Background of the Study

In the aftermath of the WWII and consequent reduction of military resources, changes in military might introduce a cycle of military expenditures that ultimately led to inflation. This reduced tempo of operations resulted in establishment of government policies that favored outsourcing the supply of materials and services to the private sector, which in turn resulted in the growth of civilian contractors perceived to be a less expensive source of procurement than the previous military self-containment of material and services (Maninger, 2007; Singer, 2004). Currently, military contractors design, build, and deliver hardware and software to the Department of Defense. They also perform critical tasks such as the provision of armed security, management of installations, convoy protection and services such as training native security forces and training war dogs. Support services provided by civilian contractors include providing logistics, moral support, and medical services. Military contractors are less expensive compared to permanent in-house military support operations since they can be contracted in times of need and released thereafter when their services are not needed, which represents significant cost savings for the US government (Maninger, 2007; Singer, 2004).

Civilian contractors in the US play a pivotal role in military operations across the world. A crucial requirement for successful management of operations by the federal government is a functional and effective SCM. Arif-Uz-Zaman and Ahsan (2014) asserted that SCM breaks the impediments between functional areas by enabling a comprehensively review of every aspect of the supply chain to identify and mitigate points of weakness. A reliable supply chain can move necessary equipment and services to fight men and women in an organized and reliable manner even if those first line defenders are behind enemy lines, this ensuring they can operate optimally towards the success of their missions.

Globalization of US military operations opened new avenues for operationalization of SCM. Globalization also resulted in new complexities of delivery and the need for high emphasis on performance by contractors. A battlefield is defined as any operation where the American military is in a state of readiness to respond such as in South Korea, Afghanistan, or Iraq, and include the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard., and National Guard.
Problem Statement

Globalization of American military operations has led to an upsurge in outsized inventories, inadequate service levels, lengthy lead-times, and expenditure inefficiencies (Badakhsh, Rashidi, & Akbari, 2014). Currently, the US relies considerably on private companies numbering 265,000 civilian contractors as of 2008 (Kinsey, 2009).The general business problem addressed by the proposal is that some personnel in the military sphere are negatively affected by inefficient SCM, which results in ineffective delivery of materials and services characterized by lengthy lead times, unbalanced inventories, inadequate service levels, and expenditure inefficiencies. The specific business problem is that some American military officers in military missions located in Afghanistan and Iraq lack knowledge in purchasing, operations, distribution, and integration, the basic components of SCM, and result in fatal military missions because personnel do not have enough support to defend themselves from adversaries or launch a strong offensive. Research question: what are the perceptions, attitudes and lived experiences American military officers towards SCM in military missions to remove lengthy lead times, unbalanced inventories, inadequate service levels, and expenditure inefficiencies.
Purpose Statement

The purpose of the qualitative research for the case study research design is to explore the perceptions, attitudes, and lived experiences of former American military officers who have experienced the outcome of civilian contractor sourcing of materials and services in fields of operation such as Afghanistan and Iraq and relevant to the four components of supply chain management. The targeted population will include a sample of 10 former American military officers who have experienced the use of civilian supply chain management contractors in their respective fields of operation in military missions located in Afghanistan and Iraq. Results have the potential to change the way how purchasing, operations, distribution, and integration impact military operations. Results may assist in reconstructing and improving military operations by ensuring civilian contractors are more efficient.
Research Questions

Based on the business problem statement and the purpose statement, the following research questions will drive the methodology of the proposed qualitative case study.

The research objective is to understand what perceptions, attitudes and lived experiences former llmilitary officers have who have experienced the use of civilian contractors in their respective fields of operation such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

RQ1: What are the perceptions, attitudes and lived experiences of former military officers in the US who have experienced the use of civilian contractors regarding purchasing?

RQ2: What are the perceptions, attitudes and lived experiences of former military officers in the US who have experienced the use of civilian contractors regarding operations?

RQ3: What are the perceptions, attitudes and lived experiences of former military officers in the US who have experienced the use of civilian supply chain management contractors regarding distribution?

RQ4: What are the perceptions, attitudes and lived experiences of former military officers in the US who have experienced the use of civilian contractors regarding integration?
Nature of Study

The choice of the qualitative research design for this study explains the desire to have a full picture of the perceptions, attitudes, and lived experiences of the military personnel with the reference to an individual setting (Tracy, 2013). The research seeks to study the personal experiences instead of evaluating numerical values of returns. Qualitative research will give an opportunity to get a better picture of the opinion and personal vision of the subjects.

