Organizational Fitness of a Proposed Network Centric Organization

Abstract

Network Centric Warfare (NCW) has emerged as a new concept for the U.S. Navy. NCW capitalizes on technology to obtain and maintain an enhanced situational awareness and uses the distributed offensive firepower of the collective force to fight the battle. Speed of Command and Self-Synchronization are key tenents of NCW. The authors propose an organization designed to operate in the NCW environment. It consists of the Force Commander and Commanders of Situational Awareness, Resources, Effects, and Operations. The research question is whether or not the proposed organization’s is fit in the NCW environment. The organization is studied using two “snapshots”: one is the planning process and the other is the execution process. The expert system Organizational Consultant is used to analyze the organization and determine its organizational fitness. The results indicate that the proposed organization is fit if changes are made to make the planning process highly centralized and the execution process decentralized. Formalization will also need to be lowered in the organization.