Overview Of The Organizational Culture Of My Flight At Fairchild Air Force Base

1. The background paper is on the organizational culture of my flight at Fairchild Air Force Base. According to a study by Edgar Schein, “Culture is an abstraction, yet the forces that are created in social and organizational situations that derive from culture are powerful. If we don’t understand the operation of these forces, we become victim to them.” (Schein 2004). I’ll be covering the condition of organizational culture within my flight, and how the impact of organizational culture has on the members. We will discuss some topics like trust, commitment and some unconscious bias that exist within both my section and flight.

2. My flight has a very unhealthy organizational culture but a healthy culture within my section. The current underlying

We will first talk about the level of trust we have in our flight. According to Gene Kamena and Aron Potter “Building trust and maintaining trust is tricky. Leaders must have it in order to lead, and organizations run more smoothly with it, but when trust is broken, real or perceived, there is an emotional price to pay.” (Kamena, Potter 2016). We operate as at the lowest level of emotional investment because of how much trust was violated. We have gone from truth over time to institutional trust and respect. This is mainly due to toxic squadron leadership, inconsistent treatment of unit members and conscious bias towards members of my section. An example of inconsistent treatment towards members of my section is, when a member who was wrongfully accused of a crime, does anything outside the squadron it will make us look bad. This member has been denied or passed over on opportunities because he wouldn’t be a good fit for it. These members are branded as a problem child and left to flight leadership to be dealt with. They allow these members to be put up for these opportunities but do not review their

With the lost of trust and lack luster leadership the commitment level to the members in my shop was nonexistent. Most of them were just there because they had to be and counted the hours till they were released for the day. An example is the micromanaging of my section. This led to unpredictable schedule for members and no clear guidance from management. Resulting in divided views and selfish morals running ramped. Without a predictable schedule my team’s commitment to the mission diminished. Going from an invested state of commitment to just being involved in the mission. Members no longer tried to mitigate short falls but hoped for it, so leadership would have to answer for it. According to Mark Sanborn, “When we deliver a remarkable performance we are saying, “There is no other place or way I would rather spend my “commitment dollars” than on you”. But when we deliver a poor performance, we are saying, “My “commitment dollars” would be better spent somewhere else” (Sanborn