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The a priori identification and development of army personnel competencies are necessary to enable effective and efficient responses to rapidly changing climate conditions. Accordingly, this study aims to identify the performance requirements of a military flood responder and the competencies (knowledge, skills and abilities) required to perform it.

Using an abductive approach, the authors conducted both secondary and primary research to generate a validated framework of performance criteria and competencies for army personnel responding to floods. This literature review integrated both the peer-reviewed academic literature and public sector grey literature. Using the critical incident technique, the authors then conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) who had previously been tasked with flood response operations. Participants were asked about the tasks required while conducting flood response operations. Interview transcripts were then content analysed to identify themes regarding those tasks, and the competencies needed to perform those tasks were then extracted and contrasted with the literature review findings. Inter-rater reliability for the analysis was established via iterative discussion between the two co-authors.

The primary data reinforced and expanded the list of performance expectations that the authors deductively identified from the integrated literature review, adding granularity to each. It also identified competencies (including both hard and soft skills) and highlighted previously neglected contextual antecedents of military flood response effectiveness.

though knowledge saturation was achieved from the 15 interviews conducted, further research with larger samples could more deeply ground the evidence discovered in this study. Nevertheless, the competencies identified in this paper could serve as a starting guide to staffing and/or training interventions targeted at improving these competencies for personnel responding to flood scenarios.

The theoretical findings also have immediate practical relevance to training for flood response operations. In particular, the subtle challenges in competency crossover from military operations to flood response operations may facilitate not only more efficient, targeted training (that could improve the effectiveness of army personnel involved in humanitarian roles), but could be applied to the selection of army personnel as well. This study may also help provincial/municipal operators and emergency planners by better communicating the strengths and limitations of army personnel in addressing civilian military cooperation for humanitarian operations. Thus, the findings of this research study represent an important first step in prompting attention to the strategic human resource planning studies required to make all responders more efficient and effective in their respective division of labour within the humanitarian domain.

Peering a little beyond these research findings, human-induced climate change is expected to continue increasing the frequency of such events (IPCC, 2021), and a timely, national force is likely to be increasingly required for Canadians impacted by major disasters stemming from natural hazards when local resources become overwhelmed. Yet, there is some concern from the CAF that increasing responsiveness to disaster operations will affect their military readiness (Leuprecht and Kasurak, 2020). One can indeed envision a paradox whereby the CAF is both a “force of last resort” while increasingly becoming a “first choice for domestic disaster and emergency assistance”. The practical implications from this research also suggest that military personnel, while fully capable of successfully conducting flood response operations, may become overburdened and less able to adopt yet greater capacity and training for other additional humanitarian work. Nevertheless, the competencies highlighted by participants can help inform the next flood response operation in Canada.

Most literature in the field of emergency response focuses on cooperation between civilian and military resources and other strategic-level themes. The findings address critical granularity missing at the operational and tactical levels of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief research. The authors also draw implications beyond the military context, including for local/regional governmental players (operators and emergency planners) as well as for volunteers in flood response roles.

Evidence shows that African countries are confronted with high levels of income inequality. Therefore, it is relevant to approach and analyze the factors contributing to these severe inequality cases. This paper addresses the issue by focusing on the role of financial regulation and military spending.

We used a sample of 30 African countries and a recent period (2009–2020), employing various instrumental variable estimation techniques to control for endogeneity.

The results confirm that economic growth aggravates income inequality due to high corruption and political instability. Results confirm that the increase in military spending increases inequality and that financial regulation weakens financial inclusion and also increases income inequality.

The study shows the need for greater control of corruption and the promotion of political stability so that economic growth and financial inclusion can effectively reduce income inequality, as well as the need for a better balance in the drafting of financial regulations and the preparation of military expenditure to safeguard other policy objectives.

