EM695 Research Paper

by
Jason R. Howe

Submitted to Dr. Muhammad Ahmed

Eastern Michigan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
Seminar

EM 695
December 2012
Ypsilanti, Michigan
Academic Integrity Statement

Eastern Michigan University Conduct Code and Judicial Structure for Students and Student Organizations

Academic dishonesty
1. Students are not to engage in any form of academic dishonesty including, but not limited to, plagiarism, alteration of records, substitution of another’s work representing it as the student’s own, and knowing assisting another student in engaging in any such activity. For purposes of this section, plagiarism is defined as the knowing use, without approval, or published materials, expressions, or works of another with intent to represent the material(s) as one’s own.

I hereby acknowledge that I have abided by the above statement in the creation and submission of this assignment.

Table of Contents

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Introduction
The Defense Acquisition community accounts for a significant amount of the Department of Defense’s expenditures every year. These expenditures are for providing the military forces with the supplies and equipment needed to perform their duty of keeping the country safe. Of these expenditures, there are programs that are not making any technical progress yet funding is provided every year. There are times that even if a program is canceled, it receives a new name and funding is then provided under this new name; therefore, the program truly is not cancelled. In addition, the individual program budgets are padded in such a way that even if some funding is pulled then the programs still have millions of taxpayers’ dollars at their disposal. This study addresses the problem of over spending the taxpayers’ money by the Defense Acquisition community. The purpose of this study is to examine whether any lack of ethics, integrity and accountability of Defense Acquisition professionals when spending the taxpayer’s money exists. Elliott Branch, the Executive Director of Acquisition and Logistics Management at the Office so the Assistant Secretary of the Navy believes “money is the enemy of innovation (Corrin, 2011).” In other words by having such large budgets, innovation is not at the forefront of development resulting in inappropriate spending of taxpayer money. As anyone knows, the U.S.’s current administration is seeking to cut Defense Department spending in the near future as one of the measures to help in the reduction of the budget deficit. These cuts are extensive and through observation and discussions, these are equal cuts across the board at Marine Corps Systems Command. Through this research project, it has been determined that with the proper spending and innovation the negative effect of the budget reductions can be reduced.

Literature Review
Much literature has been written about ethics and doing the right thing. There are even websites dedicated to ethics and related topics. For example, doingtherightthing.com is a website that that is dedicated to influencing people to regain their morals and stop doing things that are not only unethical but also morally wrong. With the topic of this research, it is very important to understand that concept and how it relates to requesting and expending budgets. In addition, Department of Defense Acquisition professionals have a duty to perform their jobs with integrity and honorable intentions that would not create doubt or questions by taxpayers. In 2009 and 2010 the Deputy Secretary of Defense released memorandums to all of his subordinates addressing his expectations and the departments need for ethics, integrity and accountability by all Department of Defense personnel. Acquisition professionals are at the forefront of providing gear to the operating forces but as the Deputy Secretary of Defense reveals in his memorandums this must be