The Principles of the Contracting Discipline: An Analysis

This thesis analyzes five candidate contracting principles for their validity and utility to the contracting discipline. The effort is an important cornerstone to the establishment of contracting as a scientific discipline. The paper begins with a brief review of the complimentary efforts to date, and presents a general hierarchy of science within which future contracting principles would exist. The research effort present the results of a survey conducted among a group of the contracting disciplines most respected professionals. Each was asked to conduct an independent validation of the candidate principle in terms of the given validation model. Results of this survey are tabulated and analyzed. While no overwhelming consensus as to the candidate principles validity was obtained, this effort was able to refine and redefine the candidate principles to the extent they should be much more highly susceptible to validation. The writer concludes that principle validation is much closer to realization.