Strategic Capacity Research Articles

Strategic capacity portfolio planning under demand uncertainty and technological change

High-tech industries are experiencing accelerated technological change, which causes rapid obsolescence of invested manufacturing equipment. In such environment, the impact of the new technologies must be carefully considered while making decisions involved in resource acquisition or replacement. In this study, we consider a capacity planning problem with the presence of uncertain magnitude and timing of new technologies and stochastic demands. This study targets of determining (1) the most profitable technology portfolio investment, (2) the corresponding resource levels, and (3) the production plan to fully utilize the capacity. The research problem is modeled by Markov decision process (MDP). The objective is to maximize expected profit under demand and technology uncertainties. For solution efficiency, the Intlinprog solver is utilized to find the optimal action at each decision epoch, accompanying with a parallel computing mechanism to relax the computational burden of the MDP model. Through experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, and highlight the importance of considering uncertain factors.

Analysis of the State Universal Basic Education Board's Execution of Strategic Capacity Building and Teachers' Job Satisfaction in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

This study examined the relationship between the State Universal Basic Education Board's execution of strategic capacity building and teachers' job satisfaction in Akwa Ibom State. One objective, research question and null hypothesis were formulated to guide the study. The correlational design was adopted. The population of the study consisted of 12,566 public primary school teachers in Akwa Ibom State. A multi-stage approach was used to select a sample size of 1,750 teachers. Two researcher-developed instruments namely ‘Executing Strategic Capacity Building Questionnaire (ESCBQ) and ‘Teachers’ Job Satisfaction Questionnaire (TJSQ)’ were both completed by teachers and used for data collection. The instruments were validated by three experts from the University of Uyo. The Cronbach’s Alpha Statistic was used to ascertain the reliability coefficients of .832 and .790 respectively. Correlation (r) was used to answer research question while the PPMC analysis was used to test hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that strategic capacity building has a significant relationship with teachers’ job satisfaction. It is therefore recommended that SUBEB management should strategically design and carryout capacity building programmes for teachers based on needs assessment that leads to successful implementation of educational strategies. Keywords: Strategy execution, capacity building, job satisfaction DOI : 10.7176/JEP/10-5-03

Dress Rehearsal: Ephemeral Urbanism, Participation, the City and Food Sustainability

Food waste threatens the sustainability of our planet. This paper aims to explain, through references to the project Dress Rehearsal, which took place in Barcelona in 2016, how ephemeral design can showcase and promote environmental change. Specifically, how certain tactical, temporary, and participative urban planning actions permit, through the strategic capacity of design, to ‘rehearse’ how a city could behave in coherence with the challenges posed by our current food production and consumption system.

The Trades Union Congress 150 years on

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to reflect on how the UK’s Trade Union Congress, in the 150th year of its formation, has been responding to the significant changes in the labour market, working practices and union decline. The paper considers Trades Union Congress (TUC) initiatives to recruit and organise new groups of workers as it struggles to adapt to the new world of work many workers are experiencing. Although the paper reviews progress in this regard it also considers current and future challenges all of which are becoming increasingly urgent as the current cohort of union membership is aging and presents a demographic time bomb unless new strategies and tactics are adopted to bring in new groups of workers – particularly younger workers.Design/methodology/approachThis is a review paper so it mainly draws on writings (both academic and practitioner) on trade union strategy and tactics in relations to organising approaches and in particularly the TUC’s initiatives from the period of “New Unionism” onwards.FindingsThe authors note that while unions have managed to retain a presence in workplaces and industries where they membership and recognition, there has, despite a “turn to organising” been less success than was perhaps hoped for when new organising initiatives were introduced in 1998. In order to expand the bases of organisation into new workplaces and in new constituencies there needs to be a move away from the “institutional sclerosis” that has prevented unions adapting to the changing nature of employment and the labour market restructuring. The paper concludes that in order to effect transformative change requires leaders to develop strategic capacity and innovation among staff and the wider union membership. This may require unions to rethink the way that they operate and be open to doing thing radically different.Originality/valueThe paper’s value is that it provides a comprehensive overview of the TUC’s role in attempting to inject an organising culture with the UK union movement by drawing out some of the key debates on this topic from both scholarly and practitioner writings over the last few decades.

