The military faces unprecedented limitation of resources due to fiscal cuts through all branches of service. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore succession planning (SP) strategies used by Air National Guard leaders to retain skilled workers. The target population consisted of 5 leaders of the Washington Air National Guard (ANG) with a minimum of 5 years of experience in the ANG. The five tenured candidates were selected given proven leadership performance, ability to influence the organization, and they provided institutional knowledge and corporate insight of SP efforts spanning nearly a century. Additionally, these leaders had direct first-hand experience with local selective retention process and successful force management practices. The conceptual framework included organizational leadership theory, succession theory, and employee retention. Semistructured interviews were conducted and relevant documents collected. All interpretations from the data were subjected to member checking to ensure trustworthiness of findings. Coding, clustering, and thematic analysis were methods used for data analysis. Prominent ideas and actions taken were coded, common codes were clustered and themes evolved. Based on the methodological triangulation of data, 5 themes surfaced: (a) skills focus verses strategic, (b) informal verses formal SP, (c) individual verses organizational, (d) priority for retention verses recruitment, and (e) limited skill leads to mission gaps. The application of the findings from the study may contribute to social change by inspiring military leadership to adopt more strategic succession planning and ensure business sustainability by changing existing SP from a recruitment-based technique to culture of retention.

Due to the recent war in Iraq, the Middle East has once against jumped to the forefront of everyone's mind. The world has been focused on Iraq and Iran for a decade now because Iran has established a strong foothold in Iraqi life since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. However, in order to understand this issue and attempt to solve it, an extensive study must be made of all the reasons that Iran is succeeding where the United States has not. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the historical influence that Iran, particularly the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has had on Iraq since its creation. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has taken over its home country and a historical analysis will chronicle its rise. Case studies of Iran and Iraq will be used to understand the geopolitical, military, economic, and religious reasons for the IRGC's ever-increasing influence. Previous studies and news coverage have only focused on one issue at a time; however, it is rare to find a study which combines all the reasons. This thesis will not only compile an analysis of these reasons, but will also explore and suggest what steps or policies Iraq can adopt in order to prevent it from being a puppet to other world powers.

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No description available.

Scandinavia has a rich history of the raising of runestones, monuments in stone of varying sizes for honoring the fallen. Among these there exist a group of runestones that mention a land far away from the cold winds of the north, the land of the Byzantine Empire, stretching from the Balkans to the edge of Anatolia with Greece at its center. Scandinavia and the former Byzantine empire has a long history between them where many made their way down the eastern rivers of the Rus to finally reach the city of Constantinople or ‘Miklagard’ as the Scandinavians called it, the great city. Here in the vast empire of the Greeks many Scandinavians saw an opportunity for wealth and fortune. Many of these however did not return home, they died in Greece and for some of them a runestone was raised in their memory. These would form the so-called Greece runestones, a collection of 27 runestones which will be explored in this thesis. The travelers to Greece also left behind their own writings at places like the Hagia Sophia and the Piraeus Lion. Where with their own words they tell of their journey to this distant land, which will also be covered along with the Greece runestones. The aim of this thesis is to explore these writings to hopefully give a greater insight to the early medieval Scandinavian society and what would motivate so many to travel all the way to Greece. This together with an analysis of the import of byzantine coins to the baltic area will hopefully provide us with a better understanding of these motives and at what period these travels primarily took place.

This dissertation examines the influence of paramilitary professional cultural attributes on the speed at which disaster response organizations (DROs) recognize, respond, organize, and take action in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Three agencies are examined: the U.S. Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the U.S. military's Southern Command/Joint Task Force-Haiti. The 2010 Haiti earthquake is used as a case study to explore the influence of three independent variables: (1) paramilitarism; (2) career ladders (i.e., recruitment and professional development of staff); and (3) workforce autonomy. The purpose is to determine if paramilitary cultures help or hinder an agency's speed into action, thereby helping improve the disaster response organizations of the future. In the case of Haiti, it finds that the combination of thick paramilitary culture, insider career ladders, and high workforce autonomy best enabled responders' speed into action. / Ph. D.

