Utilizing collaborative technologies to create sustainable competitive advantage: Improving situation awareness to impact the decision-action cycle in the United States Navy

Abstract

This dissertation depicts a two-year effort to improve group situation awareness (SA) in the U.S. Navy's Third Fleet. The research contributions of this work are in three primary areas: (1) the study of behavioral, social and political factors that affect technology transition in the military, (2) the determination of the requirements for SA collaboration in the Navy, and (3) the development of a collaborative system to support distributed group SA. This research utilized the Technology Transition Model (TTM) to guide the development and fielding of a web-based, thin client prototype logging application known as CommandNet. Through the course of this initiative, the political, social and behavioral aspects of the technology transition were found to be more important to the success of the project than the actual specific attributes of the software application. By propagating SA in near real time throughout the organization, the prototype application directly supported rapid coordinated decision-making and action in the fleet. Individual prototype users were found to have great power over the introduction and proliferation of the technology. Users at all levels of the military hierarchy became change agents that could not only encourage participation in the collaborative logs, but also establish usage norms that other users actively enforced. The users' willingness to adopt the prototype was largely a factor of fit with work processes, however, social factors such as status and recognition were often more important to the individual users than the practical aspects of the prototype. The elicitation of requirements and iterative development of the prototype GSS revealed four necessary attributes in support of group SA collaboration: (1) reliability, (2) responsiveness, (3) simplicity, and (4) flexibility. The more specific requirements of a logging tool derived from this work were the need for searches, entry analyses, and user alert notifications. Additionally, providing support for time zone changes, entry categorization, prioritization, system security, user access control, and a range of user controlled display options were discovered to be important prototype enhancements.