Strategic Maneuvering Research Articles

Confrontational Argumentative Strategies in the Discourse of Foreign Policy Experts

The aim of this study is to explore the discursive practices of foreign policy experts. While policy decisions involving war and peace keep people alarmed all over the globe, most of these decisions are shaped by policy experts who work on influencing public opinion through the media (Manheim, 2011). This study adopts a critical discursive stance and uses argumentation analysis to examine the ideological backdrop to the discourse of thirty opinion articles authored by American foreign policy experts in print media. Drawing on the Pragma-dialectical method of augmentation analysis (van Eemeren and Grootendorst, 2004), and more particularly on its notion of strategic maneuvering, the analysis examines the confrontational strategies used by this group of experts and attempts to determine the rhetorical goals pursued by these strategic maneuvers.

Addressing the Challenges of Industrial Transition Processes – the Case of Photovoltaics Industry

The aim of the article is to explore the managerial practices that enable capitalizing on the critical instability during an on-going transition period in the life-cycle of an industry. The investigation followed a qualitative approach using a field-based case study method and a longitudinal design. Multiple data collection methods were adopted to reduce a systematic bias in the gathered data and to develop the case, shaped by the context and emergent data. The gathered rich data enabled the confrontation of industry transformation signals with the strategic maneuvering exhibited by the investigated firm. Observed options involved imitating, repositioning, exiting or entering. The study is a part of a larger project financed by National Science Centre of Poland (NCN) - 2013/11/D/HS4/03965

Battle for dominant design: A decision-making model

This paper synthesizes, analyses and organizes the factors that can be decisive in a battle for a dominant design. The result is the construction of a rational decision-making model, where the relevant factors are grouped into three blocks – market, technology, and complementary assets. First, the firm must decide on the strategic manoeuvres that it is going to deploy to be able to capture the market that it has created or invaded. Second, technologically, it must decide whether to compete with its design made public or private, open or closed. Finally, it must plan its access to complementary assets without which it would be impossible to exploit the new design in a mainstream market. The proposed model is integrative in character and practical in approach, and it helps in forming a strategy and decision-making in the usual design wars today. It is aimed to contribute to a literature in which the analysis of factors is usually done in a fragmented form, without the systematic approach that would facilitate rational and dynamic decision making.

Negotiating the Mines: The Culture of Safety in the Indian Coalmines, 1895–1970

This article explains the way mineworkers negotiated workplace hazards and articulated their ideas of safety. Mineworkers increasingly attained mining sense and made use of it, thereby surviving terrible working conditions and seeking to mend the accident-control mechanism. The formation and function of their mining sense were part of the industrialization process. It involved mineworkers’ particular ways of adaptation—quixotic and prudent—to the demand made by work relations. The miners’ unions strove to push the safety regime beyond voluntary codes of discipline and practical and technological solutions. They invested in legislative disciplining and sought informed safety-supervisory controls. They got involved in ‘civic engagement’ with agreeable investigators and legislators within the colonial context and afterwards. Confronted with the limits of such measures, the rank-and-file moved on, from the latter half of the 1950s to direct action in the very mining faces, thereby insisting on the right to withdrawal from danger. The historiographies which argued that Indian workers knowingly acquiesced to perilous mining to maintain livelihoods inadequately lend us the safety ideas shared and action at protection prevention undertaken by mineworkers. This article shows that Indian mineworkers reinforced the safety campaign through their strategic manoeuvring in legislative and workplace struggles as did their counterparts in Britain and some other societies.

Multi-criteria evaluation in paradigmatic perspectives of agricultural environmental management

Agriculture is one of the primary activities that affects the environment due to natural resources consumption. Therefore, systematic environmental management for the agricultural sector is required. This study was conducted to analyze the paradigmatic perspective and strategies of agricultural environmental management in Iran. Considering basic criteria of environmental management, three paradigms of frontier economics, eco-development and deep ecology were compared using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The AHP, is a multi-criteria decision making techniques which is useful when there are different alternatives or indicators in decision making. Comparisons were based on the viewpoints of 117 policy makers, superior managers and main elites and agriculture sector researchers. Environmental managerial strategies also have been studied. Findings revealed paradoxes among the paradigmatic perspectives and selected strategies of different agricultural stakeholders which reduce their effective interactions. Frontier economics is the dominant viewpoint of key agricultural policy makers and other governmental executives. They prefer independent reactive strategies to cope with environmental challenges. Agricultural researchers and private sector authorities believe in eco-development. They have selected cooperative proactive strategies in this regard. Finally, deep ecology has the highest priority according to environmental specialists, who endorse strategic maneuvering and believe in modifying, rethinking and redesigning previous strategies. A paradigm shift, as well as consistency between paradigmatic perspectives and executive strategies, is suggested.

