We begin with a narrative about the vast inequalities between the 2021 women’s and men’s college basketball championships (sponsored by the National Collegiate Athletic Association). These disparate events exemplify systemic inequalities across college athletics that we document with data showing sex-based disparities in participation, resource allocation, and leadership. We introduce a critical perspective on Title IX – the celebrated 1972 U.S. sex nondiscrimination law – arguing that aspects of institutions employed under nondiscrimination policy can nevertheless undermine the quest for equality. We outline a set of policy proposals to address gender inequalities. These include more aggressive enforcement of Title IX, policies to ensure equal resource allocation and protections for women student-athletes, and initiatives to increase opportunities for women’s industry leadership. We then theorize three routes to policy change – from the bottom up, top down, and outside in – as well as the institutional hurdles that stand in the way of change. Throughout this discussion, we make a concerted effort to highlight how sex segregation, inadequate representation, androcentric organizational culture, and market demands are hurdles faced not just by those seeking equality in athletics but by other marginalized groups as well.

We assess how change to gender equality might be achieved from the top down. Policymakers in the context of college sports are athletic department administrators. They can directly affect policy via the NCAA rulemaking committees and must implement policy at individual schools. We also explore the role of coaches; while they have less direct policy control, they still make hiring decisions within their team staffs and serve as important intermediaries between student-athletes and administrators. We build on work on organizational culture to predict that as women move into higher leadership roles (i.e., head coach or administrative department head), they become less supportive of gender equity initiatives. We show that is indeed the case; moreover, we find that, more generally, female coaches and athletic administrators exhibit less support for equity initiatives than female student-athletes. This suggests that organizational culture – where women administrators and coaches remain in the clear minority – is a hurdle to equality. It shows that marginalized groups pursuing change from the top down must contend with organizational cultures that are at odds with such transformation.

Just as there are determinants of health of individuals and communities, there are determinants of health system organization and performance which we term structural determinants. This chapter focuses on a set of such determinants considered key in understanding and strengthening health systems in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs). These determinants include politics and governance; the economy, livelihoods and poverty; climate change, environmental degradation and natural disasters; social and organizational culture; wars and conflicts. Each of these determinants has its own set of issues. For example, with regards to politics and governance, it is intersection of the form of authority, institutional arrangements, political values, citizen participation, corruption, and informal governance channels that determine health system performance. While the influence of structural determinants on health systems is acknowledged, there is still limited attention to integrating work on structural determinants in health system thinking, policies and practice. This chapter argues for a multi-pronged strategy to address this gap: focusing on tackling inequities; removing misconceptions about health determinants among health workers; easing the path to health system work on health determinants; engaging concerned communities; evaluating innovations to address health determinants; and strengthening intersectoral collaboration.

Chapter 4 analyses corporate culture in East Asia with a view to understanding how Confucian cultural norms can inform efforts to promote compliance with competition law. It suggests that practices to secure compliance among commercial operators can usefully be tailored to takes account of cultural characteristics. This implies a need to consider the legacy of Confucian ethics, which has had a profound influence on the organizational psychology and behaviour of commercial entities in the region. The importance of that legacy suggests that compliance will not be achieved within firms solely on the basis of the external legal environment, an environment in which deterrence-oriented factors such as sanctions and the threat of detection play a central role. Beyond traditional tools, more attention should be given to the internal moral and social environment, and to shaping the logic of appropriateness within a given firm. A compliance culture can thus be constructed on the basis of elements such as moral commitment, Eastern-style education, the cultivation of virtue, and the constructive convergence of the interests of the enterprise and those of its employees.

1. To describe the challenges associated with centralizing strategic decision making and control in MNEs, and to highlight the possible ineffectiveness thereof.

2. To develop a framework for classifying MNE subsidiaries as a function of the location advantages they can access and the unique bundles of FSAs they command inside the firm, but with due consideration to the value chain activities involved.

3. To foster reflection on the ‘procedural justice’ concept and to highlight the impact thereof on decision making and organizational effectiveness.

4. To explain MNEs’ strategic agility in terms of balancing the tensions between head office priorities and local priorities in high distance markets.

5. To highlight the managerial implications of assigning differentiated roles to MNE subsidiaries.

Explanations for the successes or failures of militaries in both war and peace have traditionally focused on key factors such as technology, leadership, personnel, training, or a combination of all of these. A more recent addition to the list of possible variables contributing to military effectiveness is the concept of organizational culture – the pattern of shared assumptions that an organization learns as it solves problems, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and that is therefore taught to new members as the correct way to approach those problems. This chapter combines the organizational culture concepts of Edgar Schein with the nine cultural dimensions of the GLOBE research program. The resulting model provides a useful framework to analyze a military’s organizational culture. Perhaps more importantly, the model also provides prescriptive actions leaders can take to align a military’s organizational culture with its mission and environment.

The emergence of organizational culture in the Israeli Defence Forces can inform scholars and practitioners how military cultures are formed and evolve, and how they shape organizational habits and patterns of actions in newly established military organizations. This chapter examines the vision, plans, and means the IDF’s early leadership deployed in a conscious attempt to create a shared pool of values and practices in the armed forces of the young State of Israel. It offers three different examples illuminating the dynamics of the IDF’s self-fashioned culture, defiantly independent and idiosyncratic from its very inception: the early emergence of an offensive approach in conventional and sub-conventional conflicts; the desire to learn from other armies but emulate none; and the IDF’s relations with the Israeli government characterized by agency and self-promotion. Together, these shed light on the IDF’s early organizational culture, imprinted into the organization’s cultural DNA and persisting many decades to follow.

Culture has enormous influence on military organizations. One can broadly define organizational culture as the assumptions, ideas, norms, and beliefs, expressed or reflected in symbols, rituals, myths, and practices, that shape how an organization functions and adapts to external stimuli and that give meaning to its members. Except in unique circumstances, culture grows slowly, embedding itself so deeply that members often act unconsciously according to its dictates. Because culture lies hidden under more visible organizational doctrine and symbols, one can easily overlook its power. Culture creates organizational identity and establishes expectations of how group members will act. Three important external factors impact military culture: geography, history, and the environment in which navies, armies, and air forces exist. Of all the factors involved in military effectiveness, culture is perhaps the most important. Yet it also remains the most difficult to understand, because it involves so many external factors that distort its formation and continuities, even in different military organizations within the same nation. Organizational culture will shape how military organizations respond to challenges. The hardship is that changing military culture represents an extraordinarily difficult task that may require years, if not decades, to accomplish.

Culture is a key determinant in organizational effectiveness and plays an enormous role in the lives of military organizations. Cultural biases often result in unstated assumptions that have a deep impact on strategy, operational planning, doctrinal creation, and organization and training of armed forces. The impact of culture on military affairs often remains opaque for years, if not decades, after the events it has affected. Leadership is essential to creating and maintaining organizational culture. Leaders who can shape an organization’s culture from its inception have an outsized influence on its future orientation. Leaders, therefore, must be discriminating when establishing the initial culture of an organization, for once embedded, that culture will prove extraordinarily difficult to change. But even superb leaders are limited. Selection of the right subordinate leaders is critical if an organization’s culture is to survive a leadership transition. Some military organizations do change, assisted by cultures that embrace innovation and a reasonable degree of risk-taking. Organizational culture takes on the characteristics of wider societal culture, but when the military becomes a caste apart, the result can be the degradation of its ethical foundations. Military organizations often have subcultures with significant influence on the larger organization. Technology-centric forces must not allow a culture focused on technological excellence to turn into one centered on technological determinism. Professional military education is critical in sustaining organizational culture.

Dissatisfaction with the Royal Navy’s World War I performance led a generation of officers to analyze the fleet’s wartime record. This analysis revealed three problems: over-centralization of authority, a reluctance to fight night actions, and an overly defensive use of destroyers. In an effort to correct these issues, the Royal Navy made changes to its doctrine, training, and professional military education that improved the Navy’s World War II performance, especially in surface warfare. Reforms flowed from a variety of sources, including First Sea Lord Adm. David Beatty, contributors to the Naval Review, and Mediterranean Fleet exercise. The interwar reforms reflected an organizational culture that pursued improvement and learning in response to the perception that in World War I, the Navy failed to live up to historical standards of success.