Insights from the Marine Corps Organizational Culture Research: Implicit and Explicit Perceptions of Fairness

Abstract

This document was an applied "quick look" report from the Marine Corps Organizational Culture Research (MCOCR) Project. The MCOCR project was conducted between 2017 and 2020 by the Translational Research Group, a multidisciplinary social science research team at Marine Corps University. The project involved interviews and focus groups with 267 active duty U.S. Marines regarding various aspects of culture, but with an emphasis on gender bias, leadership, and cohesion. The project also was informed by the researchers’ enduring presence within a Marine Corps organization and daily interactions with Marines, which assisted them in interpreting research participants’ comments. This particular report focused on early researcher insights related to Marines’ explicit and implicit perspectives on fairness, particularly the tension between concepts associated with parity and those associated with equity. Much of the debate about fairness during this time period centered on physical performance standards, raising interesting issues of embodiment, gendered physicality, and the impact of institutional discourses.