BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:'Lions led by Horses? A Reappraisal of Generalship in the First Wo
 rld War' - Martin Boycott-Brown (University of Nottingham upon Trent)
DTSTART:20090224T173000Z
DTEND:20090224T190000Z
UID:TALK18434@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ilya Berkovich
DESCRIPTION:The British generals of the First World War are popularly seen
  as having been incompetent\, but this view is not really justified. It is
  now widely accepted by specialist historians that the revolution in the n
 ature of warfare that manifested itself in 1914 presented military command
 ers with a set of problems that had never been encountered before\, and we
 re largely unexpected. Solving these problems demanded a process of adapta
 tion and learning\, both by individuals and organisations\, that was reall
 y unprecedented in the history of war. But while historians have now given
  us a good picture of what changes were made in organisational structures\
 , methods\, and practises\, less work has been done on how these adaptatio
 ns were made. This paper describes research into this question that uses t
 he methods of social and organisational psychology. On the one hand it use
 s a broadly ethnographic approach to illuminate the development in thinkin
 g of a few major British commanders of the war\, using material from their
  diaries. On the other hand\, it shows that the British Army possessed som
 e embryonic "Organisational Learning Mechanisms" (OLMs) that permitted it 
 to collect\, evaluate\, and disseminate lessons from its operations in ord
 er to establish new methods and practises.
LOCATION:Seminar Room F4\, Staircase F\, Old Court\, Peterhouse
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR