Rhetoric Of Change Jeopardy Summary

Chapter 7: A Dedicated Organisation
Organisations are sacred cows. To suggest changes to organisation is a risky enterprise. That is why the preceding chapters have limited themselves to recommending changes to staffing, training, and minor process changes, which would wily-nily bring about some organisational changes. In his book “The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy”, theorist Albert O Hirschman, writes about change. He argues of a ‘reactionary narrative’ when it comes to social change, that is conservative in nature and opposes change. This can well be applied to changes proposed to organisations. There are three theses; the perversity thesis, which believes that any purposeful attempt to improve the organisation will only further worsen the condition sought to be changed; the futility thesis, that holds that any attempt at change is futile and will simply fail, and; the jeopardy thesis, that supposes that proposed changes jeopardises the “status-quo” and the benefits the existing system has.
This chapter seeks to analyse two issues- one, whether the defence acquisition organisation in the army needs changes; two, does the army need an acquisition cadre or corps, specialist officers dedicated to acquisition appointments who would ultimately bring professionalism to acquisition.

As such, development of qualified program managers requires appropriate experience, training, and education, as well as the ability to attract promising candidates into the field. DOD policy has, since 1974, recognized this need. Nevertheless, while some recently appointed program managers possess substantial experience and training, many do not. Changes are needed in current service programs to ensure a highly qualified cadre of program