Search Results

This chapter describes the challenge of strategic change, whether internally or externally driven. In particular, a meta-framework that identifies three specific types of knowledge necessary for leading the process of intelligent strategic adaptation: a theory of organizational performance, a theory of change, and a theory of intervention, is reported. The basic types of skills and knowledge that leaders need if they are to be effective agents of strategic change are also examined. The Dashman Company is used as a case study that shows the three generic categories of skill and knowledge.

Having considered the nature and effectiveness of network adaptation under Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, this final chapter reconnects these important empirical and comparative insights with the wider conceptual debate about the impact of European Union (EU) membership at the national level. It employs the innovative strategic-projection model of Europeanisation to examine the extent to which strategic adaptation in the UK and Ireland can be attributed to wider domestic reform processes or to developments at the EU level. In other words, do the changes outlined in this study simply reflect the political decisions and distinctive leadership styles of Blair and Ahern (agency) or can they be attributed, at least in part, to the shared, longer-term impact of European integration (structure). It considers five potential independent variables: national change agents, domestic administrative opportunity structures, domestic political opportunity structures, technological change, and European integration. In order to disaggregate the potential EU effect further, the section on European integration is broken down into the four modes of Europeanisation: effective obligation, strategic adaptation, intergovernmental learning, and administrative optimisation.

This chapter addresses the conceptual challenge posed by Europeanisation by reflecting on the utility of the existing goodness-of-fit model for exploring domestic adaptation aimed at uploading national policy preferences onto the European Union (EU) arena. It argues that the goodness-of-fit model is ill-suited to conceptualising strategic adaptation to EU membership: that is, the reform of national policy-making processes for the purpose of enhancing the coordination and projection of national EU policy. As an alternative to the conventional goodness-of-fit model, the chapter proposes an innovative strategic-projection model that sought to delineate between four modes of Europeanisation: the effective obligation of membership, differential empowerment and strategic adaptation within government, administrative transfer through intergovernmental learning, and the desire to maximise the compatibility of domestic and EU structures.

This chapter examines the selective correspondence between external pressures—the call for a New International Economic Order in the 1970s–1980s and neoliberalism in the 1990s–2000s—and World Health Organization (WHO) policies and programs in the respective periods. Drawing on insights from organizational sociology, the chapter describes an approach to international organizations that conceptualizes international bureaucracies as purposive actors who function within limits of external constraints. It also considers the inevitable tension between the dependence of international bureaucracies on member states and their tendency to develop independent material and ideational goals, along with the types of strategic responses available to international bureaucracies to satisfy exogenous pressures while protecting some of their goals. Finally, it assesses the implications of the WHO experience for our understanding of organizational change as well as the conditions under which an international organization is likely to engage in strategic adaptation.

This chapter develops the first systematic theory—the informational theory of strategic adjustment—to explain why military interventions can be crucibles of grand strategy. It argues that, by prosecuting a military intervention, states glean rich and rare information about adversaries’ capabilities and intentions, as well as their own military power and cost tolerance. The uniquely costly nature of warfighting renders this data particularly credible. Amidst background conditions of intense interstate competition and pervasive uncertainty, states face strong incentives to reassess their grand strategies in light of this new information. This process of grand strategic updating begins with a reassessment of the strategic assumptions directly tested on the battlefield, but it doesn’t end there. Indeed, the grand strategic effects of military interventions are far-reaching because information conveyed via warfighting is widely extrapolated to related strategic assessments.

More than 75 years after the end of World War II, military interventions—rather than major wars—have emerged as a defining feature of contemporary geopolitics. Yet, for all the fierce policy debates over interventions and their lessons, scholars have largely ignored the systematic linkages between these smaller-scale wars and transformations in the grand strategies of states that prosecute them. This book develops a new theory—the informational theory of strategic adjustment—to explain why military interventions can be crucibles of grand strategy. It argues that, by prosecuting a military intervention, states glean rich and rare information about adversaries’ capabilities and intentions, as well as their own military power and cost tolerance. The uniquely costly nature of warfighting renders this data particularly credible. Amidst background conditions of intense interstate competition and pervasive uncertainty, states face strong incentives to reassess their grand strategies in light of this new information. This process of grand strategic updating begins with a reassessment of the strategic assumptions directly tested on the battlefield, but it doesn’t end there. Indeed, the grand strategic effects of military interventions are far-reaching because information conveyed via warfighting is widely extrapolated to related strategic assessments. This book demonstrates the plausibility of the informational theory of strategic adjustment in three historically detailed case studies that trace the evolution of American grand strategy over the course of the Cold War and into the early post–Cold War era: the Korean, Vietnam, and First Gulf Wars.

