Strategic Shift Research Articles

E&P Notes (April 2017)

E&P Notes Artificial Intelligence Holds Promise for Seismic and Drilling Data Stephen Whitfield, Senior Staff Writer As the oil and gas industry forges a new landscape in the wake of the financial downturn, an expert argued that artificial intelligence (AI) technologies could potentially have a disruptive, valuable impact on operations in the near future. In a webinar hosted by SeeAlgo, an AI consulting firm, Adnan Siddiqui discussed the ways in which AI and machine learning can improve project efficiency. Siddiqui, a principal at SeeAlgo, examined AI technology’s potential roles in several facets of oil and gas operations including seismic interpretation and well control event prediction. Ignored Signal During Hydraulic Fracturing Offers Instant Feedback Trent Jacobs, JPT Digital Editor A Denver-based startup company is trying to fine-tune a technique that would give shale producers instant gratification by explaining one small aspect of the behavior of fracturing fluids during a horizontal well completion. The subject of this research is known as the water hammer effect and, though others have investigated, no one has yet made complete sense of it. Founded in 2014, the oil and gas analytics firm Well Data Labs recently completed a study that aimed to get closer to unraveling the mystery. Because the signature of the water hammer signal is determined by the makeup of the wellbore and near-wellbore fractures, the engineering team behind the research believes the raw data can be crunched into a report that describes the quality of a well’s connectivity with the producing reservoir. PDC Optimistic About Wattenberg, Delaware Assets Stephen Whitfield, Senior Staff Writer Since selling its assets in the Marcellus in 2014, PDC Energy has undergone a major strategic shift in its hydraulic fracturing operations, focusing primarily on its acreage in Colorado’s Wattenberg field while entering the Delaware Basin in west Texas. As the independent exploration and production company enters the third year of this new operational focus, its top executive said there is plenty of reason for optimism. Speaking at a luncheon co-hosted by the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, PDC President and Chief Executive Officer Bart Brookman gave an overview of recent developments at the company. Brookman described the Wattenberg as a highly productive region for PDC, and that the company hopes to increase efficiency in the operation of its 96,000 acres. PDC utilizes a near-even split of standard-, mid-, and extended-reach laterals in the Wattenberg. Brookman said the company plans to drill each new well with monobore technology, saving approximately 1 day in spud-to-release times. It also plans to move from a 4½-in. liner to a 5½-in. casing on its laterals, which will allow for larger completion volumes and higher completion rates. Independent Shale Producer is Driving Permian Well Improvements With Clean Sweeps Trent Jacobs, JPT Digital Editor Good housekeeping has proven to be a big difference-maker for Houston-based Callon Petroleum. The independent shale producer recently published a study showing how it developed a data-driven workflow to predict which wells will suffer the most screenouts, allowing them to build in time for a preventive completion practice known as a clean sweep. “It’s not a new concept. It’s not a fancy technology,” said Nancy Zakhour, a completions engineer with Callon who worked on the study. “It’s just us trying to better understand which differences made to our operations are impacting production and whether or not we can leverage that to our advantage.” The company attributes its approach to clean sweeps to better proppant placement and higher production. While supporting figures have not been disclosed, Zakhour emphasized, “We came to know that whatever we did with the sweep enhanced the wells’ productivity.” Her confidence in the effectiveness of the clean sweeps is partly backed by hydraulic fracturing models that indicated that the fracture designs themselves were not the chief driver of well performance. Run post-completion, Zakhour said the models showed how the clean sweeps were allowing otherwise inactive perforations to be successfully “pumped to completion” with a full dosage of sand.

Strategic shifts that build executive leadership

Organizations are challenged to develop leaders who can think strategically about the business and solve systemic problems. How can mid-level leaders develop this capability? Herein, we describe five strategic shifts in perspective that are essential for mid-level managers in transitioning successfully to strategic leadership positions. All five shifts improve mid-level leaders’ ability to look beyond tactics to see wider opportunities and enable strategic impact. The shifts are iterative and build on each other. We offer a new model that guides managers in shaping strategic leaders using these five perspective shifts to impact the organization positively and substantially. Further, we provide specific techniques that mid-level managers can employ to shift their perspectives and build personal strategic capabilities. Finally, we share specific ‘Try It’ exercises that mid-level managers can engage in to learn about the preferred concepts.

