However, because radically slashing the Department is not feasible in the current international environment, due to the need to keep Americans safe, there has traditionally been less of an incentive for the DoD to institute effective quality control methods, compared with private industries.
Corruption and waste regarding the awarding of government contracts is of great concern. There is a so-called 'revolving door' whereby government officials work for the government for a number of years, then shift to more lucrative careers in private industry and use their connections and influence to gain government contracts for businesses. These businesses may not offer the least expensive 'bids' or even the highest quality, if their proposals are viewed in an objective fashion.
"Previous attempts to achieve improvements have traditionally consisted of more quality audits, reports, additional testing and inspection, legal battles over contract compliance, and prosecution for fraud…the DoD Total Quality Management (TQM) strategy" instituted in the 1990s was meant to shift the focus "from defect correction to defect prevention; from quality 'inspected' into the product to quality designed and built into the product; from acceptable levels of defects to continuous improvement; from approval of waivers to conformance to properly defined requirements" (Strickland, Jack & Peter Angiola, 1989). However, more stringent controls are still necessary: unlike a private enterprise instituting TQM, the DoD can never go 'bankrupt' if it is wasteful. Government...
"Under current law, government officials who make contracting decisions must either wait a year before joining a military contractor or, if they want to switch immediately, must start in an affiliate or division unrelated to their government work. One big loophole is that these restrictions do not apply to many high-level policy makers" and that a year is a fairly short period of time (Wayne 2004, p.1). There is too much flexibility in terms of what is defined as 'unrelated.' Greater accountability is essential and legislators must exercise more oversight over the DoD's methods of financing, as claims of national security can be used to cover up corruption.
References
Human relations contributors. (2010). Employee Motivation. Accel. Retrieved September 22,
2010 at http://www.accel-team.com/human_relations/hrels_01_mayo.html
Scientific management. (2010). Employee Motivation. Accel. Retrieved September 22, 2010 at http://www.accel-team.com/scientific/scientific_02.html
Strickland, Jack & Peter Angiola. (1989, May). QICID 3662: Total Quality Management in the Department of Defense. Annual Quality Congress, 43 (0): 806-811 Retrieved September
22, 2010 at http://asq.org/qic/display-item/index.pl?item=3662
Wayne, Leslie. (2004, June 29). Pentagon brass and military contractor's gold. The New York
Times. Retrieved September 22, 2010 at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/business/29door.html