The present study contributes to scarce financial, economic, and social literature considering the role of financial regulation and military spending in the persistence of income inequality in African countries. Previous studies disregarded this fact.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-04-2023-0287

This chapter focuses on the US Civil War of 1861–1864, the application of the laws of war to a civil war, and gives great attention to US Army General Order 100 (aka The Lieber Code), the first set of laws to direct and constrain the behavior of troops in the field.

This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of the laws of war up to the mid-1800s CE. It discusses the interconnection between social and historical forces, armies, and the laws that govern them.

This chapter examines the explosion in International Humanitarian Law between the US Civil War and World War I. The primary foci are the Hague Conventions on land warfare and the Geneva Conventions for the sick and wounded. This body of treaties is the foundation of IHL and the modern laws of war. Most of central issues in the international laws of war emerge in this period.

Publicly available datasets in the USA present data suppression issues that limit the ability to investigate entrepreneurial subgroups like military veterans, which account for about one in ten entrepreneurs in the USA. Thus, despite public desire to support veteran entrepreneurs (“vetrepreneurs”), there is a limited descriptive understanding on the relationship between veteran business owner demographics, such as gender and race, and their business survival and growth. We address this limited understanding in this article by providing descriptive evidence on veteran-owned business survival and growth, emphasizing variation across race and gender.

We use limited-access longitudinal microdata to provide descriptive evidence on the survival and growth of veteran-owned firms across race and gender.

Findings indicate statistically significant variation across demographic subgroups’ business survival and employment growth. For example, veteran-owned firms have high women ownership rates, greater employment, revenues and payrolls, but also lower employment and revenue growth. More generally we provide descriptive evidence that military experience or the military community help women overcome the gender gap in small business survival.

This type of descriptive research is common among entrepreneurial researchers, however, peer-reviewed research specific to US veterans is very limited. These descriptive results are useful for policymakers and for spurring future policy research related to veteran entrepreneurs.

The study aims to assess military procurement strategy in NATO countries labelled as emerging markets (Czechia, Slovakia and Lithuania) and capitalist Norway, which vary in national culture as indicated by the Hofstede Culture Compass.

This comparative case study analyses the procurement of a simple, mass-produced, off-the-shelf military product (FN Herstal MINIMI gun) in four small but very economically free countries from 2008 to 2023. The study answers the research question of how the unit price of MINIMI guns varies across post-communist and historical NATO countries distinguished by the variables operationalising national culture.

The general disability of the government to control corruption deviates the strategy of military procurement in post-communist defence institutions from an effective strategy of liberal capitalism, minimising the unit price and risks (Norway), to an odd strategy maximising the unit price and risks by preferring middlemen as agent of hidden agenda (Czechia).

Some defence institutions in post-communist countries may be burdened by legislature capture, and detailed research is needed to determine this.

The authors argue that national culture may contribute to significant goal displacement in the procurement strategy adopted by the government in an economically liberal state.

Without perfecting the control of corruption in post-communist defence institutions, the NATO burden-sharing debate on 2% of GDP will remain controversial.

With variables characterising national culture and the government’s ability to control corruption, the study elucidates a slow pace of convergence of post-communist countries to NATÓs values and procedures.

“Genderwashing is an organizational tool that presents the myth of gender equality in organizations through discourse and text” (Fox-Kirk et al., 2020, p. 586). Existing literature focuses upon business and economy, e.g., considering how representations of equality are used to enhance profit. The contribution of this chapter is to show how two processes – gender washing and militarization – might function in support of each other. To do this, I firstly argue that the concept of genderwashing should be broadened to consider spaces outside of business and economy. I show how sex, gender and feminism are employed in ways that position martial organizations (such as militaries and arms manufacturers) as socially progressive, “washing” their reputation for militarized violence. Secondly, analyses must consider how the impact of genderwashing goes beyond individual organizations. Martial organizations marginalize their female staff, but I argue that we must look further: in a context in which people can be killed, we must consider what broader harms genderwashing visits upon civilian populations also.