Rapid assessment of facilitators and barriers related to the acceptance, challenges and community perception of daily regimen for treating tuberculosis in India

ABSTRACT Introduction: The Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) is the largest tuberculosis (TB) control program in the world based on Directly Observed Treatment Short-Course (DOTS) strategy. Globally, most countries have been using a daily regimen and in India a shift towards a daily regimen for TB treatment has already begun. The daily strategy is known to improve program coverage along with compliance. Such strategic shifts have both management and operational implications. We undertook a rapid assessment to understand the facilitators and barriers in adopting the daily regimen for TB treatment in three Indian states. Methods: In-depth interviews were planned across six districts of three purposively selected states of Maharashtra, Bihar and Sikkim, among health system personnel at various levels to identify their perspectives on adoption of a daily regimen for TB. These districts were sampled on the basis of TB notification rates. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data was undertaken. Results: 62 respondents were interviewed from these 6 districts. During the analysis, it was observed that an easily accessible, patient-centred and personalized outreach is an enabling factor for adherence to treatment. Lack of transportation facilities, out-of-pocket expenses and loss of wages for accessing DOTS at institutions are major identified barriers for treatment adherence at individual level. At program level, lack of trained service providers, poor administration of treatment protocols and inadequate supervision by health care providers and program managers are key factors that influence program outcomes. Conclusion: A major observation that emerged from the interviews is that the key to achieve a relapse-free cure is ensuring that a patient receives all doses of the prescribed treatment regimen. However, switching to a daily regimen makes adherence difficult and thus new strategies are needed for its implementation at patient and health provider levels. Most stakeholders appreciate the reasons for switching to a daily regimen. The stakeholders recognised the efforts of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) in spearheading the program. Strategies like the 99 DOTS call-centre approach may also further ensure treatment adherence.

Two Decades of Strategic Shifts the Future and Challenge of Egyptian-American Relations

Two Decades of Strategic Shifts the Future and Challenge of Egyptian-American Relations

Road to a Better UN? Peace Operations and the Reform Agenda

UN peace operations are confronting crises from all sides: they face ever more complex operating environments in the field, while in New York they face divisions among member states over the very nature of peace operations, a “peacekeeping fatigue” aggravated by scandals, and cuts to the peacekeeping budget. These are some of the reasons why, two years after the release of the report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), progress on peace operations reform has been slow. In this challenging context, this report asks whether the reform agenda put forward by Secretary-General Guterres would—or would not—help realize the four strategic shifts called for by HIPPO—recognizing the primacy of politics, viewing peace operations as a continuum, strengthening partnerships, and focusing on the field and on people—and under what circumstances. It also provides preliminary analysis of the five streams of reform presented to date: (1) the renewed focus on prevention and sustaining peace; (2) the creation of a new UN Office of Counter-Terrorism; (3) the reform of the UN development system; (4) the restructuring of the peace and security architecture; and (5) organization-wide management reform. It concludes that the challenge for the secretary-general will be to translate these parallel tracks of reform into a concrete and coherent approach that will be true to his overarching vision for the organization and have a real impact in headquarters and, most importantly, in the field. While the temptation inevitably will be to focus on short-term structural reorganization, change will also need to come from improvements in working culture, methods, and processes over time.

TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN ARID REGIONS: MASDAR CITY AS A CASE STUDY

