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The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the influence of political goals and behaviour on the outsourcing decision process and outcomes.

The research used an exploratory longitudinal case-based approach. Eight outsourcing projects in three telecommunications companies were analysed from the initial decision to the outcome of the case.

The authors show how political goals and behaviours influence the outsourcing decision process and inductively develop four political goals: personal reputation, attainment, elimination and control. The authors also identify three dynamic outsourcing paths: the personal reputation path, which leads to successful outcomes; the short-term attain and eliminate path leading to unsuccessful outcomes; and the destabilised path, which leads to mixed outcomes. All of these can be tested in other empirical settings.

The implications for outsourcing literature are that political intentions influence the decision process and outcomes. For theorists, the authors provide an understanding of how political and rational goals and behaviour interact to impact outsourcing outcomes: with political and rational goals and behaviour complementary in some instances. The limitations are that with a small sample the findings are generalisable to theoretical propositions rather than to a population.

The implications for managers are the ability to identify and manage political goals that influence outsourcing decision process and outcomes.

For the first time, the authors uncover the political goals that impact the outsourcing decision process and outcomes. The authors add to the outsourcing literature, transaction cost theory and resource-based theory by defining and understanding the political goals that complement these theories.

Social movements experience periods of intense activity and periods of abeyance, when collective action is very weak because of an inhospitable political climate. Non-democracies are extreme cases of hostile political environments for social movements. Drawing on a case study of the women’s movement in Franco’s Spain (mid-1930s to 1975) based on an analysis of published documents and 17 interviews, this paper argues that some non-democracies force social movements that existed prior to dictatorships into a period of abeyance and shape collective organizing in terms of location, goals, and repertoire of activities. Some social movements under prolonged non-democratic rule manage to link and transmit the aims, repertoire of activities, and collective identity of pre-dictatorship activists to those of post-dictatorship activists. This occurs mainly through cultural activities.

The aim of the paper is to argue that principal preparation programs should help candidates: recognize the political role of the school principal; develop political skills (including the ability to strategically appropriate policy); and understand that the political approach of the principal influences teaching, learning, relationships, governance, and reform efforts. In addition, the paper reports findings of the analysis of Ontario's Principal Qualification Program guidelines to determine if they require principal preparation programs to develop aspiring school leaders’ political skills.

The paper reviews theoretical arguments and empirical studies from the fields of school micropolitics, business, educational leadership, and critical policy studies to establish five political skills principals require. The authors then conducted a content analysis of Ontario's Principal Qualification Program guidelines to determine if they require principal preparation programs to develop aspiring leaders’ political skills.

Ontario's Principal Qualification Program guidelines do not explicitly direct principal preparation programs to help candidates develop political skills. However, the guidelines recognize that principals pursue political goals and work in political environments, and they offer opportunities for appropriating the guidelines in ways that promote the development of principal candidates’ political skills.

The paper is the first to analyze Ontario's Principal Qualification Program guidelines to determine if they require principal preparation programs to develop aspiring leaders’ political skills. It also identifies policy appropriation as a political skill that should be developed in principal preparation programs and provides a model of how principal preparation policies themselves may be appropriated to support a focus on developing aspiring principals’ political skills.

Peace is a very precious commodity. It is being concealed by a number of other goals. All the great living religions‐revealed or non‐revealed are strongly committed to peace. This is even more true for the three Abrahamic faiths‐Judaism, Christianity and finally Islam. Unfortunately, the history of world events during last few decades attests to the fact that there exist more suspicions, distrusts, enmity, hatred and anger among the believers belonging to these three faiths than the others. The reason being the primary goals pertaining to political, socio‐cultural and economic pursued by the Christian‐dominated West are predominated by the goal of supremacy and domination and not of coexistence and cooperation. In pursuing these goals the Christian including the Jewish dominated West are pursuing the philosophy of moneytheism, liberalism, modernism and secularism. The Muslims living either in their own lands or in the West being the victims of their own despotic and autocratic rulers and their Western sympathisers are forced to take recourse to equally unjust methods branded as terrorism. Having realised the need for peaceful coexistence, this paper advocates for a thorough transformation as far as the basic goals are concerned. In order to achieve this, the existing academic, cultural and religious institutions and media need to undergo transformation based on an acceptable moral education on behaviours, norms and practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate new welfare indicators, which no longer rely solely on the gross domestic product but provide a more holistic understanding of welfare encompassing aspects such as health status, social inclusion or environmental quality. So far, it remains, however, questionable to what degree these new indicators can serve as an actual political morality.

To assess this question, this paper proposes to turn to the distinction between right-based, duty-based and goal-based approaches. Assessing welfare in these terms not only suggests itself because of the consequentialist connotations of those alternative formulations that call for happiness or well-being, but also because the distinction allows to consider them in view of some of the central social goods and concerns.

The analysis shows mixed results. It, first, shows that welfare as political morality is best captured in terms of goals. Still, whatever new indicator one chooses, it must not be conceived as a mere aggregation of particular interests, nor should individuals be sacrificed for the sake of an overall good. This makes it important that subjective rights that function as a counterweight are strengthened.

The assessment of the new welfare indicators in these terms has not been undertaken so far, although they fit the purpose ideally. Thus, from the originality of the method, the originality of the findings follows so that the analysis provides neat categories and conclusions.

The purpose of this paper is to implement the concept of the “political iceberg” and to investigate its hidden or submerged part comprised of motives and latent triggers lying behind leaders’ political behavior, and which remains almost unexplored. Specifically, drawing on the abundant literature at the intersection of leadership and organizational politics, the authors examine – what drives leaders to engage in political behavior?

