Determining the Best Loci of Knowledge, Responsibilities and Decision Rights in Major Acquisition Organizations

Abstract

The Department of Defense (DoD) is a large, bureaucratic, rule-intensive organization that may not be well-suited for its environment. Building upon prior research on acquisition centralization and knowledge dynamics, the authors employ computational methods to assess the behavior and performance of different organizational designs in varying environments. Their results reinforce Contingency Theory and suggest that particular characteristics of different acquisition environments make one organizational form relatively more or less appropriate than another. Practically, answers to their research questions have direct and immediate application to acquisition leaders and policy makers. Theoretically, they generalize to broad classes of organizations and prescribe a novel set of organizational design guides.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 30, 2005
Accession Number
ADA443284

Entities

People

  • John Dillard
  • Mark E. Nissen

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Aircrafts
  • Business Administration
  • Combinatorial Analysis
  • Command And Control
  • Complex Systems
  • Computational Science
  • Governments
  • Information Exchange
  • Information Processing
  • Information Systems
  • Management Personnel
  • Organizational Structure
  • Public Policy
  • Systems Engineering
  • Systems Management
  • Test And Evaluation

Readers

  • Organizational Process Management (OPM).
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.
  • Theoretical Analysis.