File Number: NPS-PM-06-022

Authors:  Mark Nissen, and Frank Barrett

Title: Changing Major Acquisition Organizations to Adopt the Best Loci of Knowledge, Responsibilities and Decision Rights

Published: September 2006

Sponsored by: Acquisition Chair, Naval Postgraduate School 

Full Text URL: http://www.acquisitionresearch.net/_files/FY2006/NPS-PM-06-022.pdf

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Abstract:
The DoD is a large, bureaucratic, rule-intensive organization that may no longer be best suited for its new environment. Building upon prior, multidisciplinary research, we draw upon the best knowledge and practice in change management, and analyze transformation from the classic Hierarchy to the Edge-like Holonistic organization, which offers excellent potential for performance improvement. Such analysis focuses on the processes of change from one organizational form to another and leads to the generation of transformational plans, which can be used by acquisition leaders, practitioners and policy makers to outline steps—and leaps—required to affect fundamental organizational change. We also build upon prior work on computational modeling and experimentation to develop models of the transformation process, and we explore such models to emulate the behavior of the alternate transformational plans noted above. By modeling and experimenting with processes of change, as opposed to processes of ongoing organizational routines, we begin to extend the state-of–the-art in computational modeling and experimentation. Practically, answers to our research questions have direct and immediate application to acquisition leaders and policy makers. Theoretically, we generalize to broad classes of organizational transformations and prescribe a novel set of organizational redesign guides.

Keywords: Acquisition, change management, computational modeling, organizational design, project management, qualitative methods.

About the Authors:

Mark Nissen, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Information Systems and Management at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research focuses on knowledge dynamics. He views work, technology and organizations as an integrated design problem and has concentrated recently on the phenomenology of knowledge flows. Mark’s publications span information systems, project management, organization studies, knowledge management and related fields. In 2000, he received the Menneken Faculty Award for Excellence in Scientific Research, the top research award available to faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School. In 2001, he received a prestigious Young Investigator Grant Award from the Office of Naval Research for work on knowledge-flow theory. In 2002, he spent his sabbatical year at Stanford integrating knowledge-flow theory into agent-based tools for computational modeling. Before his information systems doctoral work at the University of Southern California, he acquired over a dozen years' management experience in the aerospace and electronics industries.

Mark Nissen, Ph.D.

Graduate School of Business and Public Policy

Naval Postgraduate School

Monterey, CA  93943-5000

Phone: 831-656-3570

Fax (831) 656-3407

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Frank Barrett, PhD, is a Professor of Systems Management at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he is also the Director of the Center for Positive Change. He received his BA in Government and International Relations from the University of Notre Dame, his MA in English from the University of Notre Dame, and his PhD in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University. He has also served on the faculty of The Katholieke University of Leuven in Belgium, Penn State University Behrend College, Case Western Reserve University, and Illinois Benedictine College. He has taught courses in Management, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Theory, Group Dynamics and Leadership, Organizational Design, Organizational Development, and Organizational Change.

Frank Barrett, Ph.D.

Graduate School of Business and Public Policy

Naval Postgraduate School

Monterey, CA  93943-5000

Phone: 831-656-2328

Fax (831) 656-3407

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The research presented in this report was supported by the Acquisition Chair of the Graduate School of Business & Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School.
 
To collaborate on Defense Acquisition Research or to become a research sponsor, please contact:
 
RADM James B. Greene, USN, (Ret), Acquisition Chair
Tel: (831) 656-2092
Fax: (831) 656-2253
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