The purpose of this paper is to explore how military strategic knowledge managers consider and respond to digitalization of operational processes in their revision of military…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how military strategic knowledge managers consider and respond to digitalization of operational processes in their revision of military knowledge management technologies. The research question is: which strategic considerations and professional concerns impact decisions about how far digitalization should be incorporated into Army planning doctrine?
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents material from a qualitative research study which observed the process of revising Danish Army Field Manual III. The empirical data include 12 in-depth interviews as well as documents related to the revision process. Data were analysed using a thematic approach.
Findings
The paper identifies and discusses strategic dilemmas arising from incorporating digitalization into planning doctrine. Two major areas of concern are addressed. The first involves considerations about the extent of digitalization, including concerns about risk and issues of timing regarding choices of specific digital solutions. The second involves potential limits of digitalization in relation to military notions of the role and identity of the commander. The article suggests that digitalization may impact on professional roles and identities and that strategic knowledge management developers need to be cognizant of this.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, the paper draws attention to the notions of risk and timing in relation to strategic decisions on how far knowledge management technologies should make use of possibilities brought about by digitalization. Second, the paper provides insight into how digitalization may profoundly alter professional roles and identities.
Details
Keywords
Therese Nilsson and Andreas Bergh
There is an on-going debate as to whether health is negatively affected by economic inequality. Still, we have limited knowledge of the mechanisms relating inequality to…
Abstract
There is an on-going debate as to whether health is negatively affected by economic inequality. Still, we have limited knowledge of the mechanisms relating inequality to individual health and very little evidence comes from less-developed economies. We use individual and multi-level data from Zambia on child nutritional health to test three hypotheses consistent with a negative correlation between income inequality and population health: the absolute income hypothesis (AIH), the relative income hypothesis (RIH) and the income inequality hypothesis (IIH). The results confirm that absolute income positively affects health. For the RIH we find sensitivity to the reference group used. Most interestingly, we find higher income inequality to robustly associate with better child health. The same pattern appears in a cross country regression. To explain the conflicting results in the literature we suggest examining potential mediators such as generosity, food sharing, trust and purchasing power.