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This chapter is based on the experiences of lieutenant general Cornelis Johannes (Kees) Matthijssen in his period as the Force Commander of the UN Mission in Mali. His military Force consisted of men and women from 60 nationalities. The authors clearly explain what has been done to turn this diversity into a strength that benefits effectiveness. In the first part, they address the challenges like differences in cultural and doctrinal backgrounds that every nationality brings, as well as the language and the interoperability challenges. Part of the latter is the human aspect, which is mainly about understanding and respecting other cultures and how to bridge differences for the benefit of effective cooperation. The authors conclude with the importance of having a good understanding of the challenges. The second and main part of this chapter brings a wealth of practical experiences when the authors discuss how they turned diversity into a strength. Overarching they stress the importance of the tone at the top since it sets the example. Thereafter, they discuss five elements in their ways of working: continuously showing respect and understanding, exploiting all perspectives, encouraging unit cohesion, utilizing collaborative planning to enhance a common focus and teamwork, and finally continuously appreciating everyone’s efforts equally. Intersecting with the diverse nationalities is the critical issue of gender equality. A final paragraph in this chapter explains how this was an essential theme within the responsibility of the Force Commander. As a conclusion, the authors again stress the importance of leadership.

This paper aims to systematically review the extant research on social psychological aspects of civil-military inter-organizational collaboration, particularly in a total defense context.

A systematic scoping studies review was performed. Peer-reviewed articles were searched in PsycInfo and Sociological Abstracts. Inclusion criteria were met by 25 articles.

Four higher-order categories with underpinning categories were derived in the analysis. They were modeled as follows: antecedent conditions affect, informal processes and practical efforts, which, in turn, affect inter-organizational trust and collaboration. These higher-order categories are all influenced by formal organizational aspects and the society in which they are found.

The existing literature covering the chosen study focus is limited. Further studies are needed and the presented model can serve as a road map.

A series of questions derived from the categories of the model is presented. The questions are included as a tool for practical reflection for collaborating actors in common education, training or exercise settings or in after-action reviews.

The focus on social psychological aspects of civil-military inter-organizational collaboration, particularly in a total defense context, is new. The suggested relationship between superior themes adds knowledge to a research field dominated by sociological and political science approaches.

This chapter traces the origin of racism and reviews the historical and contemporary debates around race and racialisation in western thought. There are persistent disagreements surrounding the origin and nature of racism. Because of the evolution of racist ideas, behaviours and institutional practices and policies, there are various views about the meaning and analytical application of racism. This chapter explores how ideas of race – understood as innate and immutable human differences that can be classified and ranked hierarchically based on race – has emerged in western history and evolved over time. It examines how this has influenced social and political practices and associated policies across the evolution of modernity. The chapter specifically discusses the Atlantic slave trade and how it shaped the historical development of race and racism within the context of colonialism. It concludes with a discussion and critical review of some of the racist systems and policies which have been enforced across different multiracial countries.

This paper aims to study the dimensions and subdimensions of humanitarian supply chain resilience through the case of an non-governmental organization (NGO) logistics organization facing the international COVID-19 pandemic.

The methodology of this empirical research paper is based on a qualitative study using semistructured interviews with key actors of the Médecins Sans Frontières Logistique (MSF Log), NGO during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and 2021.

The data analysis highlighted four main dimensions of humanitarian supply chain resilience: organizational capacity, collaboration, flexibility and humanitarian culture. The transversal importance of the information system and that of the humanitarian culture were also pointed out. Furthermore, the authors have identified the subdimensions of each dimension; these subdimensions further elaborate the main dimension and provide a more detailed understanding of the concept. These dimensions require both proactive and reactive actions to be effective. Finally, based on these empirical results, a conceptual model of humanitarian supply chain resilience is proposed.

Additionally, further research can be done to explore the impact of digital technologies on the humanitarian supply chain resilience and how these technologies can be used to improve the resilience of humanitarian supply chains. Additionally, future research can also be conducted to explore how to measure the resilience of humanitarian supply chains and how to develop methods to improve the resilience of these supply chains.

