Title : Hypothesis Testing of Edge Organizations : Empirically Calibrating an Organizational Model for Experimentation

200 words max) This paper continues our efforts to model, simulate and ultimately optimize work and knowledge flows in Edge organizations. We use the extended POW-ER 3.0 framework to model and compare two organizational forms (Edge vs. Hierarchy) being used by participants in a counterintelligence student exercise, ELICIT — first without, and then with, learning micro-behaviors enabled in POW-ER 3.0. We compare empirical observations of student teams conducting the ELICIT exercise once in each of two structural configurations with outputs from POW-ER 3.0 computational simulation models representing teams in executing the ELICIT task in these two structural configurations. Comparing ELICIT observations with predicted results from a POW-ER model has the potential to further calibrate and validate POW-ER for potential use in analyzing and designing C2 organizations. Empirical, experimental data on learning and forgetting have already provided the basis for defining and modeling agent learning and forgetting microbehaviors in POW-ER 3.0. Thus, a second set of experiments compares changes in empirical results of teams that engage in successive rounds of the ELICIT exercise with predictions of organization-level learning from POW-ER 3.0. This allows us to continue calibrating the accuracy of POW-ER 3.0 learning micro-behaviors for predicting organization-level C2 knowledge flows in Edge vs. Hierarchical organizations.