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Nonaka (1990) makes the distinction between generic knowledge that can be applied in many similar contexts, and local knowledge that can be best applied in a specific local context. Israel (1987) and Fukuyama (2004) point out that “high specificity” tasks (i.e. with clear objectives, and using well-defined technologies) with low transaction volume are more likely to be performed successfully by organizations across a wide range of cultural contexts. In this spirit, Friedman (2005, pp. 313–323) observes that countries can benefit from the “flat world” through a combination of “reform wholesale” and “reform retail”. The former entails market-centered reforms such as privatization, deregulation, reducing trade barriers, and adopting flexible labor laws. A handful of leaders in each country have pushed through such reforms in a wide range of cultural contexts including the developed OECD countries, plus many others such as Brazil, India, Mexico, Russia, China, and other East Asian “tiger” economies. The latter entails upgrading infrastructure, regulatory institutions, and education and health standards. Unlike the former, the latter reforms cannot be instituted by a handful of leaders, but require broad changes at many levels of society. Although the end results in countries successful at “reform retail” have many similarities (e.g. healthy, well-educated citizens) the steps toward achieving the results are very different, depending on culture and other contextual factors.

This chapter integrates organization design and sustainability concepts to describe an accelerated transformational change at the Fairview Medical Group (United States).

A case study of the transformation at Fairview Medical Group’s primary care clinics was developed from interviews and first-person accounts of the change. Objective data regarding outcomes was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the redesign process.

The Fairview Medical Group developed an innovation and change capability to transform 35 primary care clinics in six months. All of the clinics were certified by the state of Minnesota as complying with their healthcare standards. Clinical outcomes, costs, and employee and physician engagement also increased. All of the improved measures are sustained.

Healthcare reform in the United States struggles because the organization design challenges are great and the change difficulties even greater. Fairview’s experience provides important evidence and lessons that can help advance our understanding of effective healthcare and create more sustainable healthcare systems. This chapter provides healthcare system administrators evidence and alternatives in the pursuit of implementation.

Personnel costs typically account for 60% or more of total operating expenses in health systems, and as such beome a necessary focus in most if not all substantive health reform adaptations. This study sought to assess whether strategic alignment of the human resource (HR) and learning functions was associated with greater adaptive capacity in U.S. health systems.

Data were gathered using a survey that was distributed electronically to chief human resource officers from two U.S.-based associations. The survey included questions about organizational structure, strategic human resource management, strategic learning, and organizational response to health reform.

Significant correlations were found between strategic alignment of HR and HR’s involvement in responses related to cost control (r=0.46, p<0.01); quality improvement (r=0.45, p<0.01), and patient access (r=0.39, p<0.01). However, no significant relationships were found between strategic alignment of organizational learning and HR involvement with these responses.

Results suggest that HR structure may affect an organization’s capacity for adaptive response. Top-management teams in health systems should consider positioning HR as part of the core leadership team, with a reporting relationship that allows HR to maximally participate in formulating and implementing organizational adaptation.

There are several ways that risks and uncertainties might be discussed in the context of assessment and analysis – several of which could be inferred from previous chapters. Here, Chapters 6 and 7 are structured around what might be called strategic risks/uncertainties and operational risks/uncertainties.

This chapter presents the strategic risk/uncertainty assessment and analysis challenge. Most current thinking on risk management – enterprise risk management (ERM), but even including more traditional approaches – place expectations on leaders and top managers to provide guidance on risk policy, but also require those individuals to understand the challenges for which they are responsible. As implied previously, this domain mainly consists of uncertainties. Typically, top managers deal with aggregated operational data that – in itself – might be measurable but owing to the effects of consolidation tend to present leaders with a singular strategy/issue that is unique to the organisation and therefore not well-suited to statistical analysis. Furthermore, scanning for future threats and opportunities is decidedly a matter of considering the unknown, the emergent, and even the unimaginable. Within this assortment of challenges are the very large-scale features that – among many things – compel consideration of collaboration with other organisations. Here these special risks/uncertainties are labelled global risks.

The issue of complexity is here revisited, and this discussion serves two particular purposes. Complexity theory (and complex adaptive systems) offers some insights into methods of assessment and analysis, but they also provide some useful views on the nature of the uncertainty field in the context of complex environments. This discussion will offer some consideration of traditional, ERM, and alternative approaches and the appropriate ‘fit’ of assessment and analysis into these frameworks.

