EFFICIENCY VERSUS EFFECTIVENESS: WHY DO NUCLEAR WEAPON PROGRAMS COST MORE AND TAKE LONGER THAN THEY DID DURING THE COLD WAR ERA?

Abstract

United States nuclear weapons are high reliability engineered systems managed by high reliability organizations that make up what is collectively referred to as the Nuclear Security Enterprise. In the Post-Cold War era, there was a monumental shift in nuclear weapons policy from increasing effectiveness of underground system testing, new design, and innovation to sustainment and enhancing fiscal efficiency through management controls. However, absent from high reliability systems and organizations literature are studies of effectiveness versus efficiency and the balance of management controls. Instead, the high reliability systems and organization literature describes intense concentrations in areas such as safety, security, reliability, error reporting, high functioning public-private partnerships, continuous organizational self-evaluation, mission-driven cultures, and specialized expertise as theoretical features leading to effective outcomes. Thus, this dissertation integrates a management controls reforms-as-routines framework into a Black Box Model of Implementation on a high reliability organization responsible for nuclear weapons to generate and explore an observational measure of labor resources spanning a 21 fiscal year timeframe. The output is utilized to explore the primary empirical research question: Over time, how have changes in reforms for management controls in the Post-Cold War Era impacted the distribution of resources across the Nuclear Security Enterprise? The empirical results illustrate a larger increase in the labor resources implementing management controls reforms than the technical resources responsible for the United States Nuclear Deterrence Mission. The results are useful to high reliability system and organization theorists as an empirical case study regarding the implications of shifting the balance between policy priorities of cost, schedule, and performance in a resource constrained environment. Furthermore, these results should inform policymakers and other high reliability organizations responsible for high reliability engineered systems in the United States that increasing management controls may not be the preferred mechanism to improving effectiveness of mission outcomes.