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Ranking US Army generals of the 20th century: a group decision-making application of the analytic hierarchy process.

Article Excerpt
The pantheon of 20th century US Army generals contains many great wartime commanders. Military historians have written about their leadership qualities but have not ranked the best generals. We asked 10 experts in US military history to evaluate seven generals--Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall, George Patton, John Pershing, and Matthew Ridgway--using the analytic hierarchy process in a group setting. We developed a ratings hierarchy, and each participant scored each general. We combined individual pairwise comparisons using the geometric-mean method and a new method based on linear programming and obtained a clear, three-tier ranking of generals with George Marshall judged the best US Army general of the 20th century, closely followed by Dwight Eisenhower.

Key words: decision analysis: multiple criteria; military: personnel.

History: This paper was refereed.

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In the last 50 years or so, historians have written about the traits of the great 20th century US military leaders but have not formally ranked the best army generals. We asked 10 experts in US military history to evaluate and rank the greatest wartime commanders in recent US history using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in a group decision-making setting. We developed a ratings hierarchy for their use, and all 10 experts scored all the generals. We combined individual pairwise comparisons using a traditional geometric-mean method and a new method based on linear programming. We obtained the final scores and ranking for the generals using both methods.

Participants and Alternatives

We invited 10 professional and amateur military historians to participate in our study and make up our decision-making group. They included a US Army history institute director, university professors, national defense and security specialists, and an operations research analyst. Retchless (2005) described the participants' backgrounds in detail. We structured the hierarchy and asked the participants individually to provide the pairwise comparisons needed to establish the priorities for factors, subfactors, and alternatives.

In developing the set of alternatives, we started with a set of 21 generals. Most served in World War II, including such notables as Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall and lesser-known commanders, such as Walter Krueger. Several served in Vietnam, including William Westmoreland. Several served in the Gulf War, including Norman Schwarzkopf. We consulted our 10 participants and pared the initial set of generals to seven--Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, George Marshall, George Patton, John Pershing, and Matthew Ridgway--for this study (Appendix).

The US Army currently has four ranks of general: brigadier general (one star), major general (two stars), lieutenant general (three stars), and full general (four stars). General of the army (five stars) is reserved for wartime. The rank of general of the armies of the United States was assigned to John Pershing in 1919 to honor his wartime service. No other officer held that title until 1976, when George Washington was posthumously appointed general of the armies of the United States to signify his rank as first among all US Army officers.

Developing the Hierarchy

We developed a ratings hierarchy in Expert Choice (2005) to score and rank the seven generals (Figure 1). We used two key criteria--skills and actions.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The Skills Criterion

Using the current United States Army Field Manual 22-100 (1999) on leadership as our guide, we broke down skills into four subcriteria: conceptual, interpersonal, tactical, and technical.

People rely on conceptual skills to handle ideas: to establish intent, to filter information, to understand how organizations work, to develop frames of reference, and to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty.

They rely on interpersonal skills to communicate and work with others: to conduct dialogue, to negotiate with others, to achieve consensus, and to build teams.

People acquire tactical skills to attain proficiency and experience in their professions (fighting wars in this study). They use these skills to synchronize the activities of subordinates, respecting their independent decisions.

People need technical skills to operate at the highest levels of their professions. In the military command structure, generals need technical skills to assemble their equipment, personnel, schedules, budgets, and facilities to accomplish missions, to understand the effects of their actions, and to translate political goals into military objectives (United States Army Field Manual 22-100 1999).

Actions Criterion

We broke down the actions criterion into four subcriteria: contribution to conflict, responsibility, success, and time span.

Contribution to conflict includes a general's impact on the wartime conflicts he conducted and his specific contributions to their outcomes. In this subcriterion, we included the importance of theaters and the development of tactics, techniques, and procedures.

Responsibility includes the scope of a general's wartime activities, the geographical area of responsibility, the size of forces, and the importance of decisions made throughout the conflict.

Success includes a general's success in executing his responsibilities from tactical victories to strategic-level planning. All the generals considered were very successful during wartime, some as battlefield commanders and some as coalition builders.

Time span includes the number of wars a general served in and total wartime service.

Ratings

We developed a set of ratings for the eight subcriteria: superior, very good, good, and poor. We used these ratings to evaluate each general's performance with respect to the eight subcriteria.

A superior rating indicates that a general's performance is the best of all US Army generals in the 20th century. A very good rating indicates that a general's performance is comparable to that of a small number of generals. A good rating indicates that a general's performance is as good as most of the generals in the 20th century. A poor rating indicates that a general's performance was below the average of US Army generals of the 20th century.

Pairwise-Comparison Matrices

The 10 participants completed pairwise-comparison matrices at the first level of the hierarchy (skills and actions criteria) and at the second level of the hierarchy (the four subcriteria of skills and the four subcriteria of actions) (Appendix).

First-Level Criteria

All first-level pairwise-comparison matrices for the participants were perfectly consistent. Three participants judged skills to be more important than actions, four participants judged actions to be more important than skills, and three participants judged skills and actions equally important (Appendix).

We combined the pairwise comparisons of the participants: Let [a.sup.k.sub.ij] denote the comparison of element i to element j for participant k (k = 1, 2, ..., 10) in pairwise-comparison matrix A. We combined the individual judgments of the 10 participants using the geometric mean to produce the entry [a.sub.ij] = [[[a.sup.1.sub.ij] x [a.sup.2.sub.ij] x ... x [a.sup.10.sub.ij]].sup.1/10]. Aczel and Saaty (1983) showed that the geometric mean preserves the reciprocal property in the combined-pairwise-comparison matrix. The geometric mean is the most common approach used by groups to set priorities (Condon et al....

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