Organizing to Exploit the Information Domain: A Content Analysis of the Transformation Literature
Abstract
The US Department of Defense (DoD) has embarked on an ambitious plan to transform itself. A driving force behind this transformation is a realization that society has moved into an information age and that information age warfare will be significantly different from anything that has gone before it. At the heart of the transformation effort is a concept known as Network Centric Warfare (NCW). Transformation, information age warfare, and NCW all depend heavily on how the DoD handles the information domain. Although there are many organization structure/design issues that will derive from the transformation imperatives, one of central concerns is the need to alter the Information Technology (IT) functions/organizations that are the vanguard of this effort. Given this background, this research attempted to answer the question What does the military transformation literature say about how the DoD should organize to exploit the information domain? Specifically, this research focused on ideas regarding organizing the IT organizations/functions of the DoD. Overall, the results showed that a majority of the transformation literature supports organizing the IT function to act as a service provider. The IT function would therefore act as a separate entity within the enterprise and would provide domain expertise to other parts of the enterprise. Further research is required to determine if this type of organizational structure is applicable across the entire spectrum of the information domain.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA425334
Entities
People
- Todd S. Schug
Organizations
- Air Force Institute of Technology