An Empirical Investigation of Critical Factors Affecting the Ability of Public Entities to Compete in Public Private Competitions

In 1996, the Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard initiated the largest ever service acquisition program to re-capitalize Coast Guard assets. Called the Integrated Deepwater System or IDS, this acquisition effort seeks to renovate, modernize, and or replace the Coast Guard's entire portfolio of ships, aircraft, and support facilities. The IDS contractor will be responsible for designing and constructing the system, as well as, sharing responsibility for supporting and disposing of it. This poses a significant threat to the USCG Aircraft Repair and Supply Center (ARSC), the Coast Guard's aircraft depot located in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Is ARSC prepared to compete for this IDS workload? The study begins with the development of a Research model of public entity competitiveness. The resulting model is based on three generic key factors: Politics, Cost, and Organic; it also identifies multiple generic sub factors.