Identifying strategic maintenance capacity for accidental damage occurrence in aircraft operations

Airline operators face accidental damages on their fleet of aircraft as part of operational practice. Individual occurrences are hard to predict; consequently, the approach towards repairing accidental damage is reactive in aircraft maintenance practice. However, by aggregating occurrence data and predicting future occurrence rates, it is possible to predict future long-term (strategic) demand for maintenance capacity. In this paper, a novel approach for integration of reliability modelling and inventory control is presented. Here, the concept of a base stock policy has been translated to the maintenance slot capacity problem to determine long-term cost-optimal capacity. Demand has been modelled using a superposed Non-homogeneous Poisson Process (NHPP). A case study has been performed on damage data from a fleet of Boeing 777 aircraft. The results prove the feasibility of adopting an integrated approach towards strategic capacity identification, using real-life data to predict future damage occurrence and associated maintenance slot requirements.

North Vietnamese Diplomatic Posture during the Vietnam War

North Vietnamese Diplomatic Posture during the Vietnam War Carlyle A. Thayer (bio) According to Oriana Skylar Mastro, her book The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime "is designed to provide the first comprehensive framework for understanding when and how states incorporate talking with the enemy into their war-fighting strategies" (p. 6). The framework of analysis aims to explain "how states calculate the costs of conversation throughout a war" (p. 126). This framework is important, she argues, because the existing theoretical literature does not explain how and why adversaries transition from war or pure fighting to "talking while fighting" (p. 1) and "either ignores or gives a shallow treatment as to how states approach talking to the enemy" (p. 5). As a consequence, "states currently lack a framework for understanding an opponent's approach to wartime diplomacy and how to best shape it" (p. 1). The book argues that diplomacy and warfighting are integral and interactive parts of a state's wartime strategy rather than two separate behaviors (p. 3). Mastro develops several concepts in her analysis—diplomatic posture, strategic costs, and strategic capacity. It is necessary to provide a brief description of each concept in order to fully understand her thesis. Diplomatic posture is defined as a "belligerent's willingness to engage in direct talks with its enemy at a given point in a war" (p. 6). A state's diplomatic posture can be "either open or closed with the enemy at a given time" (p. 6) and can shift during war. According to Mastro, "when costs are considered high, [states] will choose a closed diplomatic posture. If a belligerent deems the costs low enough, it will shift to an open diplomatic posture" (p. 14). Strategic cost is defined as "the likelihood an adversary will infer weakness in the form of reduced war aims, degraded ability to fight, or waning resolve from an open diplomatic posture," and strategic capacity is understood as "the ability of the enemy to respond to such an inference by escalating, intensifying or prolonging the fighting" (p. 126). Mastro applies her framework to four case studies: Chinese diplomatic posture in the Korean War, Chinese diplomatic posture in the Sino-Indian War, Indian diplomatic posture in the Sino-Indian War, and North Vietnamese diplomatic posture in the Vietnam War. This review focuses [End Page 184] on the fourth case study, North Vietnamese diplomatic posture in the Vietnam War. This case study is copiously sourced, with reference to over two hundred Vietnamese Communist Party and government documents that the United States captured and translated during the war as well as interviews with party, diplomatic, and military officials in Hanoi (p. 103). These primary sources are supplemented with memoirs and the extant academic literature. The case study is confined to the three-year period from March 1965, when the United States commenced bombing North Vietnam and introduced ground troops in South Vietnam, to April 1968, when North Vietnam responded positively to President Lyndon Johnson's offer to seek a diplomatic solution to the Vietnam War. Almost immediately after the United States entered the Vietnam War in 1965, it adopted an open diplomatic posture toward North Vietnam. According to Mastro, the United States supported over two thousand attempts to open talks with North Vietnam without preconditions during the three-year period under review (p. 101). Washington adopted this open diplomatic posture because the costs of conversation were low and U.S. strategic capacity was immense. Indeed, the United States increased combat troop levels progressively from several thousand in late 1963 to 400,000 by 1966. It also expanded the air war over North Vietnam, flying over twice as many sorties and dropping more than two-and-half times the ordnance in 1966 than in the previous year. The United States targeted North Vietnam's petroleum, oil, and lubricant storage sites and bombed closer to urban areas than before. By contrast, throughout the three-year period, North Vietnam adopted a closed diplomatic posture and steadfastly rebuffed all U.S. and third-party efforts to open direct bilateral discussions without preconditions. The country signaled its diplomatic posture when it released its "Four Points" in April 1965 after the...

