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The purpose of this paper aims to explore the reports of housing shortages in post‐Katrina New Orleans especially for low‐income residents in the face of a returning working poor population. Despite the availability of housing vouchers by the New Orleans Housing Authority to any previous residents of New Orleans housing projects, a political uproar has claimed no homes are available and that destroying the previously failing New Orleans housing projects would amount to “forced homelessness.”

The analysis is done by reflecting on different commentary from persons claiming the housing projects must be preserved while also exploring the failed goals of the same public institutions. Further, a brief overview of the housing situation regarding availability of homes is conducted.

The findings show that the poor of New Orleans are being misled about available housing, and there is a continuing process of decline in sovereignty of local public policy makers. Politicians benefit by elevating their public persona.

The paper explores the political benefactors of perpetuating falsehoods in order to make political gains.

To present the highlights of The Association for Strategic Planning's 2004 conference, “Strategy in a Turbulent World”.

S&L Contributing Editor Stan Abraham attended the conference and selected the most interesting presentations for his report.

Highlights include: Dwight Allen, “Globalization at risk,” David La Piana, “Nonprofit organizations,” Peter Bershatsky, “Managing innovation,” and Doug Randall, “Imagine the future.”

These are conference presentations with various research methodologies.

In his presentation, Dwight Allen suggests that great uncertainty exists as to how international or global trade might develop. Faced with such uncertainty, strategists should undertake scenario planning to develop flexible strategies that can be implemented in a variety of futures.

In this study we examine how resource-constrained organizations can maneuver for competitive advantage in highly institutionalized fields. Unlike studies of institutional entrepreneurship, we investigate competitive maneuvering by an organization that is unable to alter either the regulative or normative institutions that characterize its field. Using the “Moneyball” phenomenon and recent changes in Major League Baseball as the basis for an intensive case study of entrepreneurial actions taken by the Oakland A’s, we found that the A’s were able to maneuver for advantage by using bricolage and refusing to enact baseball’s cognitive institutions, and that they continued succeeding despite ongoing resource constraints and rapid copying of their actions by other teams. These results contribute to our understanding of competitive maneuvering and change in institutionalized fields. Our findings expand the positioning of bricolage beyond its prior characterization as a tool used primarily by peripheral organizations in less institutionalized fields; our study suggests that bricolage may aid resource constrained participants (including the majority of entrepreneurial firms) to survive in a wider range of circumstances than previously believed.

This chapter illustrates the consequences that can result from a mismatch between leadership style and organizational contexts required to encourage genuine investigation and exploration – particularly in topical areas relevant to the enterprise’s business model. This cautionary tale suggests not only that leadership approaches need to complement the necessary conceptual challenges involved in rigorously defining relevant problems and strategies in order to sustain organizational success; ideally, it should also align with the strengths and goals of the teams led. Thus, a senior marketing, communication and sales leader may not support the creative research and evidence-based, user-centered design necessary to nurture innovation within, for example, a future-oriented research and development team. Such cultural misalignments have been well framed by classical theories of leadership as well as by empirical comparisons of enduringly successful companies with more transient corporations.

This chapter applies arguments advanced by Drnevich and Shanley (this volume) to the strategic leadership literature – an area of work where such multi-level analyses seem likely to be particularly appropriate. In an analysis of the relationship between managerial capabilities and firm performance, this chapter breaks from tradition in the strategic leadership literature by examining the interaction between three levels of analysis. In doing so, this chapter identifies the conditions under which leadership can be a source of competitive advantage for a firm, when labor markets will allocate managerial talent imperfectly across competing firms, and when managers will and will not be able to appropriate the rents their specific managerial talents might generate.

This study investigates the impact of corporate governance mechanisms on performance related turnover. Our results indicate that smaller boards and institutional block holders are positively related to the likelihood of performance related turnover. CEOs that also hold the position of the chairman of the board or belong to a founding family face lower likelihood of turnover. CEO stock ownership is negatively related to turnover and CEOs who own 3 percent or more of their company stock face a significantly lower likelihood of performance related turnover. Moreover, protection from external control market has no effect either on the likelihood of turnover.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Knowledge management seems to be an emerging trend in organizations. However, skepticism still exists among many managers as to the true value of undertaking knowledge management initiatives. This article presents a case study of surveying knowledge management receptivity attitudes of senior managers in a major pharmaceutical company. The results are discussed and recommended steps are explored.