The choice of the case study as the design for the research is appropriate for a qualitative method since complexities of supplies are intense during battlefield operations and ensure timely deliveries in a particular place becomes crucial (Haley, 2014). The concepts and theories in SCM cover various aspects of inventory management, use of information technology in supply chain management, and integration of different organizational operations within SCM.
Conceptual Framework

Leader-member Exchange theory (LMX) arose from Blau’s social exchange theory and Homans’ norm of reciprocity (1964 and 1958, respectively, as cited by DeConinck, 2010). Social exchange theory captures the interactions and negotiations that occur between people and shape the way they react and respond to social exchange stimuli. Constructs of trust, obligation, and expectations of reciprocity inform social exchange interactions and account, in part, for the complexity of personal and professional relationships because there are a host of unstated beliefs, values and expectations that underlie these exchanges (Bezuijen, van Dam, van den Berg & Thierry, 2010; Chiu, Hsu, & Wang, 2006). The LMX relationship relates specifically to the exchanges between leaders and followers and is considered as a vertical dyad with the leader in the superior position and the employee in the follower, lower position. In the case of military acquisitions, the leader is the Department of Defense, and the followers are the civilian contractors. The LMX relationship is also traditionally considered in terms of high-quality or low-quality interactions with high-quality exchanges characterized by positive feelings of mutual trust, respect, and satisfaction on both ends of the dyad while low-quality LMX relationships are marked by a distinct sense of maintaining the relationship for contractual, but not personal, reasons (Dadhich & Bhal, 2008).

The relatively young body of literature exploring the impact of LMX on organizational practice indicates compelling evidence that high-quality and positive LMX conditions contribute to greater organizational commitment on the part of followers and leaders (Katrinli, Atabay, Gunay, & Guneri, 2008), lower stress in the work environment (Harris & Kacmar, 2006; Wikaningrum, 2007), stronger communication and collaboration between leaders and followers (Hye Eun, Park, Lee, T. S., & Lee, D. W., 2007), and improved employee performance (DeConinck, 2011). The benefits of a high-quality LMX relationship are myriad and proceed from this idea of reciprocity. Followers who feel valued and appreciated by their leaders tend to work harder for the organization and express willingness to take on greater challenges. Their enthusiasm or interest in turn encourages the deepening of the trust and mutual respect in the relationship with the leader, and the leader will likely reward this commitment with greater opportunity and further incentives to perform. In this way, the high-quality LMX relationship can secure greater organizational identification and commitment that helps to secure organizational stability and contributes to a supervisor, an employee, and an organizational well-being.
Assumptions

Research assumptions were described by Mujis (2012) as self-evident truths inherent in the research process. It helps assume that the participants will be mentally and physically fit to respond to the questions posed by the research during the conduct of the interviews. The assumption is that the responses provided by the 10 former U.S. Army officers will be unbiased and truthful and that they will respond to the best of their abilities. The rationale for this assumption is that the officers will not receive any direct benefit from participating in the study. The study assumes that officers volunteering for the study will represent various aspects of SCM. The rationale for an appropriate sample size was that information could be transferred to other military services such as the U.S. Air Force or Navy as well as relevant to the U.S. Army battalions.

Avolio (2004) assumes that officer perceptions of issues with the four elements of SCM and leadership may vary from others involved in the battalion from which the selection of the officers occurs by snowball sampling. Individuals bring a different experience to the tasks they perform, which influences how they perceive their work experiences; hence, officers will bring different experiences from the battlefield to the interview process (Moser & Vander-Nat, 2003). Variations in officer views will support the need for data from all participants to obtain a true reflection of SCM in Afghanistan and Iraq (Avolio, 2004). Finally, it is an assumption inherent in the study methodology that the researcher will remain unbiased (Mujis, 2012).
Limitations

Limitations are issues the researcher may identify that could affect the results. The measurement explains the objectivity. Former officers may remember incidents differently, depending on their perspectives (Avolio, 2004). Officer honesty and openness in light of U.S. Army regulations concerning the release of information from the battlefield will be a potential limitation of the study; however, all participants will be drawn from those who are no longer members of the Armed Forces. A restriction of information may result from not having access to officers because of the nature of the military organizations from which they retired or left.
Delimitations

The proposed study takes place in Afghanistan using a snowball sampling technique to select participants. Participants will be in the military managing aspects of SCM, and not civilians working for the military in Afghanistan. Participants will have been working in the U.S. Army for 1 year or more and have current experience with SCM. Factors that define and focus the scope of the study are delimitations. The subjects of the study are the officer of the U.S. Army assigned to battalions in Afghanistan. Only officers who managed aspects of SCM will be selected.
Definition of Terms

Definitions provide clear, specific meanings of terminology without discrepancy (Neuman, 2005). Definitions also provide concepts using theory, ideas, and structural meanings. It is important to identify constructs to increase a shared understanding of a phenomenon. For the purpose of the proposed study, the following operational definitions will be used.

