https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5581-3293
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Abstract
Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are now managed with an eye to managerial trends associated with transnational professionals, a view that has ramifications for how IGOs govern their policies and processes. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with staff in IGOs, we trace how managerialism in IGOs is changing how staff perceive work practices. We find that IGOs increasingly rely on consultants to enact policy scripts and to evaluate program success. This signals a subtle yet significant shift from expertise and bureaucratic impartiality, grounded in particular types of knowledge, to skills and flexibility to meet client demands and advance best practice norms according to prevailing world cultural frames. This managerial trend in IGOs is partly driven by stakeholder dynamics but is primarily a normative change in who is seen as having the authority to make claims over professional best practices. Such managerialism is contracting the development policy space. This contraction is partly driven by consultants, who defer to their peers and to donors rather than IGO staff and concerned member states. This work also depletes institutional memory for IGO operations. We trace how IGO staff perceive managerial trends and changes in work practices.
Acknowledgements
This research was presented at the ‘Sociology of International Organizations’ workshop as part of the American Sociological Association annual conference in Philadelphia, August 2018. We thank, in particular, Sarah Babb, Nitsan Chorev, Terry Halliday, Tine Hanrieder, Joseph Harris and Alex Kentikelenis for their feedback. Thanks also go to Cornel Ban, Eva Boxenbaum, Martin Baek Carstensen, Matthew Eagleton-Pierce, Lea Foverskov, Stine Haakonsson, Christian Henriksen, Lasse Folke Henriksen, Sam Knafo and Eleni Tsingou for their suggestions. Our thanks also go to the reviewers for their constructive criticisms.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Leonard Seabrooke is Professor of International Political Economy and Economic Sociology in the Department of Organization at the Copenhagen Business School, and Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. His research currently focuses on transnational professionals, international organizations, activist movements, and consultancy communities on a range of politico-economic issues. He is co-editor of Professional Networks in Transnational Governance (Cambridge University Press 2017, with Lasse Folke Henriksen).
Ole Jacob Sending is Director of Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. His research focuses on changes in state sovereignty, the evolution of international organizations, the development of professional expertise, and the role of private actors in global governance. His most recent book is The Politics of Expertise: Competing for Authority in Global Governance (University of Michigan Press, 2015).
Notes
1 Mauro Guillén’s (Citation1994) study of the diffusion of management ideology and practice in the US, Germany, Spain and UK in the twentieth century suggests that new management techniques premised on efficiency and scientism can be diffused when there is: structural industrial change, international pressure, labor unrest, elite mentality and support from professional groups. IGOs such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank are at the forefront in generating all of these pressures.
2 Interview with UNDP program staff, New York, March 2012.
3 Interview with UNDP program staff, New York, March 2012.
4 Interview with UNDP program staff, New York, March 2012.
5 Interview with senior World Bank Human Resources staff, Washington D.C., March 2013.
6 Interview with UNDP Management Consultancy Team, New York, March 2012.
7 Interview with OECD program staff, by phone, May 2014.
8 Interview with UNDP Management Consultancy Team, New York, March 2012.
9 Interview with former UNDP consultant, Copenhagen, October 2012.
10 Interview with DEVEX Staff, Washington D.C., March 2013
11 Interview with UNDP Learning Specialist, New York, November 2013.
12 Interview with senior World Bank Human Resources staff, Washington D.C., March 2013.
13 Interview, former UNDP consultant, Copenhagen, June 2013.
14 Interview with UNDP Learning Specialist, New York, November 2013.
15 Interview with IMF Human Resources staff, Washington D.C., March 2012.
16 Interview with European Investment Bank Senior Staff, Luxembourg, June 2012.
17 Interview UNDP Director of Human Resources, September 2013.
18 Interview with IMF Human Resources staff, Washington D.C., March 2012.
19 Interview with senior World Bank Human Resources staff, Washington D.C., March 2013.
20 Interview with UNDP Management Consultancy Team, New York, March 2012.
21 Interview with IMF Human Resources staff, Washington D.C., March 2012. From an archival search in the IMF records it is clear that leave was commonly granted for advising central banks and ministries, as noted, commonly in the Middle East and Africa, but also, for example, Sweden. Leave to the World Bank is also not infrequent.
22 Interview with DEVEX staff, Washington D.C., March 2012.
23 Interview with senior World Bank Human Resources staff, Washington D.C., March 2013.
24 Interview with DEVEX staff members, Washington D.C., March 2012, February 2013.
25 Interview with DEVEX staff, Washington D.C., March 2012.
26 ‘New role for UN: McKinsey for the developing nations’, The Observer, 27 February 2000.
27 Interview with UNDP Learning Specialist, New York, November 2013.
28 UNDP Senior Staff, Case Study Integrity Forum, New York, November 2013.
29 UNDP Senior Staff, Case Study Integrity Forum, Geneva, November 2014.
30 UNDP Senior Staff, Case Study Integrity Forum, Geneva, November 2014.
31 UNDP Senior Staff, Case Study Integrity Forum, Geneva, November 2014.
32 Interview with World Bank program staff, Washington D.C., August 2014.
33 Interview with former Senior IMF staff, Washington D.C., November 2013.
34 IMF Senior Staff, Case Study Integrity Forum, Washington D.C., April 2014.
35 WHO Senior Staff, Case Study Integrity Forum, Geneva, November 2014.
36 WHO Senior Staff, Case Study Integrity Forum, Geneva, November 2014.