From paradigm shift to retooling: the foundation and maintenance of the AKP

ABSTRACTThis article examines the foundation of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP) after a paradigm shift and its maintenance through retooling, which involves strategic positionings and tactical manoeuvres within its new paradigm. The positionings and manoeuvres that the party took vis-à-vis states of exception have been imperative for its survival in government. The main argument of the article is that the AKP retooled itself in the face of crises rather than going through a paradigmatic change, that is to say, resorting back to the Islamism of the party elite’s origins, in Kuhnian terms. Through the fluidity of its discourse and the unrivalled charisma of its leader, the AKP has -multiple times- changed the center of gravity of its discourse and policies without having to disarticulate its founding political imaginary. Neither its recently increased nationalism nor authoritarianism was the result of an ideological orientation, just like the democratic reforms in its initial years. They were mostly by-products of survival efforts at power positioning, through retooling.

Confrontational Maneuvering by Dissociation in Spokespersons’ Argumentative Replies at the Press Conferences of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Within the framework of pragma-dialectics, this paper analyzes the use of dissociations in the spokespersons’ replies at the press conferences held by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 2015 and 2017. As shown in the research results, to cut down the authority of their opponents in criticizing China and to convince the international general public of the Chinese standpoints, four subtypes of dissociation are used, which can be differentiated as: “distorted” Term I versus “authentic” Term II, “ambiguous” Term I versus “univocal” Term II, “broadened” Term I versus “exact” Term II, and “narrowed” Term I versus “exact” Term II. The strategic maneuvering carried out by the spokespersons in confronting their immediate opponents by means of the various subtypes of dissociation is in the first place directed at their primary audience, i.e. the international general public. To make a convincing case, in using dissociations the spokespersons not only adapt in their strategic maneuvering to the demands of their primary audience but also in their selection from the topical potential and the presentational devices.

Si Đinpingov autoritarizam, kinеska spoljna politika i indija

China's President Xi Jinping has placed great emphasis on power consolidation, focusing on domestic restructuring to enhance the centrality of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its communist ideology. This has compelled political pundits to mull over the bearing of a strong authoritarian Chinese regime on Xi Jinping's foreign policy. China is already casting strong regional maritime advances and leveraging its economic might over its continental periphery. In this regard, tensions are rising in the Indo-Pacific region with countries like India and Japan coalescing to negate China's assertiveness. Nonetheless, the new security architecture of Asia demands balanced strategic manoeuvring, exemplified by China and India pushing their bilateral ties forward while striking new deals with other like-minded countries.

Alliances as Dynamic Capability to Support Organizational Transformation: Empirical Findings from a State-Owned Enterprise

Abstract State-owned companies are typically trapped in a bureaucratic system that means they experience difficulties undertaking changes and adapting to environmental changes. Whenever these companies attempt a strategic maneuver, a series of complex bureaucratic procedures must be followed. As a result, the companies are late in responding to environmental changes. This study discusses how the state-owned companies transform their organization with the support of dynamic capabilities. XT Square, a company owned by the local government in Indonesia, is used as the subject of analysis. XT Square is engaged in property. During the course of its organizational transformation, the company found it difficult to fit with customers’ needs because of the difficulties in understanding market conditions. The company then established alliances with other firms to overcome resource shortages. The results of the analysis demonstrate that the process of building these alliances was not linear; rather, it was iterative in nature. At a certain level, XT Square is required to undertake trial and error. At the end of the paper, a suggestion for further research is provided.

Divide to unite

Abstract In dispute mediation, mediators, perhaps counterintuitively, make the disagreement between parties explicit and formulate their interventions on the disagreement in such a way that the disagreement is made manageable. In this paper, three functions of identifying and elucidating the parties’ disagreement that demonstrate the importance of making disagreement salient – (1) uncovering real issues, (2) emphasizing conflict ownership, (3) making disagreements manageable – are presented. Corpora of mediation simulation transcripts are used as empirical bases for the analyses of the means by which mediators make disagreement explicit (the how) and for what specific functions they do so (the why). The three aspects of strategic maneuvering (van Eemeren 2010) are used to analyze how mediators construct the interventions on the disagreement in terms of: (a) the topics they select from the topical potential, (b) the adjustment of interventions to suit their intended addressee(s), and (c) what presentational devices are used.

