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The purpose of this paper is to circumscribe the various philosophical connections between the classical and the modern notion of corruption from Enlightenment to post-modernity.

The paper analyzed to what extent the classical notion of corruption (Plato, Aristotle and Cicero) still influenced the way philosophers perceived the phenomenon of corruption during the Enlightenment (1625-1832), the transition period (1833-1900) and the post-modernity (1901 onward). Taking those historical periods as reference points, the author will see how literature about historical, social and political conditioning factors of corruption could convey the presence/absence of the classical or the modern notion of corruption.

The paper finds that the classical notion of corruption implies the degeneration of human relationships (Plato and Hegel), the degeneration of the body-and-mind unity (Aristotle, Pascal and Thomas Mann) or the degeneration of collective morality (Cicero, Locke, Rousseau, Hume and Kant). The modern notion of corruption as bribery was mainly introduced by Adam Smith. Nietzsche (and Musil) looked at corruption as degeneration of the will-to-power. The classical notion of corruption put the emphasis on the effects rather than on the cause itself (effects-based thinking). The modern notion of corruption as bribery insists on the cause rather than on the effects (cause-based thinking).

In this paper, the author has taken into account the main representatives of the three historical periods. Future research could also analyze the works of other philosophers and novelists to see to what extent their philosophical and literary works are unveiling the classical or the modern notion of corruption.

The paper presents a philosophical and historical perspective about corruption. It sheds light on the way philosophers (and sometimes novelists) deal with the issue of corruption, whether it is from an effects-based or from a cause-based perspective.

This paper presents an actor-based conceptualization of the increasing oscillatory pattern of prison overcrowding in Colombia. The research proposes a dynamic hypothesis that explains that unintended behavioural pattern as a result of delayed balance feedback loops shaped by decision-making processes of actors that intend to control crime. This system matches a well-known systemic archetype that explains those persistent oscillations. The paper also introduces a simulation model for testing that dynamic hypothesis and for delivering concrete courses of action. This work illustrates the relevance for policymakers to understand the dynamic complexity of social systems as the outcome of the agency of actors who take action to defend their own interests. Such actions ultimately form a complex web of interactions that drive the performance of such systems with unintended consequences. In particular, the construction of explicit models provides better chances of devising policies that consider the system-level implications of those interactions.

This work uses system dynamics modelling. First, the paper presents a conceptual model anchored in operational thinking, which refers to the identification of actors and decisions, and the manner in which those decisions ultimately build the respective social system in which the oscillatory pattern emerges. Second, it identifies key feedback structures that result from those chains of decisions. Finally, the paper introduces a simulation model for suggesting policy implications for decisionmakers.

The increasing oscillatory pattern that prison overcrowding in Colombia has displayed over the last 20 years is the outcome of a wide variety of laws that increase sanctions on criminal conducts, a phenomenon known as “legislative inflation”. Such reactions against crime are propelled and sustained by society and policymakers as the result of static and linear thinking that simply delivers “more punishment” of crime – harsher legislation and longer prison terms – which ultimately boosts long-term prison overcrowding and further cycles of crime control and overcrowding. Such actions create permanent negative feedback loops that involve various material and information delays, which – coupled with the reinforcing feedback loops – explain the previously mentioned behavioural pattern. Through a system dynamics simulation model, this paper tests and explains the proposed dynamic hypothesis and shows how policymakers can enhance and develop their dynamic understanding to explore and design effective policies intended to tackle prison overcrowding.

This paper presents a practical and concrete case that bridges the fields of criminal policy and prison management through systems thinking. It uses the case of prison overcrowding in Colombia to demonstrate the relevance of incorporating systemic thinking into the cognitive portfolio of policymakers if they aspire to improve complex systems.

Criminal policy and prison management are different fields that typically belong to different traditions (law and criminal psychology for the former, public administration for the latter). The work presented here bridges those perspectives under a single engineering and systemic perspective that answers questions in both fields and serves as a unifying framework for designing more coherent criminal policies that meet the practical requirements and restrictions that prison management implies.

This study aims to empirically analyze the significance of various knowledge management (KM) elements to the environment in a military organization and establish the efficacy of performance indicators of civil organizations for a military organization.

The research methodology includes the development of a research model based on a comprehensive literature review. A sample of 454 Indian Air Force Veterans was obtained and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis using statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) analysis of moment structures (AMOS) was conducted to test the hypotheses. The study first employed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for redefining the theoretical constructs and then confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the hypotheses.

