CRGP has won a major research contract in a competitive proposal process sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), the Center for Edge Power (CEP), and the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center, San Diego (FISCSD).

The amount of the contract is ~$350,000; it extends from Nov. 1, 2005 to Oct. 30, 2006. Prof. Raymond Levitt is the principal investigator. The contract provides partial funding for three research assistants, a staff programer, an administrative assistant, and three faculty members, and will also cover travel expenses for the team to present the work products at two conferences.

The research will seek to develop a better theoretical and empirical understanding of the performance of Edge Organizations - i.e. temporary, decentralized, networked, self-syncronizing, problem-solving teams. The proposed research is structured around four primary sub-projects, each with distinct goals and objectives:

• Project A: Hypothesis Testing of Edge Organizations - Apply the POW-ER computational modeling framework to test hypotheses pertaining to the relative costs and benefits of different Edge organizational forms and processes,

• Project B: Near-Optimizing Knowledge and Power Flows - Develop and calibrate individual learning parameters; Develop representation and reasoning of knowledge flows in POW-ER; Run "gedanken" experiments for initial validation.

• Project C: Infrastructure Enhancement - Extend POW-ER representation and reasoning to model and simulate knowledge and power flows and the development of trust in Edge organizations; Enhance user interfaces and output reporting; Harden and document POW-ER for distribution to other users.

• Project D: Exploring and Exploiting Intercultural Knowledge Flows and Organizational Forms - Critique and extend the Edge organization concept and investigate sources of trust behavior in organizations.

Posted by rjorr at October 15, 2005 12:59 PM