Experiments into the Operation and Effectiveness of Edge Organizations
Abstract
Over the past year a team from QinetiQ in the UK has been investigating Edge Organizations under the sponsorship of the CCRP. The aim of the work was to establish the command arrangements for Edge Organizations, showing how these arrangements will work in many types of operational environment and how they perform against traditional, hierarchical organizations with more centralized command styles and against extremely decentralized organizations. The working premise was that the command arrangements of an Edge Organization can only be fully understood within the operational context. Hence, how an organization operates can only be understood in the full context of its environment. The study first considered and characterized the environment, then the Edge Organization within it and finally the necessary command arrangements that enable the Edge Organization to operate. The study concluded that an experimental campaign was required to test the thesis: "...the organizational agility of Edge Organizations allows their operating units to exert more decisive influence over a wider range of adversarial organizations within many types of operational contexts than those of less agile centralized or de-centralized organizations."
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA463413
Entities
People
- Anthony Alston
- Lorraine Dodd
- Patrick Beautement
- Sean Richardson