Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2018

Document Type

Dissertation - NSU Access Only

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice

Advisor

Karen Bowser

Committee Member

Silvia Orta

Committee Member

Kimberly Durham

Keywords

Homeland Security, Border Patrol, requirements management, knowledge management, interdisciplinary

Abstract

The U.S. Border Patrol is challenged persistently by the need to develop, define, and document the operational requirements for border security in a geographically diverse, multivariate environment covering nearly 7,000 miles of land border and 2,000 miles of coastal waters. Although the goal of documenting operational requirements is to understand the capabilities needed by users and other stakeholders for a specific system in a defined environment, the nature of requirements and the process of engineering them is abstract and ambiguous.

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the perceptions, attitudes, and lived experiences of Border Patrol Agents working for the U.S. Border Patrol about how they, without instruction or training, developed a system of developing and managing operational requirements to provide decision support for resource deployments and major acquisitions. A qualitative case study was implemented to explore how agents selforganized, self-directed, and self-initiated to learn the theories and principles of strategic planning, systems engineering, and program management, applied to requirements management, that they developed and implemented in the absence of an established, validated, and institutionalized requirements management process.

The perceptions, attitudes, and lived experiences of eight Border Patrol Agents were explored by implementing a semi-structured, open-ended interview process and digitally recording the results. Results were transcribed and themes developed through opencoding of qualitative data. Multi-dimensional and multi-variate analysis facilitated crystallization through inductive reasoning to facilitate the development of meaning from a systems view. The conclusions and generalizations represent a wireframe of knowledge management from an interdisciplinary construct of theories.

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Dissertation of Distinction