Historically, the distinction was based on social classes, but that doesn't explain why every army follows this arrangement, including those in very different societies.
You may also notice that the dress uniforms of pretty much every military are similar as well (especially compared to historical differences.) Also compare Emperor Hirohito to King Edward VII. People in most countries have also adopted western standards of business dress and western corporate hierarchies as well.
You could view this as a form of cargo-cult copying. Non-European countries wanted to emulate the strength of western societies, but it can be hard to know what differences actually need to be copied and which are arbitrary or irrelevant.
But war is a Darwinian process, and if one army figured out a better way to do things, they would win.
Er, all else being equal, maybe. There have been only a handful of total wars fought between states. There is zero reason to think armed forces have been optimized to that extent.
In the organizational context, officers and executives are meant to be agenty, while enlisted/NCO and non-executives are not.
Maybe this is the theory, but in practice it doesn't turn out this way at all. It's been my observation that officers who mess up do not have to face consequences as severe as soldiers do. In fact there have been investigations into military operations that have confirmed this.
Similarly, in the corporate hierarchy, senior executives can run their companies into the ground and still get bonuses (as happened in the 2008 financial crisis) whereas low-level employees would be faced with termination of employment.
However, it is true that in general soldiers are not taken to be as responsible for war crimes as commanding officers are. However, this again comes down to scope. A soldier can only ever order the murder of a handful of men; a general can order the slaughter of a million.
I have to agree with you that it only makes sense to have a single hierarchy.
In the military, I always thought that it was a method of ensuring obedience. Fear in the battleground is supposed to be one of the most intense fears experienced by humans. And getting people to go into the battlefield and act with even a semblance of competency requires a lot of brain programming. Thus, the fact that an enlisted man can never even aspire to be an officer (with a few exceptions) gives the officer an incredible source of authority; in the mind of the enlisted man, the officer is almost infinitely better than him. This is also the reason why bootcamp is so intense: programming obedience.
This might also explain the doctor/nurse duality: the institution desires that in a high-pressure situation, the nurse never disobeys the doctor. Though I'm not so sure whether this explains it fully in this situation.
Your description of the dichotomy is interesting. But it doesn't explain why some professions have it and others don't. Is it merely historical accident for each separate profession? Or did agent-y armies actually out-fight non-agenty ones when those arose?
Also, I agree with one of the answers you got on Quora, which gives another reason for multiple chains of promotion/status. Along any one chain, going up a rung is a promotion most people want. But different chains are like different sub-professions: the skills and experience may not transfer from the top of one chain to the bottom of another, and people may simply not want to change their careers that way. A manager may be "higher status" than an engineer, and tell him what to do and be paid more, but the engineer may not want to become a manager and may not be a good manager if he does.
In an army the distinction is clearly purely historical or status-based (why else are MDs officers and engineers are not?) But for doctors vs. nurses, or lawyers vs. paralegals, I think it's part of the explanation; although a status differential is clearly present, it's a status difference between professions, not between groups of people.
Is it merely historical accident for each separate profession?
Just like the two ladders in militaries is a holdover from a more classist society, the doctor/nurse divide is at least partly a holdover from a past (more) sexist society. Even today about 90% of nurses are women. This might be interesting if someone had access past the paywall: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3540064
There are very few people who actively prefer a subordinate role
That may be so, but there are a lot of people who would actively prefer NOT to take on serious responsibilities.
Another data point: the British Police have a single hierarchy. They are all called "officers", but in this case the word does not distinguish them from "enlisted", for which there is no analogue, but from people who do not have police powers (e.g. admin staff). Everyone enters at the bottom, although there are fast-track opportunities.
In my experience (being ex-military) the enlisted corp exists to mold subject matter experts, while officers have more of a executive/decision making role. It's hard to have both a subject matter expert and someone who has to make decisions based on the input of many different subject matter experts in one person, so those two roles were split between the enlisted and officer corps. Senior NCOs usually act as advisers to their immediate reporting officer.
We had briefings about this quite a bit in basic training, but that was years ago so I forgot most of it.
If you look for the commonality between various multi-ladder systems (are there ever more than two ladders?), you will notice that it originates historically in the drawing from multiple pools of candidates into the same occupation (like fighting or healing). Eventually the ladder may become a lost purpose, preserved only because it's an integral part of the system (a deep local maximum of efficiency, for example). The pools could differ by land ownership, education and/or training level or even by gender. If the original reason for the double ladder no lo...
Separating people into classes allows you to treat the classes differently. All the people who are trained for leadership roles can go to university together while it's not necessary to have foot soldiers in the same university courses.
There are different status levels among doctors and among nurses, but a PhD in nursing stands on the other side of a clear border from a beginning MD. Similarly with lawyers and paralegals. These dichotomies stem from licensing restrictions, which in turn are descended from medieval guild practices.
Are you sure you understand what these professions do? There's probably less overlap in the skillset of doctors and nurses than you think. A doctor can't do a nurse's job without some training. Might apply to lawyers and paralegals too, but I don't know.
