Abstract:
The notorious Tailhook affair, the 1991 gathering of Navy pilots in Las Vegas which was marked by the harassment of female officers by drunken airmen, is well-known for its brazen assaults. Drunken convention-goers grabbed at women as they walked through a gauntlet formed in a hotel corridor. But Tailhook, beyond being an incident, was a particularly challenging management problem for senior Navy officials, including Secretary of the Navy Lawrence Garrett 3rd. Viewing the Tailhook affair as a criminal matter might lead investigators on a cold trail: the specific perpetrators who grabbed specific women would be hard to find. Alternatively, Tailhook could be viewed as a problem in the culture of the Navy, one calling for demotions or dismissals as matters of management, not prosecution. But calling high-ranking officers to account for tolerating abusive behavior--long-established in the macho world of military aviation--might mean decimating the upper ranks of one of the nation's key air defense systems.
Learning Objective:
The case is designed to permit discussion of the challenges of cultural change within an organization and the approaches toward that end available to managers. In addition, it allows for discussion of the appropriate relation between civilian and military behavior norms.
