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This chapter provides an overview of the key management conclusions that can be derived from this book. It presents the key directions which will be pursued further regarding management practices and strategies to measure and manage IO to improve business performance in the future.

This chapter empirically shows the existence of IO as a new comprehensive measure of effective information use. It then establishes a direct causal link between higher IO and higher business performance. It notes that the integrated IO perspective demonstrates how senior managers perceive the three information capabilities contribute to a comprehensive measure of effective information use in their companies. It frames this discussion as an answer to an ongoing controversy over the IT productivity paradox, and the elusive connection between IT investments and practices and improvements in business performance.

This chapter examines the use of IO as a new metric to measure effective information use across companies and industries, and within the business units of global companies. It evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the three schools of management thinking and practice related to business performance metrics. It notes that none of the schools has provided an integrated theory and empirical validation of a metric directly linking information use in companies to business performance. It presents the Information Orientation Dashboard as a new diagnostic tool for evaluating IO inside and across companies over time. It adds that there is an initial assessment of the types of management strategies, and actions that can be used to improve the behaviours and capabilities associated with the three information capabilities of IO within companies.

This chapter explores how companies become more mature in their information usage effectiveness. Based on the theoretical underpinnings of each information capability, and the cross-capability interaction effects of the ‘spiral of information effectiveness’, it develops the prescriptive paths that a company must follow as it becomes more IO mature. It theorises and tests the causal path between dimensions of each information capability using statistical path analysis. It examines the causal interaction effects across information capabilities. It explains that the paths within and between the three information capabilities of IO are discussed based on the theoretical arguments as well as five key characteristics of effective information use that surface in the interpretation of results. It notes that the findings indicate that in more mature IO cultures, the synergy across capabilities is greater. It adds that people are prepared to use IT in new ways to manage information support of decision making.

This chapter defines the concepts and practices underlying the three key dimensions of future industry leadership in competing with information: competitive, customer, and operational information. It explains how IO is associated with these three dimensions of future industry leadership in competing with information, and how IO predicts senior manager expectations of future industry leadership with information.

In line with how our society is undergoing a transition towards a more information and knowledged-based society, questions have been raised regarding the contributions of investing on information and communication technology (ICT) for the economy. In identifying policy issues that are connected with such questions, it is important first to understand the implications of ICT developments and diffusion, and how these may be experienced differently across several regions and sectors. This chapter attempts to determine appropriate data to conduct an empirical analysis specifically for Korea through examining ICT-related data on the labour force, capital stock, and investments during the period between 1980 and 1995. Here, the chapter makes use of the Korean Standard Industrial Classification (KSIC) and the Korean input/output (IO) table for ICT investment and capital stock data.

This chapter presents profiles on the delegation and pooling of authority in eleven multi-regional or global international organizations (IOs). Each profile explains how the coding scheme is applied to the IO by charting a path from the primary and secondary evidence to scoring judgments. They tell the reader how the assembly, executive, secretariat, consultative body, and dispute settlement of each IO are composed, what decisions each body makes, and how they make decisions. The profiles chart these developments annually since 1950. The authors indicate four kinds of uncertainty in superscript: α‎ for thin information; β‎ for a case that falls between the intervals on a dimension; γ‎ for disagreement among sources; δ‎ for inconsistency between written rules in the IO. Each profile is followed by tables summarizing the authors’ observations. Data and codebooks for the Measure of International Authority (MIA) are available on the authors’ websites.

This chapter assesses the explicit target audiences of Taliban narratives and associated stories. These targets include – Local populations that are neutral/undecided toward the Taliban cause (Figure 3.20), local supports and sympathizers (Figure 3.2), local opposition (Figure 3.3), neighboring populations (Figure 3.4), and international population (Figure 3.5). The chapter introduces means of delivery for each of the audiences suggested and examines their respective messages’ strengths and weaknesses.

