Institutional Authority
In this movie we can see a lot of good examples of how institutional authorities were used in leadership skill. According to Ethics in Engineering Book, institutional authority is a person given to exercise power based on the resources of the institution. Basically, the person has given the right to make decision and supervise based on his institutional authority to carry out the given duty (page 196). In the movie Black Hawk Down, we can see a great deal of Institutional Authority with in the military. For example, when the U.S marine were on their way to the city of Somalia to crack down the building of the leader M. Aideed, the sergeant was sharing an encouragement to his soldiers. One of his statements stated that, “even though this is my first time as a leader, we are not just ROTC, this is serious and we are the leader”. This is obvious, the sergeant was given an authority to lead and make decision. Even though he seems to have less experienced than the rest of the soldier, he was able to stand in front of them and order them as needed. In this kind of situation, it doesn’t matter how young you are compare to the rest of your group, as long as you are given the institutional authority in your hand, you have the right to make decision and order the rest of your group. Thorough out the whole movie, the sergeant was ordering his people as needed. He was well focus and able to lead his fellow soldiers. One of his main focus also included, to bring his rangers(fellow soldiers) back to the station.
Professionalism and Loyalty
According to the movie, we can see loyalty was taken place in both side. When dealing with Loyalty, there are no right or wrong. In every organization, people usually show their loyalty to their leaders. For example, Aideed follower were probably aware that there were doing something against the government but they were still loyal to Aideed and most of them ended giving up their life for him. In human being mind, once we are in some kind of organization, gain members, or a militia group, we are trained to be loyal to our leaders and our fellow members. Even so, sometime people are showing their loyalty to their leaders or company because of money. For example, in the Black Hawk Down, we can see that the U.S military hire one Somalian man to spy the building where M. Aideed stays in. He was very loyal to the military because they paid him some amount of money. In away, the man was not loyal to his people. It was the same thing as selling his people to the hand of enemy. However, being loyal to other people, our leaders, and our company may benefit us in many ways. Forget about right or wrong, as long as we are loyal to the people who have authority over us, we may aspect some benefit in our life.
Over view of the movie
One of my favorite statements from the movie was when the sergeant was telling one of the rangers how important to fight in this war. He was telling him because the ranger was scared and decided to stay in the station. He said to him “Whatever you do today is the result of tomorrow”. It was another way of saying whatever we do today will have some benefit in the future. After hearing that from the sergeant, the ranger decided to go with them in the war. It is true that we live each day hoping for a great future to come.
By looking at each individual soldier, we can see that they all have different characteristic. Some of them actually concern about the people in Somalia. For example, one of the soldiers said to his friend “This people have no education, no job, and no future so we either help them or watch the country destroy them”. In the same time, some of them went there to fight because it was part of their duty to obey their leaders. Some went there with full of fears, some went with full of courage and positive attitude. No matter what was in their mind, they all went there to fight for freedom.
Conclusion
By watching this movie, I learned that whatever we do today is the result of our future. So in order to have a good future, it is important to spend our time wisely while we have time.
Since we all know freedom are never free, we should not misused our freedom. Misusing our freedom may bring us some disadvantage in our life. A lot of young people are misusing their freedom today. Some of them ended up spending the rest of their life in jail and some ended up bringing harmful stuff to their surrounding.
In my opinion, the United States should not go in other country and fight. I don’t think they should be policing other country. As long as the country done no harmful stuff to their neighbor country, I don’t think there is a need for United States to involve in every politic crisis in other country. We may think we are right but it may be wrong to them. Since we are just human being, we all have different opinion and different life style. Your yes could be no for other people and verse versa.