The purpose of the work reported within this thesis was to design and implement a series of tests which better replicate the impact conditions experienced during a game, and allow for quantitative measurements of performance of various items of personal protection equipment (PPE). The sports of cricket and taekwondo were used as case studies. The aim was to improve on existing testing protocols making them more representative of real life, an approach that has not been previously attempted in the literature and so required design of multiple items of novel equipment. A representative cricket impact test was developed utilizing a ball canon firing a cricket ball mass at an equivalent bowling velocity of 31 m/s (70 mph) and a novel, freely suspended force acquisition system with embedded accelerometers from which the transmitted force values could be derived. Throughout the testing secondary variables of coefficient of restitution (COR), deformation and contact time were measured from high speed video footage to give further insight into the impact mechanics of the three tested leg guards. Contact times were in the range of 3 ms - 4 ms, COR between 0.38 - 0.50 and deformation between 45 mm - 52 mm. These results were compared against other benchmark tests to establish how close the representative test was to an actual human related ball-pad impact and to estimate human tolerance levels to impact. A rig to mimic a human on human kicking impact in taekwondo was designed to measure performance of the piece of body protection equipment used in training and competition, commonly referred to as a hogu. Primarily a mechanical simulator was designed to replicate the speed and mass of a human leg impacting during a roundhouse kick. A force acquisition system was manufactured, capable of integrating with the kicking robot functioning, with a human torso sized and shaped anvil, using a similar accelerometer based system of force measurement as that introduced in the cricket testing. This test was then used to measure performance levels of nine off-the-shelf hogus and protective training pads. Using transmitted peak force and time to peak force (TTPF) as indicators of protection, these values were found to range from between 0.5 kN 7.5 kN and 9 ms - 23 ms across the pads indicating a major difference in the protection provided.

With the popularity of computer networks, e-systems have enhanced the information flow within the Coast Guard Institute. Due to constant information security incidents, formulating policies and managing mechanisms become an important task of the internal security authorities. In this study, we construct an Architecture-Oriented Coast Guard Information Security Management Model (AOCGISMM) which is based on the six fundamental diagrams of Structure-Behavior Coalescence (SBC) Architecture. AOCGISMM, not only provides an integrated description of structure and behavior on the Coast Guard Institute Information Security operations, but also makes the employees within the organization easily to promote compliance.. AOCGISMM covers all structure and behavior of the whole Coast Guard Institute Information Security operations. Therefore, AOCGISMM describes the complete picture of Coast Guard Institute Information Security so that every employee shall understand and communicate well to meet the organization needs.

During the study of the documents on the establishment and protection of the state border of Czechoslovakia and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, I have based myself on the literature and legal regulations in force and effective at the time of their use. I then drew indispensable information during consultations with my thesis supervisor. This thesis deals with the original control bodies of the past centuries that patrolled the borders, as well as the armed corps - the Financial Guard. It was established during the Austrian monarchy and continued its activities after the establishment of Czechoslovakia. The current borders of the Czech Republic are based on historical sources to which the Czechoslovak government referred when the Czechoslovak Republic was founded. Thanks to these efforts, we have the state borders as we know them today. However, the establishment of these borders was not at all easy, and at the very beginning of its existence Czechoslovakia had to make a military effort to maintain its borders. The greatest surveillance and protection of the borders took place during the 1930s, when the Czechoslovak Republic was preparing for a war conflict, which ultimately did not take place. The most important position was held by the Financial Guard, which in the event of a military conflict was...

This thesis is dedicated to study of interactions of utra-high energy cosmic rays using measured data from the Pierre Auger Observatory, automatic alarm system called Shift Guard and analysis of correlation of temperature and detector response. The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest experiment to study ultra-high energy cosmic rays. The assumed relation between temperature and fluorescence detector response is studied together with descriptive temperature analysis, which shows that the air-conditioning system is not able to stabilize temperature enough. The temperature influence on camera response is investigated in order to measure the calibration correction factor. Shift Guard - the alarm system dedicated to protect fluorescence detectors and data taking is introduced and its functionality is described. The alarm system informs shifters about some events and situations that can endanger detector or deteriorate data quality. The basic parameters and alarm system logic are described together with light and sound signals. The discrepancy between measured and predicted number of muons at ground level calculated by EAS generators is showed and possible sources of this disagree- ment are studied. The result of massive dark photons decay in EAS as one of exotic muon source is presented. The analysis...