Awareness and C2 Organizational Structure

In this paper we test the hypothesis that organizational structure, and the history of that structure, influences mutual workload awareness. More specifically, we explored the congruence of workload awareness among a number of decision makers acting in two organizational structures (functional vs. divisional) with different histories (divisional followed by functional vs. functional followed by divisional). Seven teams comprised of military officers were assigned to one of the two orders and performed a simulated mission. Findings show that workload awareness was higher in the functional-divisional than in the divisionalfunctional order indicating that workload awareness can be influenced by factors such as organizational structure and how that structure changes over time. There is also evidence that high workloads may foster higher workload awareness, and that high workload awareness may ameliorate some of the negative effects of high workload.