> The behaviors of soldiers who are resistant to a military order fall into one of four categories recently described by Eric Hundman: grudging obedience, refinement, exiting service, and defiance.
I argue that the interaction between brokerage and command centrism leads commanders to pursue four types of responses to orders they deem inappropriate: they can refine their orders, defy their orders, obey their orders, or exit their military roles. All brokers remain in their military roles in hopes of maintaining their brokerage-derived social power – command-centric brokers work with their superiors to refine and improve their orders; brokers who are not command centric defy their orders outright. Non-brokers who are not command centric feel little obligation to support their superiors and have little social power to lose by changing their social positions, so they respond to inappropriate orders by exiting their roles in the military. Non-brokers who are command centric, however, lack the power that might make them risk disobedience and, because they identify strongly with the command authority that issued their orders, they do not see exit as legitimate. They therefore simply obey.
> The philosophy and principles of mission command give subordinate leaders room to implement their superiors’ intent using disciplined initiative. This is the resistant behavior that Hundman characterizes as refinement. Leaders at lower echelons are best able to understand the practical ramifications of any policy implementation. General Mark Milley, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went so far as to say that subordinates needed to exercise “disciplined disobedience” and ignore specific orders to achieve their higher commanders’ intent. On the battlefield, this enables subordinate leaders to react to changing situations and take advantage of new opportunities as they arise, without needing to seek approval from their superiors. Historically the Army has made great use of mission command, enabling victories from the defense of Little Round Top to the thunder runs into Baghdad. [emphasis added]
A time-honored tradition in Navy nuclear submarining is that when a watch officer in the engine room starts getting too full of himself, the enlisted watch standers start following their orders literally (though not to the point of risk to the reactor), rather than providing feedback and recommendations.
Usually the watch officer picks up the lesson quickly. But even there, far from any battlefield, and with hundreds of pages of detailed instructions, you'll find the need for reasonable interpretation on the part of those taking orders, and reasonable accomodation on the part of those giving them.
What is refinement?