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News | Jan. 27, 2026

Why Culture Matters: Organizational Culture and Force Generation for the Cyber Domain

By John Fernandes, Erica D. Lonergan, and Alexander Master

Public discourse about the potential for a new organization, a United States Cyber Force, reflects a growing consensus that significant organizational change is required to meet the U.S. military’s current and future challenges in cyberspace. However, much of the discussion takes a mechanistic perspective, centering around restructuring cyber teams, creating new organizations, changing authorities, creating new policies, and so on. This perspective is important but it is insufficient. Culture matters. Organizations ignore culture at their peril. This paper focuses on how service culture has shaped the U.S. Army’s experiences with cyberspace as a case study to illustrate why culture must be considered in any organizational approach to how the U.S. generates cyber forces and conducts cyberspace operations. If the U.S. does not get organizational culture "right", no amount of organizational change will be effective in addressing its force generation challenges.

 

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