Outsourcing War: Private Military Companies and Command-and-Control Capabilities after the Cold War
Speaker
Abstract
| In his final speech as US president, Eisenhower expressed concern that the military could lose command-and-control decisions to a civilian 'scientific and technological elite.' In this paper, we argue that these decisions are governed in part by private military corporations (PMCs), a hybrid form of organization operating in markets under a distinctive economic logic (Williamson 1991). We uncover this logic by chronicling the development of capabilities within PMCs since the Cold War, arguing that this hybrid form was shaped by organizational and institutional developments, including the legitimization over time of outsourcing across international boundaries. Our analysis points to the need for a dynamic transaction cost theory to understand how hybrids emerge as distinct from markets and hierarchies based, in part, on relational capabilities. |
| Contact information: |
| Dr. Raymond van Wijk |
