Using Sociotechnical Theory to Explore the Organisational and Structural Foundations of NEC
Abstract
What is this report about?
The report is about how best to exploit human adaptability in the Network Enabled Capability (NEC) era. The report covers all aspects of an exploratory study that examines the processes by which human adaptability takes place under conditions of ‘Classic Command and Control (C2)’ compared to NEC.
Background and reasoning behind the work
The HFI DTC have undertaken a number of field studies examining ‘real-life’ command and control in a number of civilian as well as military settings. The current study is aimed at building on this work, using the same macro-ergonomic EAST methodology but this time in the context of a controlled laboratory study. Whereas live command and control exists ‘as is’, in the laboratory the opportunity arises to actively manipulate both organisational and environmental factors in more systematic ways according to the principles of Sociotechnical Theory. This report, therefore, speaks towards the goal of turning Sociotechnical Theory into practice.
Specific research question being addressed
The focus of the study is how best to exploit human adaptability in the NEC era, in other words, how to create the conditions in which to “leverage a disproportionate effect from a given action” (Smith, 2006, p. 84). To that end, the analysis is couched in the processes by which individuals and teams adapt themselves, and technology, to four different levels of environmental complexity under two different organisational design paradigms. As such the independent variables merely specify the initial conditions for the task so that the way in which the teams adapt themselves to these constraints (and how that adaptation becomes consolidated over time) becomes the subject of analysis proper. The question is which type of organisation, so-called Classic C2 or NEC, creates the optimum initial conditions from which to exploit human adaptability in a simulated military context and, specifically, under what conditions of environmental complexity.
What was undertaken in the research?
A team of four individuals undertook a command planning exercise on ten successive occasions. Five of those events were carried out under NEC conditions, five under C2 conditions. The task involved a commander (co-located with the BUCCANEERS command wall system), an effector (in charge of allocating battlefield resources) and a sensor (whose task was to physically move around the battlespace whilst interacting with a mobile computing device and having their position live tracked). The question is whether, and under what conditions, NEC and C2 create the best ‘initial conditions’ for team adaptation to occur.
What was discovered?
The results of this study suggest that human performance and adaptability depends on both environmental complexity and organisational design. In turbulent, complex environments, NEC does indeed appear to create better initial conditions for adaptation. The NEC condition is quicker, stimulates better ‘task focused’ interactions and is founded on situational awareness that is different in quantity, type and interconnection than that found under C2 conditions. C2, on the other hand, struggled somewhat. Performance time under C2 conditions did not adapt well to complexity, neither did situational awareness. Comparable performance in other respects seemed to rely on the rather arduous efforts of the commander. Broadly speaking, then, these results, derived from live participants, are concordant with the wider literature.
Main conclusions and recommendations
The main conclusions are that NEC has the potential to improve performance but that a concomitant shift in thinking is required in order to yield this outcome. The focus shifts from technical optimisation to the sociotechnical principle of joint optimisation, from complex organisations ‘doing’ simple tasks (i.e. C2) to instead simple organisations ‘doing’ complex tasks (i.e. NEC). Furthermore, there is the idea of ‘setting the initial conditions for success’ (a non-linear approach) rather than strictly specifying how that success is to be achieved (a linear approach). Sociotechnical theory has much to offer in all these regards and the aim of this wider program of work is to use these principles to turn sociotechnical theory into practice. The current study demonstrates that this experimental approach is valid (if embodying sociotechnical theory is the aim), is achievable (using the BUCCANEERS system) and scaleable (lessons learned from this exploratory study will feed directly into the next iteration of the work).
Military relevance of the work
Classic C2 has an appealing but often flawed logic. What are often designed as highly ‘rational’ organisations often end up growing quite irrational, for the recipients of the services that command and control dispenses, as well as those actually at work within them. This report helps to provide an evidential basis for current emergent features of command and control such as NEC and effects based operations, both of which are concordant with Sociotechnical Theory. The Theory offers further insights to enable the ‘human in the system’ to be further embedded in future command and control, in ways that fully exploit their adaptive capabilities.
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