Costly Conversations in South Asia: 1962 and Beyond

Costly Conversations in South Asia:1962 and Beyond John H. Gill (bio) The "costly conversations" model that Oriana Skylar Mastro develops in her new book The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime provides a useful new approach for interpreting the 1962 Sino-Indian War. To assess the applicability of this model, Mastro examines the behaviors of the Chinese and Indian governments during this brief but consequential conflict. As a limited interstate war fought in Asia during the first two decades of the Cold War, this conflict makes a good match for the chapters she devotes to China in the Korean War and North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and affords an opportunity to investigate the actions and policies of both belligerents. This essay will review these China and India studies and suggest another South Asian situation that might benefit from analysis through the same theoretical lens. Mastro defines China's diplomatic stance in 1962 as "open" both prior to and during the war. That is, Beijing expressed a desire for direct communications with New Delhi without imposing any preconditions. Indeed, it made such offers publicly and repeatedly. New Delhi, on the other hand, insisted throughout the war that it would only engage in talks after Chinese forces had withdrawn to prewar positions. Its diplomatic stance was, therefore, "closed" in terms of the costly conversations model. Mastro then proceeds to apply her approach to explicate why the two sides made these strategic choices by assessing the respective leaderships' views of the "strategic costs of conversation" through the prism of two factors: (1) "the likelihood that the enemy will interpret an open diplomatic posture as a sign of weakness" (p. 14) and (2) "how the enemy may change its strategy in response to such an interpretation" (p. 7). She posits that a state will only turn to an open posture if it thinks that its own strength and resiliency have been demonstrated and concludes that the enemy lacks the "strategic capacity" to prolong or escalate the war. She looks first at China (chap. 3) and then at India (chap. 4), a division that could cause some confusion of chronology for readers not familiar with the 1962 war. However, this [End Page 180] structure facilitates the focus on each in sequence and is thus suited to the study's aim of examining each state's diplomatic stance during the conflict. The 1962 Sino-Indian War resulted from the confluence of multiple developments in the post–World War II era. In part, it was caused by a dispute over the possession of territory encompassing more than 130,000 square kilometers along the 3,500-kilometer border that divides the two countries. Though still unresolved today, this dispute was especially acute at the time because it involved two large, newly independent powers who were proud and highly sensitive to issues of sovereignty as they sought to establish themselves as global leaders in the evolving postwar, postcolonial order.1 Of particular importance for China was the status of Tibet, which was harshly incorporated into the People's Republic in 1951 and the scene of unrest and rebellion through 1959.2 India's efforts to assert its claims along the border and to contest what New Delhi saw as illegal occupation of Indian soil thus deepened Beijing's anxieties regarding foreign support for Tibetan separatism.3 These fears were accentuated in 1961 when India, pursuing Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's ill-conceived "forward policy," advanced small army patrols and outposts into the mountains to counter what Indian leaders saw as Chinese encroachment. There was also an ideological element of the dispute. Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders viewed "big bourgeoisie India" as part of the "anti-China tide" sponsored by the United States and other capitalist enemies.4 Determined to teach India an enduring lesson, China launched a series of well-planned "self-defensive counterattacks"5 on October 20, 1962, that tore apart India's thin defenses. Chinese forces halted on October 24 to create an opportunity for talks, but India rejected negotiations without a Chinese withdrawal. After waiting three weeks, Chinese forces resumed their offensive on November 16, inflicted further humiliating defeats on...

