One of the challenges that the defense contractors are facing is that their employee wages are the highest compared to any other industry. This is mainly due to the higher average wages in the defense industry. For instance, “Raytheon charges the government $90 per hour for administrative support/clerical work for individuals with a minimum of a high school diploma and two years of experience, and slightly more than $100 per hour for first-tier management consulting” (Porter, 2015).
One major factor that is contributing to the higher wages among the defense contractors is the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) which may require a company performing work under a federal contract to have a unionized workforce. The other major factor is the number of requirements needed to meet the legal requirements under the Federal Acquisition Regulations which in and of itself makes the processes and the procedures more complex. In general, these complex administrative requirements will require an additional workforce that is not required in the commercial industry. This presents Raytheon with even more reason to use an ABC-oriented approach which identify and track the costs of activities, so the company can use it to see if activity costs are in line with industry standards. In fact, “in an ABC system, the costs of the organization’s significant activities are accumulated and then assigned to goods or services in accordance with how the activities are used in the production of
Zakheim and Kadish explain two decades ago, there were more than twenty prime contractors competing for defense contracts while today the government relies on just six contractors to build its defense systems. Zakheim and Kadish state, “The system largely forgoes competition on price, delivery and performance and replaces it with a kind of “design bureau” competition”. The report explains that firms such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin have operated in collaboration on several projects such as the Air Force’s next generation bomber (Zakheim & Kadish, 2008). Collaboration of this nature suggests cooperative equilibrium between the firms to enhance their mutual payoff of outbidding competitors. With the defense market on the downturn pending major budget cuts over the next several years, more collaboration strategies are possible for firms to remain competitive. The existing procurement system encourages bargaining among the government and bidding firms. When budgets are allocated generously, demand is high and firms can set their prices higher. Budget cuts decrease demand and increase bargaining between buyer and seller. Security Industry reports budget deficits subject contracts to greater
Although reducing costs and improving services have been cited as the most important reasons services are privatized by agencies, contracting out offers the attractiveness of hiring a contract employee over a public employee. This occurs because of the apparent advantages offered by such options (Dilger et al. 23). Some advantages of hiring a contract employee over a civil servant are as follows:
During the 2018 Senate budget accountability meeting, Senator Bernie Sanders says, “since 1995 Boeing, Lockheed Martin and United Technologies have paid nearly $3 billion in fines or related settlements for fraud or misconduct- $3 billion collectively. Yet those three companies received about $800 billion of defense contracts over the past 18 years” (Senate). All of these companies are private defense companies that design and manufacture weapons for the Department of Defense if the money if followed. These defense companies have paid 0.375 percent in fines for fraud compared to the amount they were given by the Department of Defense over eighteen
The debate over outsourcing in the U.S. is controversial among citizens and economists alike. There are many economists who believe that outsourcing is the next, most logical step in a free market economy (Mankiw & Swage, 2006). These economists believe that the market shifts according to supply and demand. An inherent feature of a free market economy is the free competition of goods and services where the goods and/or services go where the demand is the greatest. According to this view, there is a high demand for labor at a reduced cost and there is an almost endless supply of cheap labor overseas. An example of this would be that a call center attendant would be paid anywhere between twenty and twenty-five thousand dollars a year in compensation whereas the same worker in China would be paid approximately five thousand dollars in compensation per year (Mankiw & Swage, 2006). As anyone can see, there is a large difference between U.S. compensation and overseas compensation. These
Contractors bid on U. S. Federal Construction projects and most contracts for federally assisted constructions exceeding $2,000 required to pay their employees the standard wage and benefit package that workers in the area performing similar work are earning the
Under an ABC system, the allocation of costs to products is achieved through at least four analytical steps. Firstly, costs are grouped into activity levels. Secondly, cost drivers are
Activity-based costing (ABC) methodology is an instrument designed to provide accountants and managers with valuable costing information that will allow them to make sound strategic decisions. It is used as a secondary methodology rather than a replacement for the company’s primarily costing system. The ABC methodology identifies activities in an organization and for each activity it assigns a cost. The cost reflects the actual resource consumption by each activity that has been identified.
Jarvis (2014) asserted that during the shutdown, more than one third of the government workforce was furloughed because their position was not deemed “excepted.” Government management official was left to sort out what positions were “excepted” or “non-excepted” with a mere understanding of contractual terms (Brass, 2014; Curren, 2015). Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., added that the government shutdown stagnates the economy and disrupts federal employees’ ability to do their jobs (Katz, 2015). This literature review will be broken into four sections: (a) government shutdown and power bloc defense contractors, (b) furloughed government contractors, (c) WLOC, CWB-I, and CWB-O, and (d) job satisfaction and performance.
government and other foreign governments in which firms conduct business. Doing business with the U.S. Government is fundamentally different than transactions between commercial companies. Defense contractors must comply with laws and regulations relating to the formation, administration, and performance of U.S. government and other contracts. These laws restrict the use and dissemination of classified information, require certification and disclosure of all cost and pricing data in connection with many contracts, and impose specific and unique cost accounting practices among other things. Defense contractors are subject to periodic audits to ensure that they are operating in accordance with all applicable regulations and
In 2001, the Pentagon began taking in contract offers from companies around the United States. Private contracting firms such as KBR Inc. or Prime Project International began receiving over 15 billion dollars a year. Foreign conflicts can be very profitable for large businesses that invest time
H4. Job performance mediates the relationship between furloughed government contractors investigated in this study and their
Before we begin we must first understand the different definitions of proprietary and contract security operations. There are many definitions and explanations that are used to distinguish between the two but I will use the definitions provided by Fischer, in his book titled Introduction to Security. “Proprietary security operations are those that are “in-house,” or controlled entirely by the company establishing security for its operations” Fischer, Robert; Halibozek, Edward; Walters, David (2012-11-23). Introduction to Security (Kindle Locations 877-878). Elsevier Science. Kindle Edition. A good example of this would be if a company purchases all the equipment and security personnel to provide security functions
An organization costing system is a system that helps the management with the strategy planning while the system plays an important role in providing accurate cost information about the products and customers (Curtin, 2006). UPS utilizes the Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system. ABC assumes that activities cause costs and that cost objects create the demand for activities (Marx,
Alan Blinder evaluations 22 to 29 percent of US employment are possibly offshorable. Not all will move, but rather all are contestable. A contestable activity won't really be outsourced, yet now presented to the worldwide rivalry. This breaking points wage weights organizations feel. In the event that an occupation is contestable on a global scale, a laborer is rivaling shabby ability around the globe—not simply in the following workspace. This constrains a specialists capacity to arrange compensation: arrange excessively, and the robot or outside call focus starts to look a great deal better to administration. As leaps forward in IT make the quantity of all around contestable occupations increment, the worldwide straightening of wages crosswise over tradable administrations businesses is probably going to proceed.
Nowadays, we know that activity based costing system assigns overhead costs to products or services products that using a two-stage process, which focuses on activities. ABC is a relatively new and very important topic in managerial accounting. ABC allows us to find a way that we could determine the profitability of every product, profitability of every customer we serve, and the profitability of our process. Contents in brief, first that comparing potential advantages of ABC versus traditional costing methods. The