This chapter summarizes the main findings and conclusions of the book, discusses the cross-national generalizability of the informational theory of strategy adjustment, considers directions for future research, and reflects on the implications of this book for American foreign policy in the 2020s.

This chapter examines the World Health Organization's (WHO) strategic response to the call for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) and how it was able to contribute to the new international order in the field of public health. More specifically, it considers the discrepancy between the NIEO and WHO policies and how this discrepancy was created through the maneuvering of the WHO leadership and staff rather than negotiations between North and South. It shows how strategic adaptation enabled the WHO to satisfy the expectations of developing countries while safeguarding the organization's material and ideational goals. It also explains how, by reinterpreting the meaning of the principles of socioeconomic development, equity, and self-reliance, the WHO secretariat was able to present its central agenda—Health for All by the Year 2000 through promotion of primary health care—as loyally following the logic of the NIEO, without compromising the organization's commitment to its constitution and to new perceptions in public health knowledge.

This chapter introduces the puzzle of the military endurance and combat effectiveness of ISIS/IS, though outnumbered and outgunned by substantially stronger state and nonstate militaries. Beginning with the academic study of insurgency dating back to Lawrence, Mao, Templar, Lansdale, Guevara, Galula, Hoffman and more recent scholars; this book explores traditional factors associated with insurgency success, such as the support of an external power, popular support from the disaffected population, sanctuary, geography or topography, regime type, or other factors, which might, individually or in combination, be explanatory of ISIS/IS endurance and expansion. Most of those factors are found not to be especially significant, so the chapter focuses on the military strategies and tactics employed by ISIS/IS and central to its successes. The chapter then argues that the military tactics employed by ISIS/IS in the four countries and elsewhere better explain their expansion and endurance. The chapter concludes by outlining a framework of analysis explaining ISIS/IS combat effectiveness in the four countries and beyond.

This chapter examines how the World Health Organization (WHO), under the leadership of Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland, strategically adapted to the “new policy environment” that was created by the neoliberal reforms in the health sector. In the late 1990s, the WHO underwent programmatic and organizational changes in an attempt to pacify the exogenous forces and to strategically adapt to the logic of neoliberalism. The central component of the WHO leadership's strategic adaptation to the new environment was the replacement of a social logic with economic logic as the foundation for the organization's decisions and policies. This chapter shows how WHO officials justified investment in health by emphasizing the importance of health for economic development rather than as a fundamental part of a nation's social development, while also adopting cost-effective calculations to introduce the concept of the “new universalism,” which rejected primary health care and rigid market-oriented approaches while maintaining the WHO's “central task” of alleviating poverty by improving health.

This chapter provides an overview of the birth and the military build-up of ISIS/IS in Syria, as of 9 April 2013. It aims to explain how ISIS/IS was able to gradually develop their combat capacities and the resulting combat and military effectiveness in Syria. The chapter then focuses on describing and analysing the battlefronts of Raqqa Governorate between 2013 and 2019. Raqqa City, the governorate’s provincial capital, was the first “capital” of the organisation. Arguably, ISIS/IS had shown its maximum combat capacities in Syria during its occupation of the governorate and in defence of its “capital.” The chapter is partly based on interviews with Syrian rebels and soldiers who fought against IS in eight Syrian governorates: Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Damascus, and Rif Dimashq. It is also based on documents, audio-visual and photographic releases produced by ISIS/IS in Syria. The chapter also relies on official documents released by the US government, Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), and other open-source materials. The chapter is composed of five sections. It overviews the military build-up of ISIS/IS in Syria since its establishment in April 2013. It then outlines the details of the battlefronts of Raqqa Governorates within specific timeframes. It analyses how IS fight in Syria, using data and observations from the Raqqa battlefronts as well as others, such as Deir Ezzor and Aleppo Governorates. Finally, it reflects on the future of IS insurgency in Syria after losing Raqqa and other territories and shifting back to mainly guerrilla and terrorism tactics.