Implementing Edge Organizations: Exploiting Complexity. (Part 1: A Framework for the Characterization of Edge Organizations and their Environments)

摘要

During 2003, CCRP published 'Power to the Edge' which described a new kind of organization, an 'Edge Organization' (EO), which would display exceptional agility. Key to implementing and employing Edge Organisations is achieving an understanding of the types of arrangements which would enable Edge Organisations to work in this manner. This paper provides initial output on four themes from a DoD-sponsored programme of work being carried out in the UK to look into these issues. This paper contends that Edge Organisations follow a highly-extended, totally unconstrained organisational concept that enables power to be dynamically distributed away from the centre to those involved in execution. Therefore, Edge Organisations will have to have (effectively unlimited) degrees of freedom available to them that non-edge organisations do not have. The challenges to be addressed in the work include: finding out how to characterise Edge Organisations and provide a 'language' for reasoning about them; investigating the degrees of freedom, mechanisms and features that Edge Organisations need to have; understanding the circumstances under which they will and won't work; and indicating how the concept of Military Capability Packages is changed by Edge Organisations. The work will also indicate the kind of programme of experimentation that would be appropriate to Edge Organisations.