IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/syseng/v4y2001i2p145-155.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The difficult problem of establishing measures of effectiveness for command and control: A systems engineering perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Noel Sproles

Abstract

Formulating Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs) for complex sociotechnical systems is a difficult task. This can be seen in particular in the difficulties experienced when this is attempted for military command and control (C2). The intent of this paper is to demonstrate why this is so for C2 and for similar sociotechnical systems. Systems such as these only become purposeful when they are integrated as part of a parent system. Without this parent system they are purposive and are unable to perform a mission. The MOEs of these component systems are tightly linked to the contribution they can make to the achievement of the parent system's mission. In military operations, the purposeful system is the result of the synergy generated by the component systems that constitute the force assigned to the commander to accomplish a mission. These components combine to provide the emergent properties necessary to satisfy the need, and their individual effectiveness is assessed on the contribution they make to the parent system. An essential component of this purposeful system is Command and Control (C2), but it is difficult to separate the contribution that C2 makes to its parent system from those made by other component subsystems or to treat C2 as an isolated system. Because of this, the formulation of MOEs for C2, and for similar systems in other areas, is a difficult task. It is possible that the behavioral or “soft” sciences will offer a solution. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Syst Eng 4: 145–155, 2001

Suggested Citation

  • Noel Sproles, 2001. "The difficult problem of establishing measures of effectiveness for command and control: A systems engineering perspective," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 4(2), pages 145-155.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:syseng:v:4:y:2001:i:2:p:145-155
    DOI: 10.1002/sys.1012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sys.1012
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sys.1012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lee W. Wagenhals & Sajjad Haider & Alexander H. Levis, 2003. "Synthesizing executable models of object oriented architectures," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(4), pages 266-300.
    2. Jason E. Bartolomei & Daniel E. Hastings & Richard de Neufville & Donna H. Rhodes, 2012. "Engineering Systems Multiple‐Domain Matrix: An organizing framework for modeling large‐scale complex systems," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(1), pages 41-61, March.
    3. Noel Sproles, 2002. "Formulating measures of effectiveness," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(4), pages 253-263.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:syseng:v:4:y:2001:i:2:p:145-155. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6858 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.