Dynamic, Dogmatic, & Divergent: How United States Marine Corps Officers Learn the Innovative Art of Constructive Rule-Breaking.

摘要

To date, the United States Marine Corps chapter of history reflects an impressive record of ready, capable, and loyal service to American foreign policy. For 237 years, Marines have demonstrated themselves capable of fighting through chaos and winning when the Nation was least ready. A Marine unit's meaningful progress across that chaotic history has frequently been the product of the commanding officer's ability to innovate, often having to improvise in the face of rules, vice their absence. The warfighting philosophy and decision-making practicum of the six-month Marine Corps officer basic school represents the crucial element in teaching newly commissioned officers that rule-breaking skill. The Basic School accomplishes this by compelling student officers to incorporate the Marine Corps doctrinal system, and then by facilitating progressive experimental decision-making exercises that teach student officers how to recognize and bypass doctrinal inefficiencies without discarding the system altogether. Established Marine Corps Rules, Norms, and Directives provide the officer with timeless structure for sound decision-making, but it is through the progressively fluid, six-month grind of immersive executive experimentation, against the threat of a thinking "enemy" in the field, that a Marine officer learns the key to the art of divergent decision-making: Rules are the first, not final reference in the decision-making process.