research findings can be summarized as thus: "There is evidence, therefore, that a notion of 'evaluation culture', conceptualized as above, might be applicable to the analysis of behaviour in the financial markets. One reason why this is an attractive possibility is that the political valence of an application of this kind of the concept of 'culture' differs from the situation that gave rise to suspicion of the concept: a situation in which the society from which the researcher comes is more powerful than the society he or she studies. Research on financial markets is 'studying up' (Nader 1974): on any ordinary criterion of power, those who are studied are more powerful than the researcher" (2011, p.20). What MacKenzie appears to be proposing is that within these complex financial markets, of recent times, the culture appears to be dominated heavily by the ability to scrutinize. But even so, MacKenzie alludes to the fact that the mere act of researching a specific pocket of society lends itself to the danger of making it appear more powerful than the society from which it originates. That was not a danger that I ran into when I was examining neither the RPM division of the Coast Guard nor the specific facet of Officers Evaluation Systems. The difference here may have largely stemmed from the fact that I was examining professional culture within a government/military organization, and within the military it's very difficult for one faction to appear more powerful than others, as there's a strong pervading mentality that all factions are just cogs within the greater machine.

Interestingly enough, I did find that the RPM division had a sense which evoked the "evaluation culture" which MacKenzie alluded to so strongly, but that this was not treated as something which was an anomaly. As a result of the fact that this department is a faction of the U.S. Military as a whole, there's a strong sense of burden and obligation to follow the set structure of the previous decades and to fully embrace the U.S. Military culture and code of conduct, along with an overt sense of assessment to ensure that this is continuing to happen. This aspect of the culture within the organization was also no doubt aggravated by the fact that they deal with a ton of administrative work, which forces them to have a heightened perspective of rules and protocol not just for their department but for the members of the Coast Guard that they're interacting.

National Cultures

One changes that I was able to observe while engaging in research within this branch of the Coast Guard, was that there appeared to be a marked change at least in how this department viewed other cultures -- cultures within other divisions of the Coast Guard and of the world at large. This department had a marked acknowledgment that other departments within the greater umbrella of the Personnel Service Center was also following military protocol, but that they too had a slightly shifted focus, which often manifested as professional cultural distinction.

One aspect that has transformed throughout the Coast Guard and was readily visible within the RPM department, was the sense that everyone had a responsibility to engage in transcultural education, and that it was no longer adequate to just be acquainted with one's own culture. This largely stemmed from the fact that the Coast Guard here is a microcosm for what the Navy is doing overseas and the Coast guard can't help but be influenced by the internal cultural changes which are occurring throughout the U.S. Military as a whole. The desire to become more culturally educated stems from a more politically correct understanding that a broad cultural understanding is the best way to operate in today's demanding and high stakes world.

Furthermore, the greater military strategy of "know thy enemy" which has translated to: have a strong cultural understanding of one's enemy, is something which every faction of the military has been influenced by, even the RPM division of the Coast Guard. As one scholar conjectures, "Why has cultural knowledge suddenly become such an imperative? Primarily because traditional methods of warfighting have proven inadequate in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. technology, training, and doctrine designed to counter the Soviet threat are not designed for low-intensity counterinsurgency operations where civilians mingle freely with combatants in complex urban terrain" (McFate, 2005, p.24). In this sense the greater international backdrop has created a stage where the failures overseas have prompted and overall change in protocol and this has manifested on nearly every level. As other scholars have pointed out, while overseas soldiers might have an overwhelmingly strong technical or situational awareness, a lack of cultural awareness prevents them from truly understanding who their friends are and from assessing a situation with immediacy and accuracy (McFate, 2005).

In this sense, with the 20-20 vision of hindsight, one can see clearly how a strong level of cultural awareness could have prevented certain embarrassments and tragedies in U.S. military history. Because the U.S. thought they were getting mixed signals from the Japanese, they were never able to predict that the Japanese would engage in actions which were so "irrational" and unpredictable as bombing their headquarters in the U.S. Pacific (McFate, 2005). "Successful counterinsurgency depends on attaining a holistic, total understanding of local culture. This cultural understanding must be thorough and deep if it is to have any practical benefit at all. This fact is not lost on the Army. In the language of interim FM 3-07.22: 'The center of gravity in counter-insurgency operations is the population'" (McFate, 2005, p.37). Such a notion has been felt far and wide by the U.S. Military and is one which is felt by nearly every division of the Coast Guard, and is something which one could argue is a long time coming. The need for a stronger cultural understanding is just as a result of the failures in the Middle East but also because of the repeated failures and embarrassment in Afghanistan. While the department of the Coast Guard that I scrutinized in particular wasn't in contact with a foreign enemy, there was a lot of self-education and discussion that was apparent about Middle Eastern culture, traditions, customs, religion and rules. Overall there was an overwhelming impetus by nearly every member of this division to engage in some sort of self-education as a manifestation of a perceived shared responsibility.

Engaging in a higher level of cultural education and awareness could put the U.S. In a situation where it has strengthened its level of social capital overseas. This is no small feat; the U.S. military needs an aggravated level of social capital overseas in order to experience more success and less animosity. "Sadly for the situation in Iraq, numerous studies show that even if external agents have a tough time helping social capital grow, they can -- and regularly do -- cause social capital to decline. Both Saddam Hussein's divisive rule and the chaos following the U.S. invasion have increased the distrust ordinary Iraqis have for one another, said Joseph Kopser, a U.S. Army major now serving in Iraq who is interested in social capital ideas" (Vedantamm 2007). The RPM division, by placing a high premium on the importance of being culturally educated…