Networked Operations

Decentralized, peer-to-peer command and control is a key principle of network-centric operations that has received a lot of scholarly attention. So far, robust networking, another principle, has remained rather underexposed in the academic debate. This chapter introduces theory on modular organizing to start a discourse on network robustness from an organizational design perspective. Above all, the chapter makes clear that the level of system decomposition influences the command and control process of composite military structures. When military organizations follow a fine-grained modularization approach, the structure of a task force deployed may become complex, asking for extra coordination mechanisms to achieve syntheses between the many contributing functional organizational components. In addition, it is argued that modularity's principle of near-decomposability has to be incorporated into the available mathematical models on network-centric operations. A point of concern, in this respect, is that the current modeling parameters make no clear distinction between the different types of actors—or nodes—in a military network structure, whereas in reality, technological, organizational, and human actors all live by their own specific rules.