The United Nations has highlighted the importance of the issues of development and housing policies through endorsing the International Strategy of Sheltering in 1988 [25]. The efforts of the United Nations in the domain of housing, whose concepts have been formulated so as to include Sustainable Cities in the conference of the United Nations: Rio + 20: The Future We Desire, concerned with sustainable development, and held in Brazil in 2012. Hence, there is stress on partnership bonds among governments, the civil community and the private sector in order to develop cities in which opportunities are availed and everyone gets the chance to attain the basic services, energy, housing and transport in a sustainable manner [27]. The increase in population, however, has led to expansion in establishing new cities so as to fulfill the need for housing and effectively participate in accelerating development. It is also important to reclaim the desert regardless of the harsh environmental circumstance of those regions. Thus, the planners and the decision makers adopt the strategies of sustainable development in order to avoid creating new environmental, economic, social problems. Therefore, it is important to research in the study of experimenting in establishing sustainable cities in the environment of arid areas for the purpose of finding the pros and cons of those experiments and lay the foundation of developing those cities in a sustainable manner. Thus, we have chosen the city of Masdar in Abu Dhabi Emirate as a case study due to the richness of experimenting on that Emirate concerning the shift from investing in the formidable revenues of petro-urbanism, in what is known as petrol communities, to sustainable urban development represented in establishing the city of Masdar as the first sustainable city in the world. Nevertheless, so as to achieve those objectives, the research adopts the analytical descriptive methodology in the study of that strategic shift which is witnessed by Abu Dhabi Emirate. Also, the methodology of the case study is used in analyzing and evaluating the strategies of sustainability in the city of Masdar. The research includes three principal aspects. The first aspect centers on the study of the environmental, economic, social and political factors which leads to transforming Abu Dhabi Emirate from petro-urbanism to urban sustainability. The second aspect deals with defining the city of Masdar as well as studying and analyzing its system of sustainability. The third and final aspect deals with analyzing the case study according to the three main principles of sustainability: social participation, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability. Thus, the research concludes many results and recommendations, on top of which the importance of providing an integrated system that works on developing cities in arid areas in a sustainable manner.

From Middle Power to Pivot Power? Korea’s Strategic Shifts

From Middle Power to Pivot Power? Korea’s Strategic Shifts

Doing ‘speaking the (non-)standard’ in the media

Abstract Current third-wave or Speaker Design approaches to sociolinguistic variation hold that speakers may use variation strategically to create certain communicative effects (such as the projection of interactional personas and alignments). This paper explores the implications that such approaches have for empirical research methodology. For this, the discussion draws on a case study of language shifting from standard Austrian German into Austrian non-standard/dialect on a TV discussion show, in order to expound the following issues: (1) how to identify strategic uses of language variation and shifting; (2) how to generate empirical evidence for the fact that such strategic language use is interpreted accordingly by listeners. It is suggested that media data are particularly useful in this enterprise, and that close attention must be paid to listeners’ perceptions of (non-)standard language and the associated social meanings in order to explain what speakers ‘do’ when they perform strategic shifts e.g. from standard to non-standard language in local interaction.

Utilization of public oral health services by New South Wales teenagers, 2004-05 to 2014-15.

The aims of this study were to examine variations in levels of access to public oral health services in New South Wales by teenagers from 2004-05 to 2014-15 and to determine whether more teenagers have been treated with preventive dental items in keeping with the strategic shift statewide towards prevention and early intervention. This study involved an analysis of a subset of the New South Wales Oral Health Data Collection for teenagers treated in the New South Wales Public Oral Health Service in the financial years 2004-05 to 2014-15. Relevant Australian Dental Association dental service item groups are reported for teenagers by year as a percentage of total visits delivered in that year. The utilization of the New South Wales Public Oral Health Service by teenagers has remained relatively stable over the 11 years at approximately 6%, while the provision of some preventive items increased over the time period. There were important differences found in access by teenagers to preventive items by socio-economic status and rurality, and these differences will be targeted over the coming years by New South Wales Public Oral Health Services and better monitored by a new electronic oral health record being implemented statewide from 2016.