The Dynamics of Conflict and Diplomacy in Asia

The Dynamics of Conflict and Diplomacy in Asia Prashanth Parameswaran (bio) Though the observation attributed to Winston Churchill that "to jaw-jaw is better than to war-war" is often quoted by officials today to express a preference for peace over war as separate outcomes, the complex interactions between diplomacy and conflict are still far from fully understood.1 In The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, Oriana Skylar Mastro offers an insightful treatment of the important but underexamined question of what drives warring parties to pursue diplomacy. Mastro argues that calculations about strategic costs—specifically, interpretations of weakness on the part of the enemy ("adverse inference") and how the enemy may change its strategy in response to that interpretation ("strategic capacity")—drive the extent of willingness on the part of states to talk to the enemy. Mastro's original framework for explaining wartime diplomatic posture provides a useful window into how states calculate the costs of conversation during war and generates clear and specific predictions for testing against alternative explanations. The four main cases examined in the book—China in the Korean War, China in the Sino-Indian War, India in the Sino-Indian War, and North Vietnam in the Vietnam War—proceed clearly, with keen attention to various decision points within these conflicts as well as to how they affect the timing and conditions for continuities and changes in diplomatic postures. The clearly defined case selection criteria Mastro adopts upfront does leave out some episodes of conflict in Asia during the Cold War, including the India-Pakistan conflicts and the Sino-Vietnamese War. But the four episodes examined in the book do nonetheless represent significant and diverse cases, with variation in regime type, relative capabilities, [End Page 174] and diplomatic posture while also controlling for regional effects and international conditions by restricting the cases to a twenty-year period (p. 31). The additional explorations of the United States in both the Korean War (pp. 56–60) and the Vietnam War (pp. 122–24) are also useful in extending the argument, even if the level of detail provided is much less than in the four primary case studies. Overall, the book makes a persuasive and nuanced case for the explanatory power of the costly conversations thesis in these four episodes and three wars. While Mastro's wartime diplomatic posture framework itself initially draws a clear distinction between low and high strategic costs and a dichotomy between open and closed diplomatic postures, the exploration of the cases themselves repeatedly acknowledges the complexity that is evident to those familiar with these dynamics. This includes China's hedging of its bets even as it moved to an open diplomatic posture during the Korean War (pp. 49–51) and the limited openness that India displayed during the Sino-Indian War even as its behavior still fit the definition of a closed diplomatic posture (p. 95). The book also engages with alternative explanations thoroughly in each of the four cases. As Mastro herself acknowledges, other accounts do place greater weight on the role of rationalist, ideational, domestic, and international factors in aspects of each case, which is no surprise given the involvement of outside powers in all three wars as well as the role of dominant personalities such as Mao Zedong and Jawaharlal Nehru. The book's approach of isolating and then testing alternative explanations against the evidence utilized has value in this respect, even if disagreements are likely to persist over important aspects, such as the extent to which internal politics implicitly shaped Nehru's decision-making during the Sino-Indian War or the inextricable link made in some accounts between domestic and international considerations in Mao's "continuous revolution" during the Korean War.2 For the most part, Mastro makes a convincing case that these other factors played a supporting but not dominant role in specific decisions that affected continuities and changes in wartime diplomatic posture. The book also raises questions about how the argument could be further tested. For instance, although the strategic logic of the costly conversations thesis may not be time-bound, more recent cases could help test the [End Page 175] argument in contemporary settings...

STORMY WEATHER ON HIGHER EDUCATION: GLOBALIZATION AND CHANGE

ABSTRACTS The paper tackles the issue of the changes in universities, induced by the internationalization of higher education at the turn of the Millennium and the ensuing national reforms that have spread all over the world. Using a meso-approach of the organization, governance and performance of universities, it suggests a typology based on the tensions they experiment between two regimes of worth – the traditional one that favors “reputation” as a social evaluation vs the new one, build around a metrics-based “excellence” assessment. It finally questions the most sensitive issues and challenges they face and how they behave depending on their strategic capacity to face their resources and constraints.

Macroeconomic conditions for the growth of competitiveness of Russian companies

Ensuring competitiveness of the Russian companies is the key element among the national priorities of the country. The objective of the research is the definition of macroeconomic conditions for the growth of competitiveness of Russian companies. The achievement of this goal provides the consideration of conditions for the growth of competitiveness of Russian companies at the macroeconomic level, which include the high import dependence, the decrease in the production efficiency and labour productivity, low investment attractiveness and innovative activity, as well as the determination of the priority of the increase in the level of competitiveness of Russian companies. The major circumstance is the transition to the innovative model of economic development, assuming the implementation of technologies on the basis of the advanced knowledge. The susceptibility of the companies to innovations is stimulated by the digital technologies that allow processing huge data arrays and excluding decision-making in the conditions of uncertainty or the lack of information. Company management technologies (such as PLM system, blockchain technologies, Internet of things) are created to improve the conditions of realization of the strategic capacity of the company. Thus, keeping the digital assets gives additional competitive benefits to the companies, and the level of competitiveness of the companies will be defined by the level of their digitalization.

