Foundations for a Game Theoretic Framework for Agile Acquisition

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.22594/dau.18-812.26.03.This article investigates the concept of developing a game theoretic framework that is based on the application of buyer and seller utility functions to support the bidding process in government acquisition. The results of a literature survey of utility function approaches, with potential to provide a suitable foundation to a game theory framework for acquisition, are presented. The utility function methods found most promising were further adapted and tested: the Best Worst method, the Multi Swing Method, and Functional Dependency for Network Analysis. To test the scalability of the approach, the Best Worst method is applied to a larger problem to show the extensibility on a government relevant scale. The future application of these utility models is in support of a game theory framework that is envisioned to move bidding contractors closer to the government’s preferred negotiation point and expedite the decision making process in government acquisition during competitive source selection