Toward an Operational Proxy for Acquisition Workforce Quality: Measuring Dynamic Knowledge and Performance at the Tactical Edges of Organizations

Abstract

The efficacy of defense acquisition is highly dependent upon acquisition workforce (AWF) quality, but assessing such quality remains a major challenge, particularly given the knowledge-intensive and dynamic nature of acquisition organizations and processes. Hence, it is difficult to gauge much less predict the impact of leadership interventions in terms of policy, process, regulation, organization, education, training, or like approaches. Building upon the development and application of Knowledge Flow Theory over the past couple of decades, we have developed a state-of-the-art approach that enables us analyze, visualize, and measure dynamic knowledge and performance. The main idea is to apply this approach inwardly to measure the dynamic knowledge and performance of acquisition processes (e.g., within contracting and project management organizations), but we also look outwardly (e.g., at warfare processes at the tactical edges of military combat organizations) to conceptualize an operational proxy for acquisition workforce quality: end customer performance. This proxy offers its best potential to complement, not replace, other metrics in use, development, and conceptualization today, but it arguably concentrates on one of the most important AWF quality determinants: how acquired systems affect operational performance.