Public sector organizations are characterized by a high level of organizational politics and are therefore suitable for this research. A semi-structured interview formed the main data-gathering instrument. The authors conducted interviews with 14 leaders across public sector organizations. The findings are based on a qualitative analysis of the interviews.

Two key themes were analyzed: leaders’ motives to engage in political behavior to achieve corporate interests; leaders’ motives to engage in political behave or for personal interests. On the one hand, motives for political behavior are directed toward the general good, such as accomplishing organizational goals, attaining resources and managing change. On the other hand, motives to engage in political behavior may focus inter alia on such, personal interests as one’s career in the organization, gaining an advantage or other self-interests.

To date, research has focused primarily on the visible tip of the political iceberg. This study is part of a new stream of qualitative studies of political behavior. To gain a complete picture of organizational life, this study focuses on the hidden side of the political iceberg and has revealed the motives for political behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework of corporate political performance (CPP) in corporate political activity. In fact, CPP refers to political benefits obtained by firms when they formulate and implement political strategies to influence the public policy process though the investment of political resources. This paper focuses on answering what is perhaps the most fundamental question to strategy researchers: “How do firms engage in political strategies to improve their performance?”

In building a theoretical framework, this paper, first, provides a historical analysis of political efficiency and effectiveness. Then, this paper attempts to illustrate conceptually our understanding of political performance process by a generalized and contingent approach. Finally, this paper discusses the framework, its theoretical contribution and practical implications for Chinese management, and comments on limitations for future research.

The paper presents a conceptual CPP model that integrates political efficiency and effectiveness approach. In the conceptual framework, three phases of CPP include sources of political advantage, political competitive advantage and political performance outcome, and three dimensions are identified as political efficiency, effectiveness and adaptiveness. CPP approach is not a “generalized” nature of political performance measurement, as the difference among firms and industries in this area may be significant, which reflects the effect of context, reaction and outcome factors.

While it provides a strong theoretical foundation, this paper still has almost little empirical evidence concerning CPP process. However, how to measure CPP has increasingly begun to focus on an important research domain in corporate political strategy literature. This paper believes that this model has a need for future research to test its feasibility by using the measurement scales in Chinese context.

This paper is original in its attempt to measure CPP to help the business practice in corporate of political activity, and broaden corporate political strategy research in mainstream strategic management.

Little is known about the way local government utilizes the procurement function to promote sustainability. Sustainability is a political theme of considerable importance at the local government level. We investigated the relationships between municipal executive councillors and procurement managers in three Dutch municipalities. We found that the party-political councillors focus on initiatives affecting citizens to create public visibility and electoral support. Procurement managers however, are primarily concerned with stakeholders within the organization serving different interests. Sustainability initiatives appear largely input-based rather than result-based. Procurement managers rarely consult with the councillors. Rather, department heads have the final say in allocating funds in the course of sustainability initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the strategic leveraging goals associated with a portfolio of small-scale events and to analyze their implementation process (actors/tactics: who did what?) in order to propose new leverage typologies through new empirical research evidence.

Three techniques of data collection conducted the fieldwork: qualitative interviewing, direct observation and documental research. Based on the principles of grounded theory and using qualitative data analysis software (Nvivo) data were inductively analyzed.

Results showed the coexistence of a plurality of strategic leveraging goals, namely: “strengthen political advantage”; “integrate and retain partners/sponsors”; and “develop sports dynamics”. There was a set of tactics and actions identified and successfully implemented due to the coordination of the network of organizations part of the events, which included local and external actors.

Researchers realized that it was impossible to take a neutral research stand. In fact, in qualitative research, the investigator is the first instrument of data collection. In this sense, it was important for researchers to constantly reflect on their role, as Pelias (2011) says “reflexive writing strategies include indicating how the researcher emerged as a contaminant, how the researcher´s insider status was revelatory or blinding, and how the researcher is implicated in the problem being addressed” (p. 662). It is also considered that, when organizing events, the network of interactions is extremely complex, making it difficult to capture all the actors’ perspectives.

In relation to the practical implications, it is important that sports event managers have in-depth knowledge and skills on event leveraging; it is also important that managers understand the sports culture in order to recognize the multidimensionality of strategic leveraging in sporting events. The strategic dynamic should be developed and coevolved with community/local and external actors. The coordination between the actors is a key point to achieve successful leveraging.

A theoretical implication related to the event leverage is the creation of a new strategic objective – “developing the sport dynamics”. The sport participation tactic among other tactics were found, namely “enhancing of the sports shows” and “tuning of skills in sports management”.

The dynamics and plurality of strategic goals associated with the leverage of an event portfolio, namely the actions that were developed and also the actors’ interaction in small-scale events. Another factor is the identification of the prominent role of the external event organization committee in the dynamics of event leveraging, as well as the deep analysis of the leveraging process supported by the observation of all the events.

In the EU and especially in Germany, public procurement is bound to a tight legislation that also sets and enforces strategic goals such as innovation or sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether different archetypes of public procurement organizations (centralized or decentralized; state-level or local-level) perceive and implement strategic goals differently. A survey with data from 104 entities is used for this purpose. The findings reveal that the implementation of strategy is different in centralized or state-level organizations compared with decentralized or local organizations. Centralized organizations give goals such as innovation, transparency, and sustainability a high priority, while local ones highlight regional development and SME support