Traditionally Information Operations (IO) suffers from a lack of available metrics by which planners can assess their environment and measure the effectiveness of their programs. Unit commanders, who are tasked with allocating scarce resources, are often skeptical of information operations as whole due to these deficiencies. The IO assessment tool has a variety of uses that improves the available metrics; gives a commander a quantifiable view of where the population might be in terms of a broad domain, provides clues to possible non- kinetic tactical options to support the overall strategy of improving popular belief in the legitimacy of the host government, provides constant variations in why specific tribes, villages, or districts may have different perception of conditions, provides commanders with data on how the conditions have changed over time. In sum, the IO assessment tool can provide a unit commander a quantifiable view of the effect of their operations.

This chapter first considers the means, from election to selection to nomination, by which IO leaders are (s)elected and the consequences of those methods. It is followed by a discussion on the qualities regarded as necessary for successful tenure, stressing the need for trust, expertise, and legitimacy. It then analyses the three roles that the leaders of IOs, to a greater or lesser extent, must play. They are diplomats dealing with state leaders and talking in international forums. They are politicians negotiating with the state representatives on a daily basis. They are managers heading an often large secretariat. How they balance these roles often determines their capacity to shape the outcomes of their organization.

This volume compares how the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) have responded to sustainable development norms espoused by transnational environmental advocacy network (TEANs). It examines the process and extent of environmental change within three institutions of the WBG and proposes a holistic and a dynamic account of international organisation (IO) change that recognises the mutual constitution of IOs and international norms promoted by non-state actors. This chapter argues that while lending patterns fluctuate, how the WBG promotes and practises development depends upon what they understand ‘development’ to mean.

This chapter provides an overview of the debates over causes of international organisation (IO) change in relation to constructivist and rationalist accounts. It argues that a constructivist account establishes a more comprehensive and dynamic analysis of IO and World Bank Group (WBG) change by examining how international norms shape IOs through interactions between IOs, states and non-state actors. This chapter also outlines the concept of transnational environmental advocacy networks (TEANs) and discusses the key concepts of socialisation and avenues of socialisation.

Chapter 5 explains change in an IO’s policy portfolio. The model is in two steps. In a first step, the extent to which an IO is grounded on an incomplete contract determines its responsiveness to exogenous shocks. Second and causally prior to this, contractual incompleteness is feasible only when the participants share norms that can allay fears of exploitation. Around three-quarters of the IOs in our sample exhibit change in their policy portfolios over the past sixty years, yet their trajectories vary widely. A model that specifies an IO’s contractual basis and its prior normative conditions explains more than half of the variance in the policy portfolio over time.

Chapter 6 explains change in pooling and delegating authority to an IO. An IO’s authority is responsive to two pressures, one functional and one social. Functional pressures stem from the need to make decision making tractable under an expanding policy portfolio. This induces an IO’s member states to pool authority in majoritarian decision making and to delegate agenda setting to independent agents who can develop proposals and mediate disputes. Socio-political pressures arise from nationalist resistance to the loss of national self-rule. Politicization can constrain IO authority even in the presence of intense functional pressures. A two-stage model confirms the hypothesis that functional pressures are socially conditioned.

Chapter 4 explains the basic set-up of an IO—its membership, contract, and policy portfolio. It conceives the basic set-up as resulting from the tension between the functional benefits of providing public goods at an international scale and the preference of exclusive communities for self-rule. The theory expects international organization to be bimodal. General purpose IOs build on transnational community to contract cooperation as an open-ended venture among peoples. Task-specific IOs contract cooperation narrowly so that states, no matter how diverse, can come together to problem-solve in a targeted way. General purpose and task-specific IOs relate to their constituencies differently, and this shapes the scale of their membership, their openness to membership growth, and the breadth and dynamism of their policy portfolios.

Why do states sacrifice the national veto in international organizations? A large membership IO can exploit economies of scale and allow states to cooperate over problems that would otherwise confront them individually. However, cooperation among a large number of states brings the danger of decisional blockage. The most plausible explanation for why member states pool authority in international organizations appears to be the simplest: they do so in response to the number of potential veto players in the organization. This argument is assessed in a cross-sectional analysis for seventy-six international organizations using a measure of pooling that distinguishes the mode, bindingness, and substantive area of decision making.