Army Contract Specialists' Lack of Desire to Become Contracting Officers

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to explore if and why acquisition personnel serving as contract specialists express antipathy toward becoming warranted contracting officers. If the research finds that antipathy exists, the researcher desires to gain an understanding of what it will take to motivate current and future Army contract specialists to become contracting officers and thus possibly future leaders in the Army's Acquisition Workforce. It is a well-known perception that there is a shortage of contracting officers in the U.S. Army Acquisition Corps. This perception has had an injurious impact on numerous Commands and agencies in terms of providing timely goods and services. These shortages are in part due to an aging workforce and the retirement of numerous contracting personnel, and the reduction in numbers of contracting personnel in the 1990s from the drawdown of the Cold War. Also affecting this shortage is competition with our industry partners for personnel with identical skill sets to provide support to the Services. The results of this research will show a variety of data, since there currently are four generational groups of contract specialists in the workforce.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA563264

Entities

People

  • Undra Robinson

Organizations

  • United States Army Command and General Staff College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Army Procurement
  • Business Administration
  • Civilian Personnel
  • Congress
  • Contracts
  • Employment
  • Enlisted Personnel
  • Government Procurement
  • Governments
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Acquisition
  • Military Personnel
  • National Security
  • Personnel Management
  • Procurement
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Military Leadership and Professional Education.
  • Naval Personnel Management