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Dickinson, Laura A. --- "Organizational structure and culture in an era of privatization: the case of United States military and security contractors" [2017] ELECD 1115; in Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter; Emerson, Blake (eds), "Comparative Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 566

Book Title: Comparative Administrative Law

Editor(s): Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter; Emerson, Blake

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784718657

Section: Chapter 34

Section Title: Organizational structure and culture in an era of privatization: the case of United States military and security contractors

Author(s): Dickinson, Laura A.

Number of pages: 16

Abstract/Description:

Administrative law scholars seeking to consider issues of effective norm compliance must take seriously the organizational structures and cultures of the institutions that implement administrative policy. Those institutions may be governmental bureaucracies, but in an era of privatization, we need to address how to build organizational structures and internal cultures within private firms—from military contractors to rating agencies—that are most likely to effectuate core public values. And it will not be enough to reform our formal laws. In addition, we need to think about the more inchoate, but perhaps even more salient, ways that a culture of norm compliance is actually created and maintained. Using factors culled from literature on organizational theory, this chapter examines the organizational structure and culture of the U.S. military, and in particular the role that uniformed military lawyers have played as ‘compliance agents’ to promote and protect the public values instantiated in international humanitarian law and U.S. military law. This study indicates that military lawyers are most likely to function effectively and encourage legal compliance if certain specific organizational features are present. Building from this study, the chapter suggests that differences in organizational structure and culture (and not just differences in the applicable legal regime) may be a principal reason that the rise of private military firms threatens these core public law values. Thus, if we are to address how to maintain public law values in an era of privatization, we must take seriously the question of organizational structure and culture, its importance, and the ways it might be shaped. Only through such an approach can we begin to address the challenges posed by a world of privatized military force.