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This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

How do organizations act as entrepreneurs and what are the outcomes of their innovations? This paper intersects two broad areas of organizational research: the sociology of entrepreneurship and the study of organizational forms. A case study of Kaiser Permanente's role as an institutional entrepreneur in the creation of the health maintenance organization form illuminates the benefits and pitfalls of institutional entrepreneurship – in this case, the act of turning identity into form. Examining organizations as institutional entrepreneurs also raises questions and challenges for future research about both entrepreneurs and models of organizing.

This chapter is an attempt to review the New START Treaty and put forward the perspectives and prospects. The chapter outlines certain assumptions that should be kept in mind for the success of arms control based upon the findings therein. This point about arms race should be obvious, but is often ignored although the need for arms control can never be undermined.

The prime issue in Russo–American relations – apart from economic and political reforms – remains arms' control (or nuclear security). Both nuclear superpowers wish to reduce and/or redeploy forces for reasons of cost and effectiveness, and the signing of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that builds on a previous agreement is an important step. Both sides have deep incentives to cooperate as they share common concerns on one hand and yet their interests differ owing to different force postures and perceived threats giving rise to an inequality of interest on the other.

The New START Treaty is not just about Washington and Moscow. It is about the entire world community. While the treaty is bilateral, it has big implications for global security. The United States and Russia control more than 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenal, and the world looks to these two countries for leadership in securing nuclear materials globally and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Thus, the new Treaty sets the stage for engaging other powers in fulfilling the goals of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the chapter examines the issues concerning the fallout of the New START Treaty.

This article reflects on the lack of focus on history characterizing the strategic management field. Reasons and consequences of such a peculiar situation need to be pointed out in order to develop a better history-grounded research approach inside the field.

In terms of (the missing) history of thought, a fear of history seems to characterize the field, for a more aware historical understanding of strategic management and practices is likely to question not only notions and concepts, but the very perception of the field as a practically oriented discipline. A lack of historical reflection is usually preferred, wherein strategic management seems to come out of the blue, ignoring its inner evolution over time, and the relationships with previous bodies of knowledge in the business realm, such as for instance administrative sciences and accounting.

In terms of the history of practice the situation is – if possible – even worse, with an obscure understanding of contexts and features of managerial practices in the past. Archival research is called for here, drawing on two research projects on pre-industrial revolution context (the Spanish Royal Tobacco Factory in the XVIII century, and the Venice Arsenal in the turn of the XVI century), in order to examine how prior management practices can influence and inform our present understanding of the discipline of strategic management. A less simplistic view of managing practices in the past emerges, which challenges the commonly held cycle of innovation and discontinuity perpetually alleged in the strategic management field to legitimize its own existence as a research area.

While strategic management tools show a potential contribution to historical understanding in this archival research, a more historically aware understanding of the evolution of the field is thus intended as a way to falsify strategic management theory.

This chapter focuses on how corporate entrepreneurs seize opportunities and deal with threats through resource acquisition, control, and use. When corporate entrepreneurs fail to gain control of preferred resources they must rely on their ability to optimize their use of resources on hand in order to avoid the typical limitations inherent in a constrained set of resources. However, control of resources, whether existing or supplementary, by itself is an insufficient basis for influencing performance. Performance also depends on an organization’s capacity to deploy resources in combination with strategically important organizational processes to affect a desired end. The way in which corporate entrepreneurs utilize their resources is likely to have a more significant effect on performance than is merely having control of them. The current research aims to elaborate on how corporate entrepreneurs can become more resourceful by using a vacillation approach to resource acquisition and utilization. In this context, vacillation is movement between exploration and exploitation, or knowledge acquisition and knowledge integration from a knowledge management perspective. Vacillation is distinguished from the “balance” hypothesis prevalent in the organizational ambidexterity literature. A balance hypothesis states that both exploration and exploitation may be pursued simultaneously either by creating structural or contextual organizational ambidexterity. Here, we explain how vacillation enables an organization’s corporate entrepreneurship posture to lead to improved performance. In this chapter, we first describe the extant literature and construct relationships between corporate entrepreneurship posture, organizational resource level, vacillation, and organizational performance. We then analyze the learning processes associated with vacillation and discuss the research and managerial implications associated with the proposed relationships.

A framework is offered that predicts when public organizations are susceptible to change. Many researchers interested in change focus on leadership. Such an approach overlooks structural factors that inhibit change and what leaders seeking to realize change can realistically hope to accomplish. The framework identifies organizational capacity, responsiveness, and constituencies as key structural factors that govern change feasibility. Capacity, responsiveness, and constituencies are knitted together in the framework to identify types of public organizations that are ready for change and those apt to resist change. Types of change are considered that range from strategic repositioning to transformation. Also discussed are guidelines for leaders seeking to strategically reposition or to transform a public organization. To realize a transformation requires a new kind of leader, called a Mutualist. The skills required by Mutualist leadership and Mutualist leaders are identified and compared to those identified in the transformational leadership literature. Research questions are formulated and a research program proposed to deal with research issues identified by the framework.

Purpose – The major question posed in this paper is whether public finance management (PFM) reforms undertaken by development partners (DPs) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Ghana were to find solutions to the many PFM challenges or it was merely a façade to pursue latent political interest?

Methodology – Study information was gathered via a desk review of major PFM policy documents, procedures, manuals, guidelines, and findings of commissioned studies covering the period under review. Information generated from the desk review was triangulated via extensive interviews with a sample of policy makers from MOH and DPs.

Findings – The findings suggest that MOH and DPs pursued reforms mostly to address the PFM challenges in the sector. Additionally, the study finds questionable the attitude and posture of the two actors and calls for further investigations to unearth what the said attitude and posture may imply in terms of intentions.

Originality/value – The findings raises fundamental question regarding public sector – DPs collaborations in executing reforms. This could open up new frontiers for further research to better understand DPs/public sector collaboration in the implementation of reforms.

Limitations – The sample used for this study may constrain generalization to other jurisdiction. This limitation does not in any case invalidate the conclusions arrived at.