The Effective and/or the Reasonable: Border Crossing in Strategic Maneuvering

Abstract The main aim of an argumentative speech act complex, as defined in argumentation theory, is to resolve a difference of opinion by advancing a constellation of reasons brought up by the arguer in order to justify the acceptability of a standpoint. In order to achieve one’s goal, the arguer is entitled to employ strategic maneuvering, a process through which a balance between reasonableness and effectiveness is to be established, and the aim of which is to move towards the best position in the actual context of argumentation. A prototypical example of applying strategic maneuvering is that of political speeches where speakers frequently achieve their goals by the rhetorical means of persuasion and manipulation, by misleading language use. The speaker’s orientation towards finding the best position will be followed through the analysis of dialogues taken from the TV series House of Cards.

What argumentation theory can teach us about commercials: Strategic maneuvering and the ‘tulip test’

The paper seeks to show that the theory of strategic maneuvering, the most recent version of the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, can make vital contribution to understanding how commercials are designed and defended against legal challenges. If commercials can be subjected to argumentation-theoretic analysis, that would also show that the idea that commercials never constitute genuine arguments is mistaken. We will begin by sketching the pragma-dialectical approach and the theory of strategic maneuvering, then we apply the latter to two cases: the argument in a commercial aiming to persuade customers that Dove Intensive Cream moisturizes better than Nivea’s similar product, and the argument given by Dove’s manufacturer, Unilever, during the proceedings conducted by the Hungarian Competition Authority, which is intended to convince the Authority that the commercial is not deceptive.

1960-70년대 한국 건축계의 공간-담론에 관한 연구 : 「空間」과「建築」를 중심으로

The concept of space is one of the many concepts of architecture that distinguishes architecture from other disciplines. Notwithstanding its current ubiquitousness, the concept of space was actually created by handful of art historians in 19C Europe, and since then has changed its meaning and scope as a rather strategic maneuver for architecture to establish its theoretical and professional autonomy among competing fields. However in Korea, 35 years of forced modernization by Japanese colonial rule, and subsequent Korean war, the emergence of spatial terms in korean architectural discourse is quite late in 1960-70s. So, the focus of this study is to investigate how the concept of space emerged, what kind of spatial concepts were particularly developed, and how they are utilized in the post-war social reconstruction era, especially through 〈SPACE〉 and 〈ARCHITECTURE〉, the leading architectural medias since 1960.

Quest for Survival and Recognition: Insights into the Foreign Policy Endeavours of the Post-Soviet de facto States

There is lack of proper accounts of the foreign policy practices of de facto state authorities. There is no common understanding for whether de facto states have their own agency, or if these fledgling states are used as pawns within the context of wider strategic manoeuvring. This work proceeds from the assumption that de facto states are ‘states’ which, above all, seek to secure their physical survival, as well as to gain the status of legal subjectivity. For de facto states that depend on the effects of ‘smallness’; patron–client relations; and the opportunities provided by the engagement without recognition policy framework, this should ideally be the backbone of their foreign policy strategies. This comparative study on post-Soviet de facto states reveals that there are more opportunities to conduct an independent foreign policy than de facto states are able and willing to utilize. Once these entities have ensured their survival, this study demonstrates that the next steps towards gaining additional recognition might be perceived as no longer necessary.

Argument by Multimodal Metaphor as Strategic Maneuvering in TV Commercials: A Case Study

Drawing on insights from contemporary studies on conceptual metaphor and multimodal metaphor, the present study proposes a tentative analysis of multimodal metaphorical argument from the perspective of the extended theory of pragma-dialectics. A case, Liqun Commercial, is presented as an illustration. This commercial proves to use a conceptual metaphor, life is a journey, that underlies a multimodal metaphorical argument. The conceptual metaphor is highly acceptable in the cultural context of the Chinese target audience. Due to the restrictions imposed by the institutional context, the commercial tries to convince the audience by using implicit argumentative means. In this endeavor, multimodal metaphorical argument is used to enhance the commercial’s effectiveness by foregrounding through framing the aspects the protagonist desires to show and by using a strategy to evade sanctions for ignoring institutional constraints.

