ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many individuals provided time and assistance in support of both
the demand-side and the supply-side analyses. We must first thank
the more than 13,000 officers who took the time to answer a detailed
survey to provide us with facts about their positions in many diverse
outside-service organizations and with their opinions about joint officer management.
Moreover, the authors are indebted to Rear Admiral Patricia Tracey,
Director for Manpower and Personnel (J-1), of the Joint Staff, and her
staff, for their support. Lieutenant Colonel John Hamlin of the Office
of the Secretary of Defense contributed to our understanding of the
Goldwater-Nichols legislation. Many officers in all of the military
services helped us to understand how officers’ careers are managed
and how those careers are affected by joint duty assignments. In
particular, we wish to acknowledge the officers from each service
who served on the J-1 Study Group; they not only provided details of
service personnel policies and practices but also data that allowed us
to develop and validate models of joint assignments and promotion.
We also appreciate the efforts of Steven Shupack of the Logistics
Management Institute, who was the expert on issues involving the
survey and the organization of the data.
Clifford Graf and Jennifer Kawata contributed to the research in the
original two documents, MR-574-JS and MR-593-JS. We are also
grateful to RAND colleagues Susan Hosek, Al Robbert, Robert Howe,
and Paul Steinberg for their assistance and constructive reviews of
this report.
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Identifying and Supporting Joint Duty Assignments: Executive Summary
We are aware that the views expressed in this report will not be supported by all service personnel managers. These are our views and
do not represent the policy of the Department of Defense or the individual military departments.