Paper Titles & Abstracts

This paper is a conceptual contribution that offers management based operationalisation of internal performance that is applied to the EU operations externally. It therefore builds on a conceptual framework that draws on strategic management literature in public administration and organization research. It follows the predominant argument that strategic management enhances "the entire set of managerial decisions and actions that determine the long-run performance of an organization" (Koteen 1989: 18; cp. also Nutt and Backoff 1992; Poister et al. 2010). With good performance at the managerial process level of an organization, as Gutner and Thompson (2010) argue we should also expect an organization to improve its outcome. To enhance knowledge on how the internal performance of peace- and state-building operations relates to their outcome, the paper asks: What strategic management factors facilitate or impede organizational performance in post-conflict police reform? And how are differences in strategic management related to the outcome of post-conflict police reform?The framework presented in this paper is applicable to the study of EU police reform mission in Afghanistan (EUPOL), Kosovo (EULEX) as well as to the border management mission in Moldova (EUBAM). The paper will make an important contribution to opening up the "black box" of organizations in post-conflict police reform and state-building. This is important to understanding the limits of "liberal peace-building" and improving performance, most notably so because it allows differentiating organizational obstacles to success (which can be manipulated through re-form) from the generally difficult context of peace- and state-building.