Abstract
Western nations including Israel are modernizing their militaries. They are turning to advanced technologies and information warfare as altematives to nuclear weapons and as solutions to manpower and budget constraints. For the same reasons, technological modernization of the Israeli Defense Force's ground organization has become a political and strategic necessity. The modernization process, however, is precipitating a wrenching and non-obvious reorganization of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) as managers' expectations of the technology are imposed on organizational realities. The Israeli ground forces are developing into a smaller, more professional, standing army that requires more coordination and precise behavior. Achieving greater precision in operations will prove difficult for the reserve oriented IDF. This article investigates the case of the IDF as an example of a general phenomenon in which complexity in machines drives the directions of organizational adaptation, making the capabilities of military organizations less clear-cut. As a result, actors throughout the military organization are less able to accurately foresee the organizational consequences of decisions involving these machines, especially during crises.
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