Civilian contractors. These are the contractors who respond to Department of Defense Request for Proposals in competition with other contractors for federal money to execute a task (D’Ippolito, 2014).

Commander. It is a person who commands a squad, unit, or battalion in a leadership role for the members in the command (FM 22-100, 1999).

Federal Acquisition Regulation. Issued by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act of 1974, it provides the Secretary of Defense with authority to issue Requests for Proposal for needs the government has and to determine which civilian contractors responding to the Requests are hired to provide the government with materials and services.

Job satisfaction. It is the culmination of various perceptions, attitudes, and lived experiences a worker experiences towards the job, fellow followers, and leader(s) (Casey, 1990).

Laissez-faire leadership. It constitutes a “hands-off approach to leadership in which the person in charge abdicates responsibility, delays decisions, gives no feedback, and makes little effort to help followers satisfy their needs” (Sosik & Jung, 2010, p. 182).

Leader. It is someone with the role or assigned responsibility for tasks and people who can inspire and influence followers to achieve organizational goals (FM22-100, 1999).

Military occupational specialty (MOS). MOS is a nine-character code is used in the U.S Army and Marines to identify a career field in that branch of service (FM 22-100, 1999).

Supply chain management (SCM). SCM is the systemic harmonization of delivery tactics along with the function of those tactics (D’Ippolito, 2014).

Transactional leadership. It clarifies the needs of a job followers must do to achieve a reward, either praise or monetary, thereby establishing confidence that followers will put forth the required effort to accomplish that end (Bass, 1996).

Transformational leadership. It is a style of leadership focused on individual and communal rewards based on a loyalty to ideals (Bass & Riggio, 2006).
Summary

This section contained a statement of the problem driving the need for the study, and a description of the specific phenomenon of interest. It also contained a summary of the background and justification for the study, which will be enlarged upon in Section 2. Deficiencies in evidence driving the purpose of the study were cited. Research questions were posed, a theoretical framework was outlined, and the nature of the study was described. The following section contains the review of literature upon which the research questions for the proposed study were based.

The cold war resulted in reduction of military budgets in many countries. As such, it introduced a particular cycle in military expenditure that ultimately led to an inflation menace in affected nations. The tempo of operations increased significantly resulting to establishment of government policies that favored outsourcing resulting to growth of contracted military operations. Military Contractors perform critical tasks such as provision of armed security, installations and convoys in addition to training native security forces. Support services on the other hand include providing logistics and moral support in the form of medical services. Military contractors are less expensive in the long-run compared to a permanent in-house military force since they can only be contracted in times of need and released thereafter when their services are less valuable thus saving on costs.
Documentation

The strategy for conducting the literature review was to explore literature from the Library of Congress, U.S. Army War College Library, professional journals, published articles, leadership books, and scholarly work in the field of organization leadership with a focus on leadership in supply chain management. Department of Defense publications were also searched for bulletins and documents pertinent to supply chain management. Scholarly books, journal articles, and research documents were reviewed through the following university sources: Walden University, Emerald Search, First Search, World Cat Advance Search, ProQuest, ProQuest Digital Dissertations and ProQuest Journals, Search.gov. Google’s online databases also provided information for the search of the pertinent literature. Bibliographic and reference listings were accessed from appropriate titles discovered within the review process. Approximately 50 current scholarly articles pertaining to military command structure and leadership training, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, military supply chain management, servant leadership, transactional and transformational leadership, Army leadership manuals, motivation, Federal Acquisition Regulations, organizational uncertainly, communication theory, expectancy theory, generational differences, and qualitative research design.

The following key leadership concepts were used to guide the literature review: (a) federal contracting, (b) definition of leadership; (c) concepts of leadership; (d) trait approach; (e) behavior leadership approach; (f) contingency leadership theory; (g) transactional, transformational, and laissez-faire leadership; (h) application of leadership theory to organizations; and finally,(i) literature related to leadership theory in government organizations.
Historical Overview of Federal Contracting

According to the U.S Army War College (2015), the beginning of the 1970s can be viewed as the initiating point in growing relevance of supply chain management. All contractors who do work for the Federal government must enter into a competition with their competitors. The winner of the competition is awarded the contract. The proposal that each contractor must submit to the competition is based on the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). The FAR was issued by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy Act of 1974, which provides the Secretary of Defense with authority to issue Requests for Proposal for needs the government has and to determine which civilian contractors responding to the Requests are hired to provide the government with materials and services. The process of awarding contracts can take years. Every contract must be approved by the Congress and must be within the general budget of the requesting agency. For instance, if the Joint Chiefs of Staff determines that a new satellite must be built, they must first write a report justifying the expense and detail what the expense would include or exclude. Classified projects are not advertised openly; however, competition remains the same for all contractors wishing to get a contract. The Secretary of Defense and the Administrator of General Services initially approve the award of each contract, which is then subject to the approval by the Administrator of Federal Procurement Policy. Once an agency, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has written a detailed request and it has been approved by the Congress, it is then published by the Department of Defense according to the provision of the FAR.

