Policy Coherence for Development and Securitisation: competing paradigms or stabilising North–South hierarchies?

Often treated as separate paradigms, the security-development nexus and the aid effectiveness agenda are analysed here instead as a continuum of aid policy responses that attempt to stabilise power relations in a contested and unstable international arena These responses are informed by a common commitment by western donor governments to neoliberal logic since the early 1980s. The article focuses on the discourse of policy coherence for development promoted by the DAC (Development Assistance Committee) of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), analysing it as the common vector of the two dimensions – effectiveness and security - of donor aid policy. By examining the emergence and transformations of the concept of coherence over the past two decades, it underlines the predominance of continuity over rupture in three successive phases of stabilisation (economic, political, security).     

Main drivers of human capital,learning and performance

The aim of this study was to show the relationships between the enablers for knowledge creation and human capital (HC); the effect of HC on feedback and feedforward; and the influence of these learning flows on organizational performance. To achieve this, we developed a novel theoretical model of relationships and tested this model empirically. We quantitatively test this model using data from firms in the Spanish biotechnology sector. Results show strong relationships between HC and enablers for knowledge creation (redundancy, trust, and autonomy); HC and learning flows (feedback and feedforward); and learning flows and organizational performance. The originality of this study lies in linking—theoretically, empirically, and through a novel model—independent theories of HC, learning, and knowledge creation.