Solving America's Gray-Zone Puzzle

ABSTRACT: Until the missing pieces of the role of global transitions, of American flawed by design concepts of war and peace, and of paradoxical consequences resulting from America's roles and actions to maintain and disrupt the international system are calculated into the ongoing strategy and force planning reforms, any resulting changes of those efforts will inadequately prepare America to fight, win, and fully finish gray-zone wars. For anyone paying even the slightest attention to recent global security affairs, particularly over the past three to five years, denying the significant change and disruption of what has long been the conventional sense of world order would be difficult. Determining if and how the character, scope, and direction of geopolitical competition has changed, and is changing, from the previous and current norms is the most fundamental, and arguably the most essential, imperative facing grand and military strategists as well as the national leaders and polities they serve at such times of major geostrategic inflection. Perhaps the clearest recognizable signs supporting such a claim are the measurable rise in actions taken by a number of nationstates and nonstate actors as well as the prolific increase in scholarship related to their activities. Nonstate actors such as al-Qaeda and hybrid non-Westphalian forms of self-declared alternative statehoods such as the Islamic State challenge the legitimacy of both the norms, principles, rules, and decision-making processes of the current Western advanced-industrial state-based majoritarian international order and the United States as lead nation, hegemon, and guaranteeing power of the current world order. Another sign lies in the heuristic devices and labels scholars and practitioners alike adopt and use to describe and assign meaning to these behaviors in simple understandable terms and the early practical responses and reactions to match, counter, and then ultimately, overmatch these challenges and restore the status quo ante. The increasingly relationships the United States faces with great powers such as Russia and China, in addition to regional-level disruptors such as North Korea, Iran, and the self-declared Islamic State lead the concerns of America's senior defense leadership. Consequently, the Pentagon and the armed services call for major strategic shifts in policy, war plans, planning architectures, and approaches. The United States' top general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, recently stated traditional approach where we are either at peace or at war is insufficient to deal with that dynamic--the 'four-plus-one' challenges [of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, as well as Islamist extremism] and the five domains of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Moreover, Dunford recognizes the state of adversarial competition with a military dimension short of armed conflict military and security studies scholars and practitioners have come to label gray-zone conflict. (2) This particular description, which answers the key questions of whether and how the character of geopolitical competition has changed, now represents an increasingly resonant line of inquiry in defense circles. But, just how smartly are we forming our understandings of, redesigning our overmatching strategies for, and planning our operational approaches to these so-called gray-zone problems? In the following pages, we argue current US defense efforts to better understand and to deal with this gray-zone puzzle, while sound and necessary, remain insufficient. In short, these three missing cause-and-effect pieces to the complete gray-zone puzzle are missing. If these elements are not soon acknowledged and sufficiently incorporated into our planning and capability development activities, future strategic efforts of the United States national security and defense enterprise to meet, overmatch, and overcome future gray-zone threats will be left wanting. …

Relational dynamics of protest and protest policing: strategic interaction and the coevolution of targeting strategies

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the relational dynamics of lawful and unlawful protest in the wake of the British Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign, and the plural policing efforts by public and private actors it triggered. The aim is to explain the coevolution of the targeting strategies employed by campaigners and their adversaries, particularly criminal justice agencies and corporate actors. Delimited to the life span of SHAC (1999–2014), the analysis tracks four forms of strategic shifts on the part of protestors and their adversaries – a series of strategic adaptations, innovation, cooperation and compliance, throughout five distinct phases of the conflict. The findings reveal how key players refine their targeting strategies throughout an interactive process, in which strategies are developed in tandem in the course of the battle. The paper demonstrates how research on strategic interaction can benefit from expanding the focus to include manifestations of strategy during cycles of stakeholder interaction, to fill the gaps left by concentrating on strategic decision-making exclusively. As the findings demonstrate, the ways in which strategies actually unfold and develop frequently deviate from the decision-making, and often involves unforeseen impacts and outcomes.

United we stand, divided we fall: historical trajectory of strategic renewal activities at the Scandinavian Airlines System, 1946–2012

Although the second half of the twentieth century saw the rise and fall of ‘multi-flag companies’ (MFCs) in the civil aviation industry, our understanding of how some managed to buck the trend and achieve longevity remains limited. This article advances business history and strategic management research by examining the strategic renewal activities of Scandinavian Airlines (formerly Scandinavian Airlines System [SAS]) during the period 1946–2012. The study sheds light on the key roles of private and state owners, rivals as well as banks, in critical financial phases are discussed in terms of longevity in the company. The longevity of the business stems from the leaders’ ability to develop as anticipated and respond to change in their competitive arena in close interaction with the owners. Thus, incumbent firms that strategically renew themselves prior to or during market reform, such as deregulation, enhance their chances of developing the size of their networks and revenue streams. Our main contribution to business history and strategic management literatures is the development of context-specific stages, which shed light on the evolution of strategic renewal activities and shifts from older processes and routines towards customer service and efficiency.

