The source of these causes can be traced back one hundred years to the reforms made after the Spanish-American War, and those reforms made after World War II, more specifically in the officer personnel arena. The bottom-line is that OPMS XXI is going to have difficulty as long as the competitive ethic remains. Even so, while we won the war at the tactical level, we lost it at the operational and strategic levels. Senior leaders, must admit the system's shortcomings in developing leaders and combat effectiveness for future combat. In order to prepare the Army for the battlefields of the 21st Century, in 3rd and 4th Generation warfare, both Congress and senior leaders of the Army are going to have to address and change several factors simultaneously in order to implement serious reform.
Army officers are members of both a unique profession and a complex organization.
Conflict arises out of the union between the values of a professional fellowship and those of a modern bureaucracy and is shaped by several factors. Careerism is intensified by our current organizational structure with a multitude of industrial-age hierarchies, a large officer corps created for mobilization purposes, and the centralized process the army uses to assign, measure and promote officers. The genesis of this conflict with professionalism began at the turn of the century. The military adopted a centralized bureaucracy from the big corporations of the Progressive Era, and the country's drive for efficiency in the name of management science. It intensified its control of the personnel system during World War II in order to raise hundreds of thousands of officers in a short time, and do it unison.