Globalization and U. S. Maritime Divergence; an Explanatory Case Study

This qualitative multi-case study is an exploration into decisions that influenced outsourcing United States Merchant Marine ship registration and is explanatory in nature. This industry experienced a significant decline in U.S. registered ships since World War II resulting in lost tax revenues for the government and lost jobs. This study focuses on the problem of outsourcing ship registration and is important for the reason that the Merchant Marine controls waterborne commerce during peacetime and supplements the Navy during wartime. The study is first a necessity due to tax and job loss and secondly, in order to examine the strategic maritime industry justification that the Merchant Marine is an elemental asset for national security. The researcher collect’s data from six themes, Congressional Policies, U. N. Policies, Maritime Commerce Deregulation, Globalization, Outsourcing, and interviews with three maritime experts. The significance of the interviews centered around five questions on revitalizing the Merchant Marines. The data is categorized into themes and placed in a 4C data base for content analysis that compares and contrasts key words for patterns. The purpose of this qualitative multi-case study is to explore outsourcing ship registration and explain how it relates to globalization of the maritime industry. The research questions meet the criteria of an explanatory multi-case study of “how” and “why” considerations for addressing the problem statement. The conceptual framework represents the researcher’s blueprint (plan) seen through the lens of power, politics and organizational function and behavior, a power and politics organizational and contingency theory that involves the fields of political science, economics, and history. Findings from this explanatory multi-case study explain Congress as indecisive in its foreign trade policy