You ...
An interesting data point is airfoces. There everyone actually flying a plane is on the officer hierarchy and the NCOs/enlisted are simply support staff.
I don't see how your evidence proves your conclusion. Militaries and many corporations choose to invest agency in some small fraction of their employees. That doesn't make agency a natural kind.
My impression is that this sort of two-layer hierarchy is much more about history than about any philosophy of how organizations should run. You mention the possibility that this is social/historical but I think don't really rebut it adequately.
And the distinction is not based on command: New army doctors automatically become officers, even if they don't command anyone. Doctors are non-combatants, but fighter pilots are combatants par excellence, don't command anyone, and are all officers.
I don't think all these are invariant between armies of different countries.
To the extent that the separation between officers and enlisted men is universal, I think it's probably because most countries militaries are modeled after Western first world militaries, which co-evolved over the history of Europe, ...
You don't want empathy between bosses and grunts. Folks on different ladders have less empathy than those at different rungs on the same ladder.
It is easier for a Level 2 Boss to order his Level 8 minions around than it would be for a Level 12 boss to order around his Level 10 minions. Similarly a General will wield his Soldiers more dispassionately than he will his Not-Yet-Generals. The reverse is also true. It is easier to have faith in THE COMMANDER than in a peer who has many more grades than you.
Perhaps in your corporate ladder discussions it may be useful to mention unions vs. managers to make the point clearer. Focusing on senior managers vs. executives is a weaker description because most people see that as one unified ladder, and not two separate ladders.
...Similarly: What's a corporate executive? I understand that there is a management hierarchy, but why the arbitrary distinction between a senior manager and a junior executive? Aren't those just two rungs on the ladder? In corporate-speak, an executive is called a "decision maker."
I don't think it's correct that the structure described here fits militaries cross-culturally, except in name. In the US and most Western European military structures, the senior NCOs are the critical link. The degree of authority and autonomy given to senior NCOs in the west is fundamentally different from that in most other military structures. I can't comment on this from personal experience, but every US military service member I've known who has served extensively alongside militaries outside the US, Canada, or Western Europe has commented on this, an...
How often are the two tiers of agentiness
"Capable of hiring/firing people" and
"Not capable of hiring/firing people?"
I mean, at some rank in an organization, you sort of have to get the power of adding and/or kicking people from your part of the organization. That strikes me as a big step in power that can require entirely different sets of talents. I'm an adequate programmer, but I have no practice at selecting other people for it.
That being said, I don't know for instance, if a low ranking (but finished with training) officer can kic...
I think that in the military, the "no fraternizing with enlisted personnel" rule might be one reason why a hard separation is useful. This kind of rule requires a cutoff and can't easily be replaced with a rule like "no fraternizing with people of a rank three or more below your own." For instance, how would you set up the housing arrangements? Also, promotions would be awkward under this system, since you would always have a group of people you previously could fraternize with but no longer can.
What are you saying about executives?
Are you saying that they are structured like armies?
I don't think that's true, or even that people use "junior executive" at all consistently. My understanding is that companies often have people "on the executive track." These people go through normal management ranks, but get promoted more quickly. Are they "junior executives"?
I think "agenty" was made up to point out that while all humans are agents to some extent, some do it far better than others.
Personally, "agenty" makes me squirm a bit and I wish we'd just used "agency".
A somewhat relevant statement by Teišeba Biainili in the Quora discussion, " The enlisted man swears to follow all orders, the officer does not."
My guess is just that the original reason was that there were societal hierarchies pretty much everywhere in the past, and they wanted some way to have nobles/high-status people join the army and be obviously distinguished from the general population, and to make it impossible to be demoted far down enough so as to be on the same level. Armies without the officer/non-officer distinction just didn't get any buy-in from the ruling class, and so they wouldn't exist.
I think there's also a pretty large difference in training -- becoming an officer isn't just about skills in war, but also involves socialization to the officer culture, through the different War Colleges and whatnot.
That division is in fact not universal and not clear.
First, in some armies promotion of enlisted men and NCOs is or was in fact main source of officers. One example is German army before and during WWII. Link in Russian
In short, no higher education was required and training itself took 6 - 9 months.
Second, USA has warrant officers, USSR had (and some post-Soviet states now have) praporshchiks, and there are many more categories that are between enlisted and officers.
And reason why that two-ladder system with classist origins is not univesally abandoned a...
But why does it have to be this way? Why not just rank medical personnel, or legal personnel, in a single continuum from practical nurse through rockstar brain surgeon. (Is that a title?). There would still be the understanding that some people will never climb beyond a certain point, while others can jump straight to a higher rung.
The only reason I can think of is that the establishment believes that mastery in nursing does not imply even a beginner's level competency in doctoring? (similar to how mastering ecology doesn't give one even beginners compe...
