The Performance of Edge Organizations in a Collaborative Task
Abstract
The rapidly changing and asymmetric threat environment that the United States is facing today has called into question the effectiveness of the traditional approach of hierarchical command and control (C2) structures. Edge organizations have been proposed as a more suitable alternative in the current information age. Besides task-related factors, the characteristics and behavior of the people in an edge organization play an important role in determining the organization's performance. In this thesis, the author investigates how the various characteristics of agents influence the efficiency of an edge organization in an intelligence-gathering task using an agent-based simulation model developed in Java. The author also looks at the attributes of an agent that performs well in an organization, and whether a reward system that encourages individual success in an edge organization is detrimental to the organization's performance. Comparisons between edge organizations with similar mean group attributes but different variability in agent characteristics, and between an edge organization and a hierarchical organization, also are performed.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA443075
Entities
People
- Kok M. Chang
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School