The study empirically establishes the significance of various KM elements on the knowledge environment that creates, stores, transfers and applies knowledge to achieve military objectives. Findings indicate the complexity of KM in a military setup while applying the performance measures used in the civil organization.

The study expects to expand the scope of the KM literature to the militaries of developing countries and provide a methodology to the leaders and practitioners in the military organizations, and to study the available KM practices, models and tools in the civil world.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present research is one of the first to generate empirical insights into a knowledge environment in military organizations and test its relation with parameters used in civil organizations. The paper would significantly contribute to the underexplored area of KM in military organizations and infuse a theoretical rigor into the KM literature.

The day‐to‐day stuff of regulatory compliance is far more complex, less mechanistic and literal than it might seem. Principles, rules, guidance, relations with regulators are all crucial as well as the internal management systems adopted by the firm to disseminate standards and procure compliance, and perhaps the most important factor of all is the compliance culture or even subcultures within the regulated firm itself. An unravelling of some of the so‐called ‘regulatory scandals’ that have taken place under the existing regime for the regulation of investment business shows that the problems that have arisen are not as a result of rules themselves being inherently ‘wrong’ in substance (in the sense of the type or level of obligation they impose) but are as a result of the rules not working and not therefore, having their desired effect.

The aim of this paper is to identify a way by which the concepts of effects‐based operations (EBO), an approach to problem solving derived from military thought, might be applied usefully to a law enforcement problem, namely methamphetamine in New Zealand.

The study involved analysis of relevant literature in the fields of EBO and systems thinking to identify the core principles for the modelling stage, followed by a series of semi‐structured discussions with subject matter experts to populate the model with relevant and accurate data.

The methamphetamine ecosystem in New Zealand can be modelled using a system‐of‐systems approach, which is the first stage in a broader EBO approach. The model is complex, involves a broad range of processes, actors, and workflows, and can be constantly enhanced as new information comes to light. Follow‐up stages are required to identify potential targeting opportunities, and will be the subject of later articles.

This study is the first, or one of the first, to attempt to use the concept of EBO to attack police problems. It is thus highly original, and could be extremely useful to other analysts seeking new ways to conceptualise problems.

The European Commission’s competence to vet mergers at the Community level is primarily derived from the Merger Control Regulation (MCR) 1989, amended 1997, which established a concentration architecture based on separate, non‐overlapping jurisdictional spheres for member states and the Commission, with the Commission alone having jurisdiction over concentrations with a competition concern which potentially have a Community impact. Under the MCR, Community impact is determined by the two Community Dimension (CD) tests employing a numerical form‐based approach. The paper examines the Commission’s 2000 report on aspects of the MCR, particularly the appropriateness of the key CD tests in guaranteeing that all concentrations with a Community impact are centralised to the Commission, while those which are national in impact are dealt with at the member state level. It reveals that the tests are ineffective and undermine the goal of the concentration architecture. A streamlined single CD test is advanced and a radical alternative is put forward – based not on separate jurisdictional spheres but where the Commission and member states competition authorities form a network of co‐operation to regulate concentrations.

Despite many efforts within organizations toward business process orientation (BPO), research on real-world experiences remains in its infancy. The purpose of this paper is to redress the existing knowledge gap by analyzing a Swedish public housing company that has made notable effects regarding BPO and to explore lessons learned from the BPO journey (from 1998 to 2013).

The point of departure is principles in the BPO foundation, principles of successful BPM and effects in empirically based literature. The reconstruction of the narrative case study describes milestones and critical junctions, as well as effects based on quantitative and qualitative data.

Effects in BPO are demonstrated in terms of higher customer satisfaction, increased innovative ability, improved operational performance, higher employee satisfaction and, as a result of these, increased profitability. Theoretical constructs with implications for the theory building on BPO are suggested in a three-layer management framework – with capabilities and abilities emerging from the case study used as an illustrative example.

Lessons are learned regarding critical practices related to advancement in BPO. A strategy-building process based on eight design propositions is suggested to define the pre-conditions for BPO in an organization.

