11th Iccrts

The Edge represents a fresh approach to organizational design. It appears to be particularly appropriate in the context of modern military warfare, but also raises issues regarding comparative performance of alternate organizational designs. Building upon prior C2 research, we seek to understand the comparative performance of the Edge and all organizational forms, across 21 Century and all mission-environmental conditions, and hence characterize the entire organization design space systematically. Leveraging recent advances in computational organization theory, we extend our campaign of experimentation to specify six, diverse, archetypal organizational forms from theory, and to evaluate their comparative performance empirically. Results confirm that no single organizational form is “best” for all circumstances; highlight contingent circumstances for which the Edge and other kinds of organizations perform relatively better than one another; and elucidate seven specific performance measures that provide multidimensional insight into different aspects of organizational performance. This research grounds the Edge organization firmly in well-established organization theory, and provides empirical support for and against claims regarding this novel organizational form, particularly in terms of agility. We discuss the model, experimental setup and results in considerable detail, which offer theoretical implications for the organization scholar and actionable guidance for the C2 practitioner. INTRODUCTION The Edge (Alberts and Hayes 2003) represents a fresh approach to organizational design, which appears to be particularly appropriate in the context of modern military warfare. It proposes to capitalize upon fully connected, geographically distributed, organizational participants by enabling shared awareness, and by moving knowledge and power to the edges of organizations. This highlights promising opportunities for enterprise efficacy, but it also raises issues in terms of comparative performance with respect to alternate organizational designs. Modern military organizations in general have adapted and evolved over many centuries and millennia, respectively. Command and control (C2) through bureaucratic, hierarchical organizations in particular have been refined longitudinally (e.g., through iterative combat, training and doctrinal development) to become very reliable and effective at the missions they were designed to accomplish. In contrast, the many putative benefits and comparative advantages proposed for Edge organizations have since their origin remained untested hypotheses at best and naïve speculations at worst. The research described in this article addresses such putative benefits and comparative advantages directly, through a campaign of experimentation to assess the relative performance of Edge and other organizations across a diversity of mission-environmental contexts. This work builds directly upon prior C2 research that employs the methods and tools of computational experimentation to examine organizational performance empirically. For recent instance, Nissen and Buettner (2004) articulate the promise of computational experimentation toward this end, and elaborate a unique, complementary role that the associated research methods and tools can play in conjunction with other, more established methods (e.g., analytic modeling, laboratory experimentation, fieldwork). As another instance, Nissen (2005) compares and analyzes more than 25, diverse organizational forms from the organization studies literature, and shows how the Edge organization is theoretically distinct and uniquely differentiated from other organization forms described over the past half century. This prior research succeeded in grounding the Edge firmly in organization theory for the first time, which provides a noteworthy contribution to new knowledge. With this, organization scholars can now understand the theoretical characteristics of this new organizational form, and can make informed comparisons and contrasts with other, more familiar forms (esp. the Hierarchy). Also, C2 leaders and policy makers can now identify and understand the kinds of classic organizational forms that exhibit both similarities and differences with respect to the Edge. This prior research allows unprecedented, mutually informed conversations between organization scholars and C2 practitioners to take place now. Moreover, this prior research also offers a theoretical discussion, and develops a set of testable research hypotheses, about the performance of Edge and Hierarchy organization forms under two, contrasting, mission-environmental conditions: Industrial Era and 21 Century. Consistent with wellestablished Contingency Theory (e.g., see Lawrence and Lorsch 1967 for seminal work, Donaldson 2001 for contemporary review), this prior research demonstrates that no single organizational form—not even the Edge—is “best” for every mission-environmental context, and it elucidates the key missionenvironmental contingencies that impact the performance of these two, contrasting organizational forms.