‘Build the golf course first’–an organisational and strategic management perspective on UK defence reviews

Abstract

UK defence reviews have generated a flourishing academic debate for the past one-and-a-half decades. Still, the scholarship has hardly applied organisation and strategic management concepts regarding these reviews and therefore omits relevant insights to understand the outcomes arising from these important strategic documents. This article proposes the organisation and strategic management scholarship can contribute significantly to explaining the dynamics of strategy-making and implementation of the UK’s previous and forthcoming defence reviews. The avoidance of budgetary losses and maintenance of corporate autonomy by any formal organisation–including the UK Ministry of Defence–are particularly powerful concepts for explaining the dynamics of strategy-making and implementation. These concepts are critical for understanding how the UK defence budget is actually spent and how its defence reviews are developed and implemented.