Among the foremost objectives at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) is to challenge our students to look intensely within themselves and their service to assess their performances objectively; to see criticism as opportunity for positive change; and to make recommendations based on careful, systematic, and deep intellectual analysis. In his exceptional study of culture and identity in the USAF, Lt Col Jonathan Riley has internalized these lessons and respectfully speaks truth to power. The literature on culture and identity is vast. It stretches across academic domains and service boundaries, yet no one to date has applied...

“Today’s Air Force is experiencing an institutional identity crisis that places it at an historical nadir of confidence, reputation, and influence,” states Thomas Ehrhard in his 2009 work for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul.¹ If his were a lone voice in the wilderness, one might be inclined to disregard it, but expressions of concern over the Air Force’s identity have become commonplace enough to border on trite. As early as 1989—on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union—a group of Air Force officers compiled their concerns...

Although the study of individual identity has a long and storied tradition in psychological research, it was not until 1985 that Stuart Albert and David Whetten published their landmark work that has defined the boundaries of organizational identity research for more than 25 years.¹ Albert and Whetten define identity as that which is central, enduring, and distinctive about the character of an organization, and this framework has been the cornerstone of almost all treatments of identity since.² From this seed of an idea, however, the field has blossomed into a myriad of nuanced approaches, measurement designs, and confounded models of...

All organizations are challenged to find their places in a world of stakeholder views, opinions, and actions. As presented in chapter 2, those in the senior levels of hierarchical organizations characteristically understand their organizations’ identity through the lens of these external relationships. In this regard, the United States Air Force is little different from for-profit companies competing in the private sector. This chapter addresses the application of the managerial approach to identity within the Air Force. While senior Air Force and private-company leaders might share the same perspectives on organizational identity, the organizations themselves operate in a very different environment...

While senior Air Force leaders expend enormous amounts of time and energy on the institutional realities of the external world, the balance of the force—more than 830,000 active, Guard, Reserve, and civilian Airmen—live in a completely different world.¹ As Kevin Corley shows in his 2004 study, the rank and file live in a world of inferred meaning, temporal discrepancies, and the powerful, unspoken assumptions that form the stable backbone of the Air Force culture.² This chapter explores this critical perspective on the Air Force’s institutional identity. Reviewed first is the central, defining characteristic of the Air Force’s institutional...

On 5 June 2008, the Air Force entered uncharted territory when Defense Secretary Robert Gates made the unprecedented decision to remove both the senior civilian and military leaders of the service simultaneously. Investigations into two separate incidents of the mishandling of nuclear weapons and weapons components assert that a lack of critical self-assessment in the Air Force had exacerbated an ongoing trend of declining stewardship of this essential national capability.¹ “I deeply regret that the issues before us require the actions that I have taken,” Gates said. “While this is a difficult day for the Air Force, for the Department...