Mark Nissen

a picture of someone waterskiing behind a military jet fighter

a bullet mark"We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn." -- Heb 5:11

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Contact Interests
Teaching
Background Publications Presentations
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Recent Highlights

See my book entitled Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics: Principled Organizational Knowing & Learning Hershey, PA: IRM Press (2006).

"Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics: Principled Organizational Knowing & Learning translates what is arcane and controversial today into managerial guidance that is sophisticated yet practical. It also complements the many existing management books on strategy, technology, knowledge and systems while addressing a well-recognized void."

"Harnessing Knowledge Dynamics: Principled Organizational Knowing & Learning draws from the emerging knowledge-flow theory to provide stable principles to build a practice of knowledge management. It also draws from diverse, real-world experience to provide operational applications of knowledge-flow principles in practice. This book builds upon theory but targets practice; it takes knowledge known only by a few researchers and shares it with many leaders and managers."

OASD-NII Research Chair Professor of Command & Control, Naval Postgraduate School (2007-present)

Director, Center for Edge Power, OASD-NII Command & Control Research Program (2004-present)

Asynchronous Instruction Design, Distributed Learning Resource Center (2003).

Visiting Associate Professor, Stanford University (2002-2003)

Young Investigator, Office of Naval Research (2001-2004)

Menneken Award Winner (for Excellence in Scientific Research), Naval Postgraduate School (2000)

Systems Management Department Award for Outstanding Research Achievement (1998)

Current Contact Information

Graduate School of Operational and Information Sciences
Graduate School of Business and Public Policy
Naval Postgraduate School
589 Dyer Road, Code 06/IS, Room 200A
Monterey, CA 93943-5000
831-656-3570 (tel); 756-3570 (DSN); 831-656-3679 (fax)
MNissen[at]nps.edu (e-mail)

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Research Interests

My research is directed largely toward the study of dynamic knowledge and organization. I view work, technology and organization as an integrated design problem, and perceive the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive institutional pillars as mutually reinforcing carriers of organizations. I have been investigating phenomenologically the dynamics of knowledge for some time, and finished writing a book on the subject. This has involved some technical effort (e.g., development of a process-redesign expert system called KOPeR, implementation of a multi-agent system for supply chain re-intermediation called the Intelligent Mall, design of electronic employment matching markets), but my interests are largely organizational (e.g., organizing around knowledge flows, integrating human actors with software agents in the organization, understanding contingent aspects of organizational fields), and I'm working deeply now in conceptualizing and operationalizing dynamic fit. Also, I'm pushing ever further into computational organizational theory and experimentation, and am beginning to work with organizations as complex adaptive systems too.

I'm involved presently in a project to investigate and design the behaviors of Edge organizations (download the book Power to the Edge for free). The project is sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration through its Command and Control Research Program. This project integrates basic and applied research from multiple disciplines, and involves collaboration with faculty and students at leading universities such as Stanford, Purdue and the University of Southern California. The Center for Edge Power was established in 2004 to coordinate the associated multidisciplinary, multi-university, multi-year research project to understand institutional, organizational, processual, technological, doctrinal and personal aspects of what the Military terms command and control. Additionally, I'm beginning a new DARPA study on memetics, and planning to conduct some laboratory experimentation on trust-mistrust effects using the ELICIT multiplayer intelligence game.

In 2004 I completed a young-investigator project, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, that involved basic science to develop knowledge-flow theory for the very-large enterprise.

During the 2003 academic year I enjoyed a sabbatical at Stanford University working with the Virtual Design Team (VDT) Research Group in the Engineering School. The principal focus of this work was to integrate my phenomenological research on knowledge flows with the agent-based simulation tools and computational organization theory methods employed by faculty and doctoral students in the VDT Group. This has sparked my current interest in designing organizations around knowledge flows.

As an area for application of knowledge systems, I spent considerable time addressing problems of interest to the Defense acquisition community, with particular emphasis on processes associated with procurement, contracting and software project management. This has included intensive study of supply chain management, commercial and military alike. As an additional application area, my colleague Bill Gates and I have been designing electronic labor markets, with particular emphasis on matching people with jobs within the hierarchy and integrating two-sided matching from Economics with multi-agent systems technology.

My research at Cal Berkeley was oriented toward the domain of electronic commerce, in which I had been contributing through two CommerceNet Working Groups. My primary focus in the CALS Working Group was on the Intelligent Hub project, where I was interested in designing more "intelligence" into the Hub, for example through the use of intelligent agents, and development of knowledge-based systems to support frontend and backend commercial activities. I was also associated with the Electronic Catalogs and Directories Working Group, where I was interested in the Integrated Procurement Project. This had substantial potential for synergies with the CALS work above, and represented a good fit with my previous work in the redesign of Navy Procurement.

My interest in redesigning the military procurement process began in the Eighties as a contracts & pricing manager for a top aerospace & defense contractor, at which time I was also a reserve officer in the Navy Supply Corps. This interest continued through my masters and doctoral work, the latter of which involved field research at the Naval Air Warfare Center - Weapons Division (NAWCWPNS) to investigate the major procurement process. In that effort, I developed and employed a measurement-driven, knowledge-based system to diagnose process pathologies and faults, and used simulation to project dramatic performance improvements associated with several, system-generated redesign transformations. Some of the more promising of these transformations include: Intelligent acquisition agents, knowledge-enhanced workflow systems, intelligent regulatory search and just-in-time procurement training systems.

I am also a member of the ISWorldNet community.

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Teaching

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Last updated: 2 April 2007