Towards a new model of evidence for public health

BackgroundWe are faced with a growing crisis of non-communicable diseases driven by factors such as unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, tobacco use, and alcohol consumption, compounded by major inequalities in health. Over recent decades, biomedical research methods have helped to answer many important questions about treatment and prevention, but the kinds of tools that can tell us which intervention to choose over another are not invariably the most appropriate to address complex challenges such as designing healthier cities, or creating healthier, more sustainable food systems. The aim of this project was to identify the main obstacles to obtaining valid and appropriate evidence to guide public health decision making, and propose a set of solutions to address these problems. MethodsWe conducted a series of case studies to illustrate some of the problems with the current dominance of the biomedical approach to the generation and use of evidence for complex public health problems, including an analysis of the types of projects funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Public Health Research (PHR) Programme since 2009. We held a workshop on Sept 12–13, 2016, for several internationally recognised experts on complex systems approaches to public health evidence to produce a consensus statement. FindingsThe NIHR case study showed that funding from the PHR Programme has predominantly gone to the evaluation of downstream, individual-level interventions, with only a small proportion devoted to assessment of upstream policy actions (>75% of the 110 funded proposals examined downstream or midstream interventions). The key conclusions from the meeting are that current approaches to research and policy in major public health problems such as obesity have reached an impasse. Breaking this impasse will require a move beyond linear models of cause and effect to embrace complex systems approaches to both the generation and use of evidence. Achieving a solution will require many changes, ranging from strategic shifts in the way research is funded to new conceptual models for tackling public health problems at system level. InterpretationThere is a pressing need to change the focus of research and action to tackle complex public health problems. Research funding must address the challenges of evaluating not only complex interventions, but also simple interventions within complex systems. The tools required to do this are still in the early stages of development, but we need to rebalance our approach to public health research to encompass complex systems science and methods in addition to more traditional biomedical approaches. The expert group will publish its views in a consensus paper towards the end of 2016. FundingThis work is supported by a grant from The Health Foundation.

From Middle Power to Pivot Power? Korea’s Strategic Shifts

Korea has been regarded by as a middle power nation. Korea’s accession to Group of Twenty (G20) status and membership of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development-Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) were heralded as confirmation of Korea’s status as a middle power. Korea’s current regional initiative, the Northeast Asia Peace and Cooperation Initiative (NAPCI), represents a shift from middle power to ‘pivot’ state. The initiatives have potential theoretical implications for explaining Korea’s emerging role in the region.

Firm level R&D intensity: evidence from Indian drugs and pharmaceutical industry

This paper analyzes the R&D profile of Indian drug and pharmaceutical industry during the period 2000–2013, and the factors that influence a pharmaceutical firm’s decision to undertake R&D activities. The study period from 2000 to 2013 has been characterized by a rapid growth in industry’s R&D expenditures, as part of the strategic shift, induced by the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005. Using the real financial data for the top 91 publicly listed Indian domestic pharmaceutical companies, the study provides new evidence on drivers of R&D intensity in Indian Drugs and Pharmaceutical industry. A panel data random effects Tobit model along with OLS model using firm fixed effects are applied to identify the factors affecting the RD past cash flow; export and import intensities of the firm tend to significantly impact the R&D intensity. While firm size exhibits a non-linear relationship, cash flow, past innovative output shows a positive and significant relationship with R&D intensity. Further, patent count and firm’s overseas presence, considered as additional important determinants of firm-level R&D intensity, influences R&D positively. Lastly, global orientation of Indian pharmaceutical firms has been found to impact R&D activities considerably.

China: From Imitator to Innovator?

For a long time, China was viewed as the world's “workbench,” rather than as a global innovator. However, recently, China undertook significant efforts to transform towards a research and innovation orientation, by, e.g., setting research goals in its 12th Five-Year Plan that established a Chinese National Patent Development Strategy. In this paper, we examine the effects of that government policy change and assess how it has impacted firm innovation. To address potential endogeneity concerns, we use the policy change as a quasi-natural experiment, and explain the exogenously caused variations. We also use a “difference-in-differences” approach to, e.g., propensity score matched U.S. peers, and find that the policy change had a positive effect on Chinese firms’ research spending, as measured by research intensity. We also show that Chinese firms increased their research spending in response to the strategic shift by the government in 2008, relatively outpacing their U.S. peers during the same time period. However, Chinese companies have not yet overtaken their U.S. peers. Rather, they have reduced the gaps between them.

