Entropy and self organizing in edge organizations

Abstract

Along with the advance of technologies and evolving variety of military missions, Edge Organization has been proposed to transform C2 from its conventional hierarchical and inflexible structures into more network centric and flexible forms. To develop a better understanding of Edge Organizations, in our research we take a dynamical and adaptive complex systems approach to exploring dynamical features of Egde Organizations and investigate how networking structures, self-organization mechanisms may impact on the entropy of Edge Organizations and consequently determine their agility and performance. After defining the basic concepts, we introduce an agent-based simulation model that captures the interplay among networking structures, self-organization mechanisms, and organization agility and performance with entropy as an intermediate variable. Through simulation-based case studies using the proposed model, important dynaical features of Edge Organizations can be clarified and conditions for avoiding high entropy equilibirums and for acheiving high level of agility be identified. In addition to the description of the proposed model, various measures of organizational entropy and organizational agility are discussed. A scenario design for future simulation studies is presented.