Incorporating Heterogeneity in Command Center Interactions

One of the many complexities of multinational coalition operations stems from differences in culture, military procedures, and command and control processes between the cooperating command centers. These differences can effect the interactions between decision makers of different command centers and can affect the outcome of the coalition operation. A model can be used to study the effect on coalition performance due to interactions between heterogeneous command centers. A coalition model, composed of individual models of the five-stage interacting decision maker model, which has been modified to include subjective parameters, was used in a virtual experiment. The subjective parameters included in the decision maker model can be any attribute that characterizes the heterogeneity of the decision makers. In this case, the parameters of power distance and uncertainty avoidance were used, two of Hofstede’s [1991] cultural dimensions. Differences in these values across the cooperating command centers can cause communication and coordination difficulties. The accuracy and timeliness of the coalition’s response was used to evaluate its performance as a function of heterogeneity. Including the presence of heterogeneity in the coalition model, through the use of subjective parameters, is the first step in formalizing the process for developing adaptive coalition architectures.