Vertical Integration, Firms’ Entry, Exit, Strategic Shifts, Age, and The Productivity Growth in Korea's Core Growth‐Leading Industries

AbstractThis study attempts to measure the impact of firms’ entry, exit, strategic shifts, and age on the productivity growth of Korea's three core growth‐leading industries and their vertical integration with capital share (VI) firms and non‐VI (NVI) firms in view of the 2008 global financial crisis and the institutional push by the Korean Government. A stochastic frontier production model was applied to firm‐level panel data from 2006 to 2011 for Korea's automobile, electronics and general machinery industries. The results show that exogenous shocks to the market triggered large‐scale resource reallocations from firms with declining productivity to firms with less declining or rising productivity, and market share reallocation between VI firms and NVI firms. The Korean Government's institutional push led the productivity growth of NVI firms to reach their highest levels in 2010. In a VI structure, a structure comprising VI firms only, the agency problem dominated the synergies of secure supply chains and saving on transaction costs, while NVI firms endeavoured to raise their productivity to step into a VI structure to secure stable supply chains, only to find their R&D initiatives stagnated once they took on the VI structure. Therefore, efficient resource reallocation is hindered by the agency problem within the bounds of vertically integrated industrial structures.

The contrasting fortunes of pro-sovereignty currents in Basque and Catalan nationalist parties: PNV and CDC compared

ABSTRACTThe contrasting fortunes of pro-sovereignty currents in Basque and Catalan nationalist parties: PNV and CDC compared. Territory, Politics, Governance. Nationalist parties based on regions within European states have seen cases of major shifts from accommodation to sovereignty-based assertiveness in their positioning vis-à-vis central government. While these have been interpreted elsewhere mainly in terms of changes in contextual influences, the activity of groups within parties aiming to redefine territorial strategies has received much less attention, not least in the case of Spain. This comparison of factional politics within Basque and Catalan nationalist parties since the 1990s highlights the significant influence of party-level factors in affecting the prospects of a decisive strategic shift. Factors such as the loss of political power by a party, competition during processes of leadership succession, generational renewal and distinctive party cultures help explain why the outcomes of such efforts differ. Transformation has proved more difficult to achieve in the context of complex decentralized governance structures at regional level, as in the Basque Country. There, the existence of varying identity configurations, reflected in different political balances at the sub-regional level, provided an impediment to a thorough radicalization of the Basque Nationalist Party, whereas in Catalonia more centralized political arrangements facilitated the transformation of Democratic Convergence of Catalonia and its eventual commitment to independence.

KPMG Knowledge Management and the Next Phase: Using Enterprise Social Media

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to present a case study summarizing some of the issues associated with KPMG's knowledge management system and their recent adoption of social media for collaboration and knowledge management. In particular, this case examines KPMG's knowledge management initiative starting roughly when Robert Armacost was hired to lead the global firm's efforts in knowledge management, from 2007 through 2014, with KPMG's adoption of social media as part of their knowledge management system. This case study shows a fundamental and strategic shift in knowledge management at KPMG from focusing on content to including collaboration. In addition, this paper illustrates some of the advantages of including enterprise social media as part of the knowledge management system.

Australia’s National Human Rights Action Plans: traditional or modern model of planning?

This inquiry has sought to assess for the first time the effectiveness of three of Australia’s National Human Rights Action Plans (NHRAP) in realising human rights and show that among other factors, the traditional concept of planning, which is still predominant in international human rights law, can play a key part in generating different problems in the way of an effective action plan. This focused case study was informed by four sources of data, including an online survey of 37 experts, an in-depth interview and secondary data, qualitative and quantitative. As the results of this mixed methods research indicate, the first two of Australia’s NHRAPs were only ‘slightly effective’ in implementing human rights. These two plans are beset by six fundamental and four subordinate problems which all stem from, inter alia, traditional planning. On the contrary, Australia’s current NHRAP which steps away from the very nature of traditional planning is more effective than the first two. The current experience of Australia, particularly in the areas of women’s rights and children’s rights, has a number of important implications for future practices. These include, but are not limited to, conducting a baseline study, linkage to the universal periodic review, evidence-based, theoretical foundation, extensive consultation and integrated governance approach. This all suggests a strategic shift towards the modern model of planning which is multi-level, participatory, top-down bottom-up, and theory laden.