The dimensions and subdimensions of resilience that have been highlighted may provide a guide for managers to target their actions, both responsively and proactively, to act on resilience over time when facing a crisis such as an international pandemic.

The value of this research is linked to the findings that result not only from literature about resilience but are also founded on an empirical and qualitative study of an NGO logistics organization facing an international crisis. The research provides an in-depth understanding of the practical application of supply chain resilience in a humanitarian context and the specific challenges and opportunities that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic for MSF Log. It also highlights the importance of information systems and humanitarian culture in maintaining the supply chain resilience. The findings of this research can be used as a guide for other humanitarian organizations to improve their supply chain resilience in times of crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected around 216 countries and territories worldwide and more than 2000 cities in India, alone. The smart cities mission (SCM) in India started in 2015 and 100 smart cities were selected to be initiated with a total project cost of INR 2031.72 billion. Smart city strategies play an important role in implementing the measures adopted by the government such as the issuance of social distancing regulations and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies. However, there is no research reported on the role of smart cities strategies in managing the COVID-19 outbreak in developing countries.

This paper aims to address the research gap in smart cities, technology and healthcare management through a review of the literature and primary data collected using semi-structured interviews.

Each city is unique and has different challenges, the study revealed six key findings on how smart cities in India managed the COVID-19 outbreak. They used: Integrated Command and Control Centres, Artificial Intelligence and Innovative Application-based Solutions, Smart Waste Management Solutions, Smart Healthcare Management, Smart Data Management and Smart Surveillance.

This paper contributes to informing policymakers of key lessons learnt from the management of COVID-19 in developing countries like India from a smart cities’ perspective. This paper draws on the six Cs for the implications directed to leaders and decision-makers to rethink and act on COVID-19. The six Cs are: Crisis management leadership, Credible communication, Collaboration, Creative governance, Capturing knowledge and Capacity building.

This chapter describes the business goals, purpose, and strategy of public defense and military services. It reinforces defense and military organizations’ fundamental bureaucratic administrative culture (Tier 1). The authors describe the influence that political appointees as leaders may play in shaping public sector cultures. The bureaucratic culture of diplomacy is deconstructed, and each of the five layers is described in detail. Additionally, the authors explain why focusing on the beliefs layer is the dominant layer and the essential starting point for analysis in military cultures. The public service culture (Tier 2) is a mediating and grounding culture for the military. It is firmly grounded in the foundational values of the state. The chapter outlines the landscape of external influencing cultures (Tier 3) in the defense and military landscape. Finally, the potential value and challenges of developing internal knowledge, learning, and collaboration (KLC) cultures are explored.

This paper presents a survey of research into interactive robotic systems for the purpose of identifying the state of the art capabilities as well as the extant gaps in this emerging field. Communication is multimodal. Multimodality is a representation of many modes chosen from rhetorical aspects for its communication potentials. The author seeks to define the available automation capabilities in communication using multimodalities that will support a proposed Interactive Robot System (IRS) as an AI mounted robotic platform to advance the speed and quality of military operational and tactical decision making.

This review will begin by presenting key developments in the robotic interaction field with the objective of identifying essential technological developments that set conditions for robotic platforms to function autonomously. After surveying the key aspects in Human Robot Interaction (HRI), Unmanned Autonomous System (UAS), visualization, Virtual Environment (VE) and prediction, the paper then proceeds to describe the gaps in the application areas that will require extension and integration to enable the prototyping of the IRS. A brief examination of other work in HRI-related fields concludes with a recapitulation of the IRS challenge that will set conditions for future success.

Using insights from a balanced cross section of sources from the government, academic, and commercial entities that contribute to HRI a multimodal IRS in military communication is introduced. Multimodal IRS (MIRS) in military communication has yet to be deployed.