The FAR was written with the intent to provide uniform policies and procedures for acquisition. Among its guiding principles is to have an acquisition system that satisfies customer’s needs in terms of cost, quality, and timeliness; minimize administrative operating costs; conduct business with integrity, fairness, and openness; and fulfill other public policy objectives. When a federal government agency issues a solicitation, it will specify the applicable FAR provisions, which may be numerous. To be awarded a contract, and contractor must comply with the provisions, demonstrate that it will be able to comply with them at the time of award, or claim an exemption from them. A contractor’s proposal will consist of three major volumes of work, any one of which may be thousands of pages long and divided into manageable-sized books. The three volumes specify (a) how the contract management takes place, (b) what the technical specifications the contract contains, and (c) a cost volume that details exactly how every cent allotted toward completion of the contract. For instance, several large aerospace companies competed for the initial phase of the Space Station construction. The contract was worth $5 billion initially, but eventually became a $14 billion contract. The contract was only for design and building the components of the station, not the cost of boosting the pieces into space.

McDonnell Douglas was one of the competitors, and the winning one. The FAR for the Space Station was nine volumes long, not the standard three volumes. McDonnell Douglas began their quest for the contract a year before the FAR was published by hiring several retired former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) engineers who were paid to write a dummy FAR they considered representative of what the final contract would contain (personal communication, Dr. B. von Diether, February, 2016). After the compleltion of the dummy FAR, McDonnell Douglas gathered together 178 engineers, managers, and cost professionals charged with writing a proposal in response to the dummy FAR for a period of two week period. Meantime, McDonnell Douglas built a replica of what their proposal would look like so NASA inspectors could walk though it during the bid competition. These activities occurred 1 year before the FAR for the Space Station was released. After publishing the real FAR, McDonnell Douglas assembled the same team to respond, who found that about 60% of what they had written a year earlier was appropriate and could be included without change. The proposal was voluminous because NASA required several hard copies of each of the nine volumes. It weighed several thousand pounds, was loaded on pallets, and transported on a cargo plane to Houston (personal communication, Dr. B. von Diether, February, 2016). The selection capped several years of intense competition in which winners and losers spent up to $75 million each of their own money on preliminary design proposals and engineering work. Contract award follows the four issues with supply chain management, when the private contractor meets the provisions of the proposed contract and which can give rise to problems with purchasing. These problems show relation to what the contractor promised if the pricing or other purchasing obligations undergo change, and operations, distribution, and integration in relation to how the government becomes obliged to manage the process of incorporating the output of the contract into the agency that sent out the FAR.
Supply Chain Management

Managing a supply chain requires each firm in the chain to be supply-oriented and at the same time, perform a particular set of collectively managerial actions across firms within the supply chain. The real-time data is involved to track the inventory level and resourcing requirements (Gereffi & Lee, 2012). Distribution consists of actual logistic management to ensure that process leads to timely delivery of the right material at the right place in the right quantity. Demand management is an important aspect of operations. Operation’s management integration occures with different software like materials requirement planning (MRP), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and radio-frequency identification (RFID), which uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. The other important issues of operations are lean systems and Six Sigma quality. The real-time data is involved to track the inventory level and resourcing requirements (Gereffi & Lee, 2012). Distribution consists of actual logistic management in order to ensure that process lead to timely delivery of the right material at the right place in the right quantity.

