Inhibiting Adaptation
Abstract
It is widely believed that whether we are talking about command and control teams, joint task forces or coalition forces, the "organization" must be adaptive. Unanticipated changes in mission, rapidly evolving technologies, intelligent and changing opponents, and so forth have created a need to create forces that can respond rapidly, accurately and can readily adapt to new situations. Over the past decade, progress has been made in understanding the set of factors that enable adaptation. If the opposing force can be made less adaptive, more predictable, more consistent then it will be easier to contain or constrain their activity. Consequently, it may be important to mitigate the adaptivity of the opposing force in order to minimize the need for both adaptability and high performance. Thus, we turn the question on its head and ask, "How can we inhibit adaptation?" This paper reviews the findings on what makes organization's adaptive and provides suggestions for how to inhibit adaptation. A number of lessons learned about how to inhibit adaptiveness are presented.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA467573
Entities
People
- Kathleen Carley
Organizations
- Carnegie Mellon University