Publications

In the five years following the Great Recession, average defence spending as a share of GDP by all NATO Member Nations declined from 1.72% in 2009 to 1.46% in 2013. According to Henius and McDonald (2014), this decline and the likelihood of continued resource management austerity could last for the next two decades. Because of this, NATO’s success critically depends on the widespread application of effective and efficient defence resource management practices. In this study, a group of NATO Member Nations identified and evaluated resource management practices and developed a collection of resource management strategies for use by Member Nations facing financial stress. The methodology for conducting this research consisted of developing an analytical framework that organizes selected “exemplar” country contributions. Of the 41 practices submitted, this study found that 59% of all practices submitted focused on reactive resourcing strategies while only 15% focused on proactive planning. Currently, there is no generally accepted NATO-wide analytical framework to assist Member Nations to identify, organize, and share defence resource management practices. This study highlights the need for NATO to adopt and expand the proposed analytical framework to provide Alliance Nations a common foundation to achieve effective and efficient defence resource management