PPPs: Public Costs and Risks for Private Profits

After the generally acknowledged failure of privatization, public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been promoted as a better means for private interests to secure lucrative rents at public expense. PPPs are supposed to reduce the fiscal burden, fill the resource gap for much needed investment to achieve economic development and to better provide infrastructure and services. These claims are grossly exaggerated in light of actual experience. The private sector, for example, is supposed to be better in risk assessment and management; but all too often, the public sector ends up bearing the bulk of the risk, worsening fiscal burdens contrary to what has been promised. Through revenue guarantees to the private partner, PPPs socialize risks, enabling private gains. PPPs in social sectors, such as health, are particularly problematic as they tend to adversely affect access, thus undermining universal health coverage. PPPs have also distorted national investment and development strategies. Thus, by and large, PPPs generally do not serve the public interest well. Hence, public alternatives, including procurement, have to be considered, before governments commit to PPPs. Instead of promoting PPPs, such as ‘blended finance’ arrangements for aid delivery, sincere development partners should empower governments through appropriate strategic capacity building and budget support.

Maskirovka in Latin America: Russia’s Pivot toward the Western Hemisphere

Throughout its history Russia has played a significant international role thanks to its strategic location, rich resources, and capacity to influence its neighbor states. In geopolitical terms, it ...

“You Can’t Just Start and Expect It to Work”: An Investigation of Strategic Capacity Building in Community Sport Organizations

Capacity building is a targeted approach to addressing organizational challenges by focusing development efforts on specific needs. Utilizing Millar and Doherty’s process model of capacity building, the purpose of this study was to (a) gain insight into the nature of the conditions and processes of capacity building in the community sport context and (b) examine the veracity of the proposed model. Interviews were conducted with organizational members from two community sport organizations that were purposefully chosen and happened to have introduced new programs: one that experienced successful capacity building that enhanced program and service delivery and one that experienced unsuccessful capacity building where organizational needs were not effectively addressed. Findings revealed that the thoroughness of the needs assessment, the selection of appropriate capacity building strategies, and readiness to build capacity were key factors in the (lack of) success of the capacity building efforts. Implications for practice and future research on organizational capacity building are presented.

Overcoming Collective Action Problems Facing Chinese Workers: Lessons from Four Protests against Walmart

In contrast to various structural accounts of collective inaction or short-lived contention of Chinese workers, the authors take an agency-centered approach to explain how the few sustained labor protests during closure bargaining develop against all odds. They suggest that workers’ capacity to resolve collective action problems is essential to understanding why a few contending workers are able to sustain protests whereas many others fail to do so. They argue that workplace representatives and external labor activists are crucial for helping Chinese workers resolve the collective action problems that prevent the formation of sustained labor protests. Their comparative analysis of four protests against Walmart store closures—including one unusually long, one relatively sustained, and two short-lived—shows how presence and strategic capacity of workplace representatives and external labor activists shape protest duration. The authors conclude by discussing lessons learned from these cases of closure bargaining for future development of labor contention in China.

La influencia del compromiso organizacional y orientación al aprendizaje sobre la innovación en las PYMES

<p>Innovation is a strategic capacity for organizations as they face new and greater challenges, such as processing a vast amount of information and knowledge, as well as responding quickly to increasingly uncertain changing environments. The objective of this is to evaluate, in an empirical way, a model that presents three causal relationships between theoretical constructs in a group of 250 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the state of Aguascalientes. The first one refers to whether organizational commitment has a positive and significant influence on the levels of learning orientation; the second is verifying if the organizational commitment has a positive and significant influence on the levels of inno­vation; and finally, inquiring if the learning orientation has a positive and significant impact on the level of innovation. The proposed model—which presents good adjustments—is validated through structural analysis using the confirmatory modeling strategy. Results are presented and they indicate that organi­zational commitment does have a positive and significant impact on the levels of learning orientation in the organization. Furthermore, learning orientation influences in a positive and significant way SMEs’ innovation in Aguascalientes. However, organizational commitment fails to show a significant positive influence on the innovation of SMEs in Aguascalientes. </p>

Feminist Activism and the Politics of Reform: When and Why Do States Respond to Demands for Gender Equality Policies?

