As I am trying to get some definitional issues out of the way in these entries, let me also add an etymological excursion into the original meaning of the words ‘command’ and ‘control’ – which in some sense can be seen as the ‘glue’ that keeps the ‘capability packages’ together in the pursuit of the political goals.
Both historical semantic components of the word ‘com-mand’ deserve attention. The familiar Latin ‘cum’-prefix (meaning: ‘together with’) evokes a ‘softer’, more collegial, consensual association of providing direction than the current interpretation of command as a top-down instruction along the ‘chain of command’ with significant elements of compulsion. Also the second semantic element, ‘mandare’ (to commit, entrust) apparently had a weaker connotation in its original meaning than its current cognates mandate, mandatory, etc. suggest. What then emerges here is that the historical roots of the word ‘command’ suggest a shared (the Latin ‘cum’) form of mandating based more on elements of ‘commitment’ and ‘trust’ (‘shared intent’) than on ‘top-down’ orders.
The etymological root of the word control is equally interesting. Its meaning appears to have changed much less over time than the verb ‘to command’ and is closer to our current understanding of the word. But its roots nicely show the tension (and symbiotic complementarity) with the verb ‘to command’. Whereas command is based on the Latin prefix ‘cum’ (together with), control is based on the opposite Latin prefix ‘contra’ (against). In nice contrast to the historical roots of ‘command’, which suggests being with others and setting a course of action in motion by ‘enjoining’ others to do things based on trust and commitment (i.e. more in line with the (aligned) wills of the subordinates than against them); the etymological roots of ‘control’ suggest monitoring the natural course of events that unwind after a course of action has been decided and – where necessary – steering ‘against’ (contra) it on the basis of a perceived discrepancy between what ought to be and what is.
The second interesting observation on the term ‘control’ is the historical practice that seems to have given birth to the concept in this sense: the ‘contrarotulus’ or contre-rolle used for duplicate copies of accounting rolls (i.e. accounting records). The famous English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400), for instance was one of these early ‘controllers’ and he used some of this practical knowledge in his Canterbury Tales. The idea that the control function requires a separate (duplicate) reporting chain next to and distinct from the original reporting chain is an idea we will also return to in this paper.
Pigeau and McCann claim that the term ‘command’ only appeared in military writing in the mid-20th century. Prior to that the concept of command was often subsumed under the concept of ‘generalship’. They also claim the compound term ‘command and control’ is of even more recent vintage, and only appeared with the advent of information technology (IT) in the 1960s. Allan English, a Canadian military historian, points out that neither the term “command and control” nor, indeed, the term “control” was used in an address entitled “Higher Command in War” made by General Slim to the US Command and General Staff College on 8 Apr 1952. In it, Slim speaks extensively about command, but though he talks about headquarters and their organizations, he doesn’t use the word ‘control’ at all. English takes this as good evidence that before IT, people considered command as the overarching activity, and that is was only with the advent of IT that the term C2 appeared”.
It has been remarked by some that the two concepts ‘command’ and ‘control’ may in some sense contradict each other, and that the compound term ‘command and control’ may be a contradictio in terminis. It is indeed interesting to observe that in most other walks of life, the ‘command’ function and the ‘control’ function are often separated by design. In politics, for instance, various checks and balances separate decision making from oversight. Also in business, the ‘accounting’ and ‘controlling’ functions within an organization are increasingly functionally separated from the executive management functions, and much effort is devoted to external accounting and controlling mechanisms. In the past few decades, as developed economies increasingly move into the post-industrial era, this trend has been strengthened significantly in the business world. But whereas in all these other environments the command and control functions are separated, in the military world the two continue to be merged in the single person of the commander, who exercises command and control and within whose staff structure the command and control functions are not separated – all of this in the name of the hallowed principle of ‘unity of command’.
The contemporary caricature of command and control is based on presumed elements of blind obedience to the commander – a sentiment that was strongly instilled in the various defence academies of yesteryear. “Soldiers, Frederick repeatedly had warned, ‘can be held in check only through fear’ and should therefore be made to ‘fear their officers more than all the dangers to which they are exposed… Good will can never induce the common soldier to stand up to such dangers; he will only do so through fear.’” A former Israeli paratrooper nicely summarizes the underlying sentiment “Primarily, the idea is that people do what you tell them to do, and if they don’t, you yell at them until they do, and if they still don’t, you throw them in the brig for a while, and if that doesn’t teach them, you put them in charge of peeling onions on a submarine, sharing two cubic feet of personal space with a lad from a farm who really never quite learned about brushing his teeth.”
This very negative view of command and control has become – not entirely unjustifiably from our point of view – very popular in the current business management literature. They caricature the very forceful, top-down nature of command and control; downplay its leadership aspects and mission control dimensions, and come to the conclusion that the term is beyond salvation. It has become a synonym for everything that is wrong with the more directive forms of management. While sharing some sympathy for the criticism of the caricature view of C2 (which, despite being exaggerated, is unfortunately not without foundation), we have argued that our current understanding of ‘command and control’ has become much more ‘directive’, hierarchical and ‘top-down’ than its etymological roots suggest. We conjecture that the industrial age may have played a big role in morphing the initial ‘softer’ concepts of command into ‘harder’, more directive ones. But we observe that the etymological roots are actually much closer to more ‘modern’ views of management than is widely acknowledged, and that therefore there might be good grounds NOT to abandon the terms altogether, but to take them back to their etymological roots.
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