Mencius’s Strategies of Political Argumentation

Mencius, the second sage of Confucianism after Confucius, is well known for his subtle argumentative skills. Mencius did not develop his own argumentation theory, but argumentation practices, including his political argumentation, have enormously inspired later scholars in China to develop argumentation theories. In this paper, we try to reconstruct Mencius’s political argumentation from perspectives of both strategic maneuvering developed by van Eemeren et al. in argumentation theory and truth-functional logic in formal logic. The aim is to manifest the Dao, a rational balance among logical, dialectical and rhetorical dimensions in Mencius’s political argumentation. The results indicate that Mencius’s political argumentation is not only logically justified but also shown to have maneuvered strategically between reasonableness and effectiveness, and that human beings have a common ground of formal and substantial logos, which makes it possible for people from different cultural groups to communicate rationally.

Gendered positionality among Irish male primary teachers: the staff room as a site of performative masculinity

The concept of masculinities has traditionally been defined in terms of crises associated with boys’ underachievement, the violence of homophobia, the under-representation of males in caring occupations, the rituals and discourses of laddism, and perceptions of disaffected and unrealised talent. Whereas the topic of masculinities has long been associated with warrants for distinctive and diverse male identities, it has a comparatively more recent history in the research on male Irish primary teachers as a particular social category. Two key findings are discussed in relation to performative masculinities – a form of strategic manoeuvring designed to exploit gender discourses, practices for control, power and privilege. First, the findings show the staffroom as a bellwether or highly developed locus for teacher socialisation through gendered discourses, events and actions. Second, the findings show nonsynchronous performative masculinities not only between male and female teachers but also with male colleagues. Therefore, it is argued that this frequently forgotten and neglected seam in the grand narrative of schools and schooling in Ireland needs to be more fully understood as a variable of quality, social justice and democratic practices across the full scope and sequence of the teacher continuum and as a prerequisite component in all teacher leadership programmes.

Mimetic Quality: Consumer Quality Conventions and Strategic Mimicry in Food Distribution

Quality is a key dimension of markets and competition in advanced capitalist societies. While political economy recognizes the role quality plays for consumers’ purchasing strategies, it is less attentive to quality as a contested field where symbolic struggles and strategic manoeuvring take place. We argue that the quality-based strategies of hybrid organizations in food distribution represent a combination of different worlds of quality and judgment devices. This combination defines a camouflage strategy through which conventional food distribution chains such as high-end supermarkets conquer specific zones of the quality space. We thus maintain that the quality strategies of these organizations are explicitly boundary-spanning. To be successful, hybrid organizations need to cover both new and traditional quality conventions, overcoming divisions among different worlds while maintaining a coherent profile. This effort requires a strategy that is able to leverage situation-specific cultural meanings quite independently from individual-level attributes.

Prime Minister Abe’s challenge to the Japanese Postwar Constitution

Abstract Japan has transformed itself from a militaristic, imperialist state into a pacifist, democratic country as well as a reliable U.S. ally. However, postwar Japan has had two responses to the lost war. On the one hand, conservatives often found it difficult to reconcile themselves with the reality of losing the last war. On the other hand, liberals found themselves at home in line with the Japanese postwar democracy based on the country’s embrace of the no war ideal. Taking into account the tension intrinsic to Japanese interpretations of the postwar Constitution, this study will explore the way in which Prime Minister Abe made confrontational strategic maneuvering in political argumentation. By doing so, it will explicate how Abe sought to identify the context in the way that one should view a reality.

Beyond Balancing: China’s approach towards the Belt and Road Initiative

This article explores the motivations and calculations behind China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It argues that China’s efforts to enhance regional multilateral cooperation across the Eurasian space through the BRI are strongly motivated by a multifaceted grand strategy. First, China makes use of the BRI as a vehicle of soft balancing to frustrate the US containment and encirclement of China, and undermine its dominance in Eurasia and beyond. Second, China intends to promote alternative ideas and norms and build its role as a normative power through the BRI for fostering the legitimacy of its rising power. Third, China seeks to form a bargaining coalition through the BRI and AIIB to reshape global governance and transform the existing international system in a way that reflects its values, interests and status. Overall, the BRI serves as a decisive strategic maneuver for China to ensure security and promote power status in the international order, moving from a rule-taker to rule-maker.