Collaborative Defence: Exploring Relations and Expectations between Society and Defence

As defence organisations are confronted with the need to continuously influence stakeholders on security policies, our study explores the main stakeholders for NATO and EU defence organisations as well as their connection to different comprehensive national defence frameworks. As we exploited the results of a systematic literature review and base our findings on a unique set of 199 empirical papers, we add to parsimonious evidence-based insights characterising the field. Amongst other insights, we established that Total Defence was the most studied framework which also exhibited the highest number of linkages with the different stakeholders, which testifies to its holistic nature and its possible emergence as a baseline for future initiatives. Further, while exploring some of the factors influencing the stakeholder network of defence organisations, we identified countries that are likely more advanced in the field with respect to others. In doing so, we proposed that more ambitious armed forces that make greater use of performance measurement and management techniques may be better placed to leverage their stakeholder network. At the same time, we proposed that defence organisations wanting to expand their stakeholder network had to synchronise this ambition with their own internal stakeholder engagement capability.