This is the first longitudinal case study to provide a comprehensive view and detailed insights of a BPO journey and top management performance toward a business process-oriented organization. Practitioners and BPM community get valuable insights into how the temporality and the context shape the BPO maturity process in terms of new organizational structure and roles during the journey.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of four types of “soft” information and communication technologies (ICT) capital related to ICT knowledge and skills (ICT personnel, ICT training of ICT personnel and users, ICT unit) on the innovation performance of Greek firms. Furthermore, the paper compares these effects with the ones of the hard ICT capital and also of four important “traditional” innovation determinants identified from previous research in this area (demand expectation, price and non-price competition, market concentration).

A quantitative methodology has been adopted for investigating the above effects, based on the estimation of regression models. Using data collected through a survey based on a structured questionnaire from 271 Greek firms, innovation models have been estimated, having as independent variables measures of hard ICT capital, the examined four types of soft ICT capital and also the above traditional innovation determinants.

The paper has been concluded that in the innovation averse Greek national context the examined traditional innovation determinants have very low impact on firms’ innovation performance, however, on the contrary both hard ICT capital, and three out of the four examined types of soft ICT capital (ICT personnel, ICT training of ICT personnel and users) have positive impact on both process and product/services innovation. Furthermore, it has been found that the total effect of these three knowledge and skills related types of soft ICT capital on innovation performance is stronger than the effect of the hard ICT capital.

The main limitations of the paper are that it uses simple innovation performance measures (not distinguishing between different types of innovations), and also is based on firm-level data collected from a single country. The paper has interesting implications for future research on the impact of the relation between ICT and innovation, which should not any more neglect the soft ICT capital, but consider various types of both hard and soft ICT capital.

The results of the paper can be useful to firms’ chief information officers and chief executive officers and also to consultants and practitioners interested in maximizing the exploitation of the innovation potential of ICT, in order to understand the hard and soft aspects of ICT that have to be developed for this purpose and optimize firms’ ICT-related investment.

The limited previous empirical literature concerning the effect of ICT on innovation focus on the hard ICT capital (mainly on ICT equipment) and neglect the role of the soft ICT capital. The paper contributes to fill this research gap, by examining the effects of three types of ICT capital, and also – for comparison and regression models’ completeness purposes – of hard ICT capital and of four traditional innovation determinants, on firms’ innovation performance.

The purpose of this study is to explore the impact of asymmetric trust on construction project management performance in China's construction industry. Moreover, the authors explore the mediating role of two types of knowledge sharing (explicit knowledge sharing and tacit knowledge sharing) in explaining the association between asymmetric trust and project management performance.

A theoretical model based on the research hypotheses proposed in this study was developed and a questionnaire survey was conducted with 271 professionals. The data collected was analyzed by the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique.

The results of this study indicate that there is a significant and negative association between asymmetric trust and project management performance. Moreover, two types of knowledge sharing (explicit knowledge sharing and tacit knowledge sharing) have different degrees of impact on improving project management performance. In addition, tacit knowledge sharing is a mediator between asymmetric trust and project management performance.

The data used in this study is from Chinese scenarios, so the research conclusions and application effects based on this are bound to have certain regional limitations. Besides, there are many factors that affect project management performance improving, and the relationships among them are so complex. The theoretical model proposed in this study may not be fully considered. Therefore, follow-up researchers can consider bringing more suitable variables into their researches, so that the theoretical researches can be more in line with the actual project management practice, and the specific mechanism for improving project management performance can be explained more deeply.

This research's value is as follows: Firstly, this paper contributes to the trust and relational governance literature by expanding the research perspective of mutual trust to asymmetric trust. Specially, this research designs a measurement scale for asymmetric trust and then reveals the impact mechanism of it on project management performance, which will certainly promote research paradigm change of trust. Secondly, this research is beneficial to knowledge sharing literature in the construction management field by expanding the research scope of knowledge sharing from a cross-organizational perspective.

Despite the fact that commercial sponsorship nowadays is a common phenomenon with salient effects on different aspects of developed societies at large (e.g. sports, the arts, the public sector, the media), academic research interest in this closely marketing‐related field seems to be rather low. Although there have been significant changes in marketing thinking during the 1990s, current research on sponsorship seems to be “stuck” in the more traditional, marketing‐mix management – and mass communicative effects‐based discourse. This paper aims at presenting a theoretical overview of how current sponsorship research could be developed further by applying the basic ideas and concepts provided by the interaction/network approach to the study of sponsorship‐related phenomena. Adopting an interaction/network perspective means that, instead of measuring the mass‐communicative effects on various audiences, the focus is on understanding the development of sponsorship relationships and networks, as well as on interpersonal communication processes going on between the sponsorship parties.