Reaction of combat service support troops under stress is a study of military organizational behavior within an active combat environment. The study is directed toward the manager assigned to a small maintenance support unit, and strives to acquaint him (or her) with the various psycho physiological reactions apparent in combat service support personnel during periods of combat. These reactions, often erratic in nature are depicted herein as being environmentally interdependent in that the physical environment acts as a stimulus producing predictable behavioral tendencies. It is the author's hypothesis that, given the exigency of a combat situation, personnel within a small maintenance support unit will exhibit a definite pattern of organizational behavior. The R.O.C.S.S.T.U.S. Study provides a graphic illustration of the aforementioned behavior pattern, and incorporates this pattern into an Analytical Model of Organizational Behavior. It is the author's contention that maintenance unit managers unlike their counterparts in the combat arms branches of the Army have little opportunity to formally concern themselves with the subtle nuances of personnel management under combat conditions. The professional development of most maintenance managers has been geared toward production management as opposed to personnel management. Therefore, to entrust the management of maintenance unit personnel, in a combat situation, to the unaided judgment of the maintenance (Ordnance) manager is to ask of combat service officer (or NCO) that he make decisions within an unfamiliar environment; and that he make these decisions without the benefit of a yardstick by which he can measure the appropriateness of his judgment. The Analytical Model of Organizational Behavior developed within this study, provides the necessary yardstick vis-à-vis personnel management decisions, by acting as an aid to the managerial decision making process under stress conditions generated by combat. As a 1st Lieutenant and company commander, serving a maintenance forward support company in the Republic of Vietnam, the author experienced the personal trauma of attempting to provide effective personnel management for 145 combat service support troops during 30 days of intensive combat -- the 1968 Tet Offensive. This research effort has been undertaken in the sincere hope that some of the lessons learned, and management techniques acquired, will serve to assist maintenance unit managers on some future and as yet undefined battlefield.

ADB 006734 Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)