ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the results of a replication of Harold J. Leavitt's pioneering study, updated and refreshed for the information-age and related to the specific concerns of Network Enabled Capability (NEC). Leavitt's 1951 paper 'Some effects of certain communication patterns on group performance' provided a salutary lesson on the effect that different organisational structures have on human role incumbents. Moreover, that it is the humans in the system who bestow upon it the agility, tempo and self-synchronisation that is desired. Leavitt's 1951 study took the simple expedient, that organisational structure will in part determine human behaviour, and subjected it to a direct empirical test. Leavitt derived four distinct organisational structures, or network archetypes, based on small networks. The chapter seeks to take the anecdotal evidence observed in the field and try to recreate, if not the exact situation, then at least an experimental analogue in the laboratory using a paradigm very similar to Leavitt's study.
