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Surging global natural disasters provide incentive for risk-reducing policies and strategies. In this light, the African Union (AU) engaged a multi-stakeholder policy formulation process between 2002 and 2006, to develop a continent-wide disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategy. Drawing from secondary data, this chapter assesses the process and applies qualitative analysis instruments to critically assess the AU’s disaster policy. Linkages to the 2005 international Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) are also highlighted. The analysis reveals that Africa’s policy formulation process was belated for over a decade, with respect to international expectations. The formulation process was however largely African owned and led, culminating in a strategy document that reflected African contextual reality at the time, and aligned well with HFA fundamental goals. The applied multi-stakeholder approach enhanced a spirit of participation across levels and was central to the largely successful policy formulation process. However, targeted policy outcomes were not explicit, and poorly formulated indicators marred short- and long-term policy evaluation. Based on these results, we conclude that the African-wide DRR policy formulation processes were belated but participatory, systematic and very successful. Belated policy formulation reflects an initial inertia on the African continent, justified by past negative policy experiences and the desire to succeed. A replication of this policy formulation approach in Africa is recommended, albeit exercising more caution on policy timing, the elaboration of better monitoring and evaluation instruments and criteria. Participation should further embrace modern, risk-free (anti-COVID-19-friendly) information and communication technologies.

Leadership development is a significant issue in public libraries and library administrators debate, among other topics, how to achieve it for the middle-level manager. At the present time, library organizations use leadership and management workshops, seminars, and institutes to assist with managers’ organizational learning processes. Current literature indicates that additional strategies such as career planning, mentoring, networking, acquiring adequate qualifications and experience, professional involvement, and continuing education are used not only to facilitate middle-level managers’ career development, but also to help organizations fill the leadership gaps within their ranks.

The World Bank's Education Strategy 2020 is the latest in a line of education-related strategies focused on supporting economic development in countries worldwide through systematic and targeted educational reform. Yet, the Bank has many critics and a history of developing educational policies that do as much to create inequality in education as to develop it. This chapter introduces the theme of the volume by focusing on the link between the World Bank's education strategy development and poverty reduction. The key emphasis of this volume is the development of the Bank's Education Strategy 2020 and how it is shaped by empirical evidence, contextualized by national and regional variations in education and the economy, and the legacy of World Bank educational involvement. This introductory chapter concludes by summarizing the ways in which each of the volume's chapters contribute to this theme, and suggests how the debates related to the Bank's education strategies and policies can move forward and contribute to educational improvement, economic development, and poverty reduction worldwide.

Our study investigates the relationships between risk management systems (RMS), strategy and organizational performance. The existing research has extensively studied the effect of strategy on organizational performance. There is also a growing body of literature suggesting that RMS positively influence the achievement of organizational objectives. However, there are only a few conceptual papers (and no empirical evidence) on the relationship between strategy and RMS. We investigate whether different strategy types (defender, analyzer, prospector, and reactor) induce different levels of RMS development and, hence, affect performance indirectly, as well as directly. We use regression analysis and survey data to test the proposed relationships. Our results confirm the direct effects of strategy type and RMS development on performance. We confirm that prospectors perform better than defenders, analyzers, and reactors across five measures of performance (profitability, sales growth, market share, new product development, and customer satisfaction). We also find that companies with more developed RMS perform better in terms of non-financial performance (measured by new product development). Contrary to the prevailing evidence, we do not find significant results for financial performance. Moreover, our findings show that there is no mediating effect of RMS development in the relationship between strategy type and performance. This implies that RMS and strategy act as independent variables, each individually affecting organizational performance.

The essential investments in new product development (NPD) made by industrial companies entail effective management of NPD activities. In this context, performance measurement is one of the means that can be employed in the pursuit of effectiveness.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine what small business strategic management and long-term planning involves as practised by successful growth-oriented small businesses. The aim is to provide insight into the strategic learning, control and development processes, including indicative detail of the underpinning day-to-day practices and actions that make up those processes. Key focus is the overall strategic control activity of more progressive owner managers and their use of an idiosyncratic mentally held ‘strategic planning and thinking framework’ that guides and informs strategic decision-making, strategic adjustment to existing markets, products and processes activities and long-term strategic direction.

The research approach is underpinned and informed by personal construct theory which gives emphasis to the highly complex nature of the task of small business strategic control and highlights the need for a creative and innovative research methodology to facilitate close and detailed investigation of the phenomenon. To this end, a multidisciplinary case study research methodology was developed by the authors to underpin examination of strategic development and planning within micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses.

The chapter enhances understanding of small business strategic management practice in growth-achieving micro and small enterprises. The findings of this research, whilst demonstrating the key role of entrepreneurial learning in small firm strategic control of the uncertain external environment, also provides a multidimensional lens through which to dissect and better understand the small firm strategy development process – drawing upon and integrating grains of truth from the differing schools of management thought embedded in the literature.

The findings of this study also facilitate the addressing of the ‘black box’ of hazy insight within the literature which fails to reveal micro-level fine detail understanding of the managerial and organisational actions and activities that make up strategy process. The authors commence provision of such black box insight within this chapter – this as lead-through to the follow-on chapter which affords specific attention to enhancing understanding of the micro-level fine detail minutia of managerial, organisational and work activities that make up strategy process within small businesses.

The research is of a comparative dimension focussing on small business development within the developed economy context of the UK, the emerging economy contexts of Malaysia and Ghana and the transitional economy contexts of Russia. Thus, time and resource limitations bound the studies.

This chapter discusses the development of tourism in peripheral areas, prompted by the “National Strategy for Inner Areas” developed by the Italian National Government. The strategy, backed by policymakers, business owners, local communities, and environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), aims to stop demographic decline by boosting sustainable tourism practices. A case study of Valle D'aosta examines the problems and their solution in the implementation of the strategy. It discusses how to make strategy implementation less complex and whether sustainable tourism is possible in such areas – whether it is an oxymoron, or whether it is a utopia that is worth pursuing.