There are three important aspects of supply chain management for an organization: material quality, delivery timing, and purchasing price. Girth (2014) suggested there has been a distinctive augmentation of the use of the term supply chain management in the last decade. The reason for this was primarily the extension of the traditional functional integration concepts. The supply chain involve traditional business functions and it allows integration of third parties and clients and facilitates proper flow of the business functions.
Supply Chain History

In the 20th century, history of the development of supply chain management advanced slowly with an initial focus on how to improve relatively simple, but labor intensive processes (Noble, 1984). With the advent of the 1990s and into the 20th century, intense engineering of supply chains as well as management of extraordinarily complex global networks moving supplies and services were required (Haley, 2014). Haley described two sectors that focused on the development of better, faster, and more accurate systems: Department of Defense buyers, and wholesalers and retailers. Companies started focusing on forming, maintaining, and extending relationships with their suppliers and vice versa (Sturgeon & Kawakami, 2011). Supplier and customer alliances strengthened. From the 1990s and into the 21st century emphasis on long-term relationships among these entities determined the evolution of supply chain management. Relationship building among various members of individual supply chains became a management focus. The Department of Defense, after decades of sole source acquisitions, meaning one contractor was guaranteed an award should they bid, moved to competitive bidding for nearly every purchase. In the 21st century, such sole source acquisitions by the Department of Defense are almost entirely concerned with “black” projects, which are not listed as line items in the annual Department of Defense budget because they require the highest security and must remain secret. Black projects are unacknowledged by the Department of Defense or defense contractors. Projects such as the F-117 Nighthawk, the SR-71, the RQ-3 Dark Star, and the Hughes Mining Barge are highly classified and their existence is denied until the Department of Defense is ready to present them to the public.

Logistics. Industrial engineering and operations research are based on logistics. Taylor (2006), who authored The Principles of Scientific Management in 1910, has been considered the father of industrial engineering with a focus on how to improve on the manual loading processes. The operational research started after the demonstration of the values on analytical study of the military logistics issues in the 1940s due to the complex needs of the World War II. Industrial engineering and operation management have attempted to maintain separate identities; most of the successes connected to the use of integrated framework that focused on supply chain and logistic challenges, being referred to as the “Supply Chain Engineering.”

By 1940s and 1950s, the focus of logistic research was more on how to use mechanization such as pallets and the pallet lifts toward improvement of labor intensive processes on material handling and taking advantage of space via racking and warehouse designs and layouts. Later in the 1950s, the concept was extended towards the transportation management with the process of developing intermodal containers with ships, trains, and tracks that were handling the containers. Pallet lifts concept was the precondition on supply chain globalization that was later introduced. However, warehousing and material handling were terms used in referring to these efforts, considering the work as crucial applications for industrial engineering. In approximately the 1960s, there was development of a fine trend that was shifting time-dependent freight transportation on truck and not rail, which caused the need to maintain joint considerations on warehousing, material handling as well as freight transportation that were part of “physical distribution.” National Council of Physical Distribution Management was incorporated in 1963 with the aim to focus on the industrial attentions on this area which later become the predominant organization. By 1960s, all transactions and process of record keeping were done and maintained manually. However, the process of computerization of the data caused large opportunities for innovation mainly in logistic planning with random storage in the warehouses to the process of optimization of inventory and truck rooting.

The period of the 1980s, marked the start of sea-change mainly in logistics hence making history in the supply chain management. There was the emergence of personal computers in the 1980s that offered significant computer access to the planners with a new geographical planning. Increased computerization was a cause of technology spawn especially on flexible spreadsheets as well as a map-based interface that allowed large improvements in the process of logistic planning and execution technologies. Production and Distribution Research Center was an innovation leader that brought together the interface with optimization models for supply chain design as well as distribution planning.

On the other hand, Material Handling Research Center offered leadership toward development of new control technologies on material handling automation process. As well, the Computational Optimization Center was able to develop a new large scale optimization algorithms that allowed solution for the previously airline scheduled challenges. Most of the techniques that were developed in these centers were able to find their ways to commercial technologies. Company executives were much informed on the logistics which was crucial area for opportunities that would develop and improve on the company bottom line.

The boom to apply the logistics system was further empowered in 1990s due to the introduction of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The ERP system was motivate by the successes made by the Material Requirement Planning System that was earlier developed in 1970s and 1980s with part desires to incorporate multiple database that was part of all companies. Despite many challenges related to the process of installing ERP system, various companies were still able to comply and install the system fully. There were various changes that were implemented in the ERP system had tremendous changes on data availability as well as accuracy. The new developed ERP software increased its recognition for better planning and incorporation in logistic systems. As a result, there was generation of Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software.

The widespread use of “supply chain” is as a result of globalization in manufacturing in mid 1990s especially the growth process of manufacturing in China. The US historically imported from China and their transactions grew from $45 million in 1995 to almost $280 billion by 2006. Due to the growth in the globalization, the need to maintain logistics strategies was part and parcel of the system with use of complex networks such as the multiple entities with diversified controls. Hence, there has been an increased trend in the use of supply chain management referring mainly to the strategic issues and logistics on tactical and operational issues.

Logistics definition states that it is a “part of the supply chain process that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of c