ABSTRACTUnder what conditions is gender equality policy advocacy successful? This article examines a segment of the largely quantitative comparative political science literature that seeks to answer this question. Recent scholarship emphasizes such factors as the strength of women's movements and the forms of opposition to which their policy demands give rise. However, one consequence of this approach is that the role of strategic choices made by feminist policy advocates is underestimated in explaining their successes. The article argues that understanding variation in the outcomes achieved by women's rights advocates requires close attention to the strategic capacity of policy entrepreneurs, assessed in terms of three inter‐related activities: (1) ‘framing’ policy demands; (2) forming and managing civic alliances; and (3) engaging with state entities without compromising organizational autonomy.

Controlled environments: An urban research agenda on microclimatic enclosure

Controlled environments create specialist forms of microclimatic enclosure that are explicitly designed to transcend the emerging limitations and increasing turbulence in existing modes of urban climatic conditions. Across different urban contexts, anthropogenic change is creating urban conditions that are too hot, cold, humid, wet, windy, etc. to support the continued and reliable environments that are suitable for the reproduction of food, ecologies and human life. In response, there are emerging forms of experimentation with new logics of microclimatic governance that seek to enclose environments within membranes and develop artificially created internal ecologies that are precisely customised to meet the needs of the plant, animal or human occupants of these new forms of enclosure. While recognising that enclosure has a long history in urbanism, design and architecture, we ask if a new logic of microclimatic governance is emerging in specific response to the ecological changes of the Anthropocene. The paper sets out a research agenda to investigate whether the ability of cities, states and corporates to design and construct internalised environments is now a strategic capacity that is critical to developing the knowledge, practices and technologies to reconfigure new forms of urban climatic governance that address the problems of climate change and ensure urban reproduction under conditions of turbulence.

Strengthening the strategic capacity of public universities: The role of internal governance models

Governments in Europe have emphasized the development of more autonomous public universities over the last couple of decades. Often, the aim of these reform policies has been to stimulate to a more competitive and agile higher education sector, where increased formal autonomy is perceived as a key condition to strengthen the strategic capacity of universities. These reforms have resulted in considerable shifts in the internal governance models of some universities, while others have kept their traditional governance models. In this article, instrumental and cultural perspectives derived from organizational theory are used as lenses to compare how universities with different internal governance models organize and structure their strategic development processes. Our findings suggest that internal governance models have little impact on the design and organization of strategic processes. In conclusion, it is argued that changes in internal governance arrangements alone are not enough to drive transformation in higher education institutions, and the issue of formal institutional autonomy is intimately linked to how various policy instruments at the system level are designed and coordinated.

“It’s hard to be strategic when your hair is on fire”: alternative food movement leaders’ motivation and capacity to act

Despite decades of struggle against the industrial food system, academics still question the impact of the alternative food movement. We consider what food movement leaders themselves say about their motivation to act and their capacity to scale up their impact. Based on semi-structured interviews with 27 food movement leaders in Michigan, our findings complicate the established academic narratives that revolve around notions of prefigurative and oppositional politics, and suggest pragmatic strategies that could scale up the pace and scope of food movement impacts. In contrast to the apolitical perspective some scholars see guiding alternative food movements, local leaders we interviewed see the food system from a structural-political lens. Though some see strength in fragmentation, most are not under the illusion that they can work alone and aspire to build their collective strength further. Concerns about organizational survival and conflicting views about the goals of the food movement, however, present ongoing challenges. Ultimately, we argue that there is a middle ground food movement leaders can walk between prefigurative and oppositional politics, one that still attempts to intentionally change the state, while also maintaining the inventiveness that can come from autonomous, grassroots initiatives. Specifically, interviewees suggested that increased strategic capacity around policy advocacy, critical food systems education, and negotiation could help them extend cross-movement networks and mainstream more equitable food policies, while continuing to experiment with customized solutions.

Higher Education Institutions as Strategic Actors

How to assess and enhance the strategic capacity of universities? This article suggests a managerial perspective derived from evidence-based social science knowledge. It lists major facets any local strategizing should address. It underlines the key role endogenous organizational capabilities play to make it happen or not in a sustainable manner. Three sets of social properties are evidenced: the way academic human resources are actually managed, the cultural norms appropriated by its members about their affiliation to their institution as a community, and the organizational governance at work between the various parts of the institution. Reminding us that the capacity to strategize is an outcome of actual organizational fabrication processes, the article also lists a series of booby-traps to avoid.