Historically, the distinction was based on social classes, but that doesn't explain why every army follows this arrangement, including those in very different societies.
The claim that all societies use this model is inaccurate. The counterexample that springs to mind is the Roman army; I'm fairly certain that there are plenty more.
With all respect, there isn`t any NEED for officers and a two-track military. This is 100% a holdover from the European class system. Just think about the expression, "an officer and a gentleman." What do you think GENTLEMAN means -- someone who is polite? The distinction between "officer" and "man" is entirely historically based--and ridiculous. Like lawyers using the designation "esquire"!
It's always puzzled me that, in armies, officers form a separate hierarchical ladder from the NCOs and enlisted soldiers.
Armies could have a single hierarchy, top to bottom, as in the simplified diagram below on the left. Instead, all armies have two distinct ladders, with one strictly above the other, as on the right. (Reminds me of those wacky non-standard integers.)
The usual answers are obvious but irrelevant: Yes, some people shoot straight to a position high on the ladder. You could do that with either model. Yes, even when those lower down on the ladder have more experience and wisdom, it can make practical sense to have a hierarchy. Yes, the higher someone is, the higher the level of the decisions they make. You could likewise do these on a one-ladder model.
It's said that officers "decide," while non-officers "just carry out orders"; or that officers choose strategy, and non-officers do tactics. But everyone makes decisions, on their own level. A private makes decisions for himself, a corporal for three soldiers, and a colonel for a thousand, each one in the context of their orders from above. One soldier's strategy is his superior's tactics. And the distinction is not based on command: New army doctors automatically become officers, even if they don't command anyone. Doctors are non-combatants, but fighter pilots are combatants par excellence, don't command anyone, and are all officers.
These answers don't explain why there need to be two ladders. I asked at Quora without a convincing answer. Historically, the distinction was based on social classes, but that doesn't explain why every army follows this arrangement, including those in very different societies.
Similarly: What's a corporate executive? (I'm talking about large companies here; small companies and startups are different.) I understand that there is a management hierarchy, but why the arbitrary distinction between a senior manager and a junior executive? Aren't those just two rungs on the ladder? In corporate-speak, an executive is called a "decision maker." What a strange term! Isn't a manager or even a lowly "individual contributor" also a decision maker -- at the scope that their own managers allow? (I should add that the two-ladder system is not as developed in business as it is in the army or in medicine. There is no career ladder for non-execs that extends arbitrarily high, though always below the execs.)
Not all professions work that way. Actuaries have ten levels, based on passing a sequence of exams. And though some areas of engineering distinguish an engineer from a technician, software engineering has no such dichotomy: Some software engineers make more money, and some make broader decisions or manage others, but there is no two-way split.
In medicine, on the other hand, there is a clear distinction between doctors and nurses. There are different status levels among doctors and among nurses, but a PhD in nursing stands on the other side of a clear border from a beginning MD. Similarly with lawyers and paralegals. These dichotomies stem from licensing restrictions, which in turn are descended from medieval guild practices. But why does it have to be this way? Why not just rank medical personnel, or legal personnel, in a single continuum from practical nurse through rockstar brain surgeon. (Is that a title?). There would still be the understanding that some people will never climb beyond a certain point, while others can jump straight to a higher rung.
The answer lies in LessWrong's concept of "agentiness": Making "choices so as to maximize the fulfillment of explicit desires, given explicit beliefs." Less abstractly, it is sometimes described as "reliability and responsibility." Agenty types get to be called "Player Characters" or heroes. ("Agenty" and "agentiness" are made-up words, and the standard terminology is "agent" and "agency.") I think "agenty" was made up to point out that while all humans are agents to some extent, some do it far better than others.)
In the organizational context, officers and executives are meant to be agenty, while enlisted/NCO and non-executives are not. The officers and executives plan towards achieving goals, while everyone else executes defined tasks. The officers and executives make high-variance decisions, with high risks and high returns, while everyone else has the job of just doing their job consistently and not messing up.
Is agentiness a natural kind, a cluster in thingspace, a joint-carving concept? Might agentiness just be a mix of features that occur to varying degrees in various contexts?
We might say that agentiness is a continuum: Everyone has some, but some people have more than others. Lower-downs sometimes have goals, and higher-ups often act like cogs. Moreover, the agentiness of officers and executives is strictly in the context of their superiors' goals: They may be agenty, but not for their individual goals. It would be more accurate to say that in their roles they are meant to be agenty, on behalf of the organization.
Some people are non-agenty in some of their social roles and agenty in others. For example, I know workers who readily admit to being lowly cogs in a machine, but who have tremendous achievements in setting up and leading non-profits outside work hours. Some hard-driving workaholics are milquetoasts at home. Some caring, wise, foresightful parents are limp rags at work.
But agentiness is a real concept, at least so far as the officers and executives go. Their roles are implicitly defined by agentiness. Armies and corporations decide which people have it (or at least are meant to). These organizations agree with LessWrong that agentiness is a natural kind.