The objectives of this paper are to: (i) define and classify the process of strategy and structural adaptation of organizations to mission and environmental changes; (ii) apply our modified design methodology to construct robust and adaptive organizations; and (iii) analyze the effects of changes in mission and organizational parameters on the organization's performance. We analyze the performance of organizations using dynamic metrics, including a measure of congruence of a given organization with respect to an organization optimally matched to a mission, as well as the DM activity and task workload as a function of time.Our previously developed mission modeling and three-phase organizational design methodology allowed one to overcome the computational complexity and to synthesize an organization via an iterative solution of a sequence of smaller and well-defined optimization problems [G. Levchuk et al., 2000a&b]. This paper extends this methodology to design robust and adaptive organizations.
Introduction
MotivationThe operational and cognitive capabilities of human decision-makers within an organization are limited, which requires that the responsibilities and the ensuing information, resources, and activities be distributed among them with care. In a highly competitive and distributed environment, a proper organizational design that defines the structure and processes is critical to superior organizational performance.When designing organizations to operate in an uncertain military environment, the specific information about many mission parameters may be inaccessible a priori, with only estimates (e.g., the forms of probability density functions, expected values and standard deviations, etc.) available to the designer. Once the mission scenario unfolds, the actual values of the parameters may require the implementation of a particular strategy to achieve desirable performance. Contingency theorists argue [Burton and Obel, 1998], and the empirical studies concur [Entin, 1999], that the effectiveness of an organization is influenced by the "degree of fit" between the requirements of the environment and the characteristics of an organization. The effort to achieve dynamic congruency in the face of changing environments forces organizations to adapt while they continue to operate [Mackenzie et al., 1996]. Not only an organization must evaluate its design against the environment to know when to adapt, but also, for an organization to succeed, the adaptation process must be smooth, efficient, and cost-effective.Thus, the challenge is to construct organizational architectures capable of: (i) operating in a timepressured and uncertain mission environment, (ii) capturing the necessary information about unforeseen dynamic changes in a mission environment and/or organization, and (iii) implementing the required on-line adaptation of structure and strategy. For this purpose, the existing scientific models of organizational design (e.g., [G. Levchuk et al., 2000a&b]) must be enhanced to equip an organizati...
