Auftrag-static (IX): Shamir's work on mission command strikes me as thin

The other day, one
of my guest columnists was citing
Eitan Shamir's Transforming Command: The pursuit of mission
command in the U.S., British and Israeli armies. Checking on line, I
saw that the title of Shamir's chapter 4 is, "Inspired by corporate practices:
American army command traditions." That intrigued me, because it relates to
some themes of the book I'm currently writing. I also was impressed that he got
Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, a smart guy, to write a foreword.

So I was pretty
disappointed when I read the chapter to find that its title wasn't supported by
much evidence. Or any, really. Shamir writes that, "Army Chief of Staff General
George C. Marshall patterned army organization on the ideas of American
business." (p. 61). That surprised me because I have read thousands of pages of
interviews and documents Marshall produced and corporate practice almost never
comes up.

The second warning
sign: Shamir footnotes that sentence about Marshall to Gabriel and Savage's Crisis
in Command, which is not a very good book, and is about Vietnam, not
about World War II or George Marshall. So I went down to the Vietnam section of
my basement library and found on page 18 of Gabriel and Savage's book one
paragraph of unsupported assertions about Marshall relying on business practice
in World War II. No evidence, no footnotes, no nothing.

That is a mighty
thin reed on which to build a chapter. And, like the clock
striking 13, it makes me wonder what else Shamir has gotten wrong. So later
in the book when I read his statement that, "The British Army has probably been
most successful in implementing mission
command," (P. 197) I was skeptical. I wondered what his evidence was, or
whether this was simply more unsupported assertion.  

Based on what I have
read so far, I was surprised to see Stanford University Press published the
book. I mean, Stanford is supposed to be pretty good, no? Best university west
of UC Berkeley?