Multimodal robotic interface for the MIRS is an interdisciplinary endeavour. This is not realistic that one can comprehend all expert and related knowledge and skills to design and develop such multimodal interactive robotic interface. In this brief preliminary survey, the author has discussed extant AI, robotics, NLP, CV, VDM, and VE applications that is directly related to multimodal interaction. Each mode of this multimodal communication is an active research area. Multimodal human/military robot communication is the ultimate goal of this research.

A multimodal autonomous robot in military communication using speech, images, gestures, VST and VE has yet to be deployed. Autonomous multimodal communication is expected to open wider possibilities for all armed forces. Given the density of the land domain, the army is in a position to exploit the opportunities for human–machine teaming (HMT) exposure. Naval and air forces will adopt platform specific suites for specially selected operators to integrate with and leverage this emerging technology. The possession of a flexible communications means that readily adapts to virtual training will enhance planning and mission rehearsals tremendously.

Interaction, perception, cognition and visualization based multimodal communication system is yet missing. Options to communicate, express and convey information in HMT setting with multiple options, suggestions and recommendations will certainly enhance military communication, strength, engagement, security, cognition, perception as well as the ability to act confidently for a successful mission.

The objective is to develop a multimodal autonomous interactive robot for military communications. This survey reports the state of the art, what exists and what is missing, what can be done and possibilities of extension that support the military in maintaining effective communication using multimodalities. There are some separate ongoing progresses, such as in machine-enabled speech, image recognition, tracking, visualizations for situational awareness, and virtual environments. At this time, there is no integrated approach for multimodal human robot interaction that proposes a flexible and agile communication. The report briefly introduces the research proposal about multimodal interactive robot in military communication.

Examining multilevel effects of financial and social performance of microfinance institutions (MFIs), the authors aim to investigate microfinance mission drift from the trend effect. The authors also seek to move the literature forward by decomposing the performance variance at different levels and examining whether and how much each level of analysis matters.

Growth curve modeling and variance decomposition analysis were conducted using a dataset consisting of 17,953 observations of 2,902 microfinance institutions in 122 countries from 1999 to 2017.

The study's result shows no evidence of mission drift in the microfinance industry. While MFIs improve their economic returns, they also increase the depth of outreach. In addition, firm-level heterogeneity is the dominant effect which explains 44% of the variance in microfinance financial performance (ROA) and 39% of the variance in social performance (Depth of outreach). The country-level is more critical in explaining financial performance (ROA) than social performance (Depth of outreach), accounting for 11 and 32% of the total variance, respectively. In particular, the interplay between the country-level and organizational-category level accounts for 9 and 11% of the total variance in financial performance (ROA) and social performance (Depth of outreach), respectively.

This study’s multilevel analysis of microfinance performances moves the literature forward by responding to the debate on microfinance mission drift and providing a comprehensive overview of both social and financial performance. By focusing on the trend effect, the result of our models shows that MFIs improve both financial and social performance to fulfill dual missions. The microfinance business model becomes sustainable over time. The study's results of country effect and its interaction effect with different organizational categories reveal the prominence of a good policy design on MFI's mission fulfillment.

This study aims to identify the main challenges to achieving humanitarian logistics in the context of United Nations peace missions in sub-Saharan Africa and to present suggestions for overcoming the logistical gaps encountered.

The methodological approach of the work focuses on the comparative case study of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic and The United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 2014 to 2021. The approach combined a systematic literature review with the authors’ empirical experience as participant observers in each mission, combining theory and practice.

As a result, six common challenges were identified for carrying out humanitarian logistics in the three peace missions. Each challenge revealed a logistical gap for which an appropriate solution was suggested based on the best practices found in the case study of each mission.

This paper presents limitations when addressing the logistical analysis based on only three countries under the UN mission as a case study, as well as conceiving that certain flaws in the system, in the observed period, are already in the process of correction with the adoption of the 2016–2021 strategy by the UN Global Logistic Cluster. The authors suggest that further studies can be carried out by expanding the number of cases or using countries where other bodies (AU, NATO or EU) work.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first comparative case study of humanitarian logistics on the three principal missions of the UN conducted by academics and practitioners.