Award Fee Contracting as a J-Model Alternative to Revitalize Federal Program Management
本文探讨了在复杂且不确定的政府项目中，奖励费用合同如何促进政府与私营承包商联合管理，以替代传统合同方式，提升项目效率。
An important feature of the American political economy is the extent to which it relies on private parties to accomplish public purposes. Contracting out governmental functions to private organizations has the ironic effect of blurring boundaries between public and private institutions. In the process, it raises crucial questions about what the government's responsibility is in mixedsector enterprises. Should government be other than merely sponsor and monitor of private performance of public functions? The position here is that, if government work to be done by contract is simple and well-specified, traditional methods may be used. Contracting and its management in such cases are straightforward. They can be done mechanically, at arms-length, and the government's part in actually doing the work can be negligible. But major complications occur when the work is complex and not well-specified, as it is in research and development or large-scale system acquisitions. One complication is uncertainty. Work statements are inevitably vague, and circumstances change in unpredictable ways. Managing under uncertainty calls for flexibility and judgment-problem solving-not routine performance of fixed procedures. Real managers, not mechanical systems must be at the heart of complex operations because only human beings can recognize and solve the problems those operations inevitably generate. Contracting must accommodate to this reality. The second complication is interdependence, a problem that is exacerbated by uncertainty. All contracting is inherently an exercise in interdependence. Under uncertainty, however, relations are active and intense because transactions must be continuously and collectively managed. Ambiguous work statements must be clarified on the basis of shared experience and redefined as circumstances or perceptions change and the public's interest must be protected in the process. Agents of the government, most particularly its program managers, must therefore participate directly and influentially in these dynamic undertakings. Contracting must accommodate to this requirement, too. Award fee contracting is a joint government/contractor approach to facilitate such participation. Lessons learned in recent Department of Defense and * To implement mixed-sector governmental programs effectively, they must often be conducted as joint undertakings by a government client and a private contractor. In practice, this means that provisions are needed to facilitate active involvement of government managers in the operations of these programs. A broadly applicable way to implement this J-model prescription-award fee contracting-is described and justified in this paper.