Capitalist peace theory asserts that economic freedom or capitalism, contract-intensity, trade, foreign investment, financial openness, or the avoidance of state property ownership promote peace. But the capitalist peace also includes the democratic peace. If democracy itself is an effect of economic freedom or the prosperity generated by it, then the democratic peace is no more than a mere component of the capitalist peace. Then capitalism and economic interdependence promote peace by two or even three routes, directly and indirectly, through democracy and, possibly, by common memberships in intergovernmental organizations, too. Admittedly, this argument relies on compiling lots of diverse pieces of evidence, some of which are still debated in the scientific community. The idea that capitalism might be more important as well as more beneficial for peace than democracy rests on two reasons. First, without capitalism or the prosperity it promotes, democracy might no longer be viable. Under capitalism, nations may enjoy prosperity and peace together. Better still, poor nations benefit from the existence of more advanced ones that are sources of technology, models for emulation, and markets for labor-intensive products. Second, democratic peace theory has invited the dangerous idea that one might or even should promote democracy by war. The consequences of the financial crisis of 2008 and the political responses to it, however, threaten to undermine globalization. That is why the capitalist peace faces an uncertain future at a time when we need it. The rapid economic rise of Asia, in particular of China and somewhat later probably of India to great power status, is likely to undermine the global pecking order and to imply some power transitions. In the past, power transitions have been related to increased risks of war. That is why we need a capitalist peace between China and the West.

William Amasa Scott was in his time well-known as a monetary economist as well as a popularizer of economic ideas, whose opinions were widely regarded by the public. A proponent of Austrian economics and defender of classical economic theory, he soon found a home at the School of Economics, Political Science and History (later the School of Economics) at the University of Wisconsin which, while initially a mainstream department, would evolve into the citadel of Institutional Economics. Notwithstanding his status as an authority on monetary economics and his place as a public intellectual, he remained at the University something of an outsider throughout his career and today is largely forgotten.

President Obama’s policies, while broad in scope, offer some specific attention to college and career readiness (CCR) and are necessary for urban youth to realize their career potentials. However, by primarily defining CCR in terms of academic achievement, many of the previously mentioned policies ignore the varied college access skills needed to ensure successful preparation for, enrollment in, and graduation from postsecondary institutions.

This chapter explores the current definition of CCR represented in the Obama administration’s policies, while also expanding the definition to include missing policy pieces related to college access.

The underutilization of school counselors and classroom teachers as college access facilitators who can expand CCR for urban schools is addressed. The paper discusses recent Obama administration initiatives and recommendations for urban schools and higher education institutions.

The administration initiatives and recommendations recently put in place by the Obama administration for urban schools and higher education institutions, if integrated within urban schools, may facilitate the realization of one of President Obama’s educational reform goals of ensuring that every student graduates from high school well prepared for college and a career.

The nature of early care and education (ECE) programs in the United States, serving children from birth through age eight, has shifted dramatically in the last 20 years. With his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama positioned ECE at the top of his educational reform agenda. His acknowledgment of the importance of the early years in providing a foundation for children’s lifelong learning and the critical need for national reform is welcoming to those of us in the field; yet, we meet it with some trepidation. ECE has a history of fragmented services for children and families, relying primarily on inconsistent state funds. Additionally, the pressure to be more competitive with our global counterparts has led to an academic push down at all levels of education, including ECE, rather than an increase in support for schools to meet the diverse needs of young children. The President’s proposed initiative further contributes to this pressure on our youngest children, their families, and their ECE caregivers.

In this chapter, we examine the current state of the ECE field, with an emphasis on the years prior to kindergarten.

We analyze two federal ECE initiatives, and argue for a return to the original purposes of ECE that best serve young children and families.

This chapter discusses the ongoing transformations of the French defence support. Considering the importance of economic activities related to defence support, this contribution aims at discussing the evolution of defence support and its costs for the State. The literature in defence economics presents very little analysis of defence support in its different forms. Neither space nor base locations have been deeply analysed in such a literature. We try to bridge this gap in an original research framework. We focus on the Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) of defence platforms. More particularly, we focus on the array of measures that surround French defence support in MRO since the end of the 1990s. Considering both economic and spatial leverages, how can the organisation of MRO be optimised? With concepts from spatial economics, we propose a new look on the defence support system. We examine new economic interconnections (e.g. Public Private Partnerships and outsourcing) between military and civilian activities. More broadly speaking, this path of research could help us to better understand the new type of economic interrelations between defence organisation and ‘territory’ as a social fabric.