Management of International Institutions and NGOs

Frameworks, practices and challenges

Eduardo Missoni, Daniele Alesani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134580187
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

International Institutions (IIs), International NGOs (INGOs) and Transnational Hybrid Organizations (THOs) play a hugely important role in the modern world economy. Despite having been studied by scholars from a range of disciplines, these organizations have never before been approached from a management perspective. This ambitious book analyzes the management challenges associated with international cooperation and sheds light on how these organizations have evolved as the political, economic and business environments have changed around them.

Covering an admirably broad canvas, the authors pursue two main objectives. Firstly, they explore the main management frameworks developed in the context of the corporate and national public/non-profit organizations and adapt them to the specificity of IIs and INGOs. This leads to the identification of a "tailored" approach to IO management based on their institutional and operational settings, stakeholder groups, core business, staff profile, and financial arrangements. Secondly, they "bring theory into practice" by linking frameworks to several case studies and best practices of organizations currently experimenting with management systems and tools, with case studies including the World Bank and the Gates Foundation.

This comprehensive textbook is a must-own resource for students and academics involved with studying and working with international organizations.

SECTION 1 The context

1 INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS Classification and main characteristics

Daniele Alesani

DOI: 10.4324/9781315887364-2

1.1 Introduction

International Institutions (IIs) are the result of the need of sovereign states to come together, as an international community, to promote cooperation, development, and social well-being as well as ensuring pacific co-existence. IIs have often been described as “clubs of states” for their constituencies are normally nation states. IIs’ accountability to the individuals and communities that are the ultimate beneficiaries of their activities is usually mediated by the political representation mechanisms.

While treaties and alliances among states have existed for centuries, establishment of formal IIs began in the nineteenth century. The history of international relations shows the first IIs were formed in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. They were mainly focused on specific themes, such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), still in operation today. Of notable significance was the emergence of the League of Nations following World War I. This institution was designed to foster collective security in order to sustain peace. It is in the ashes of this experiment that the United Nations was created after World War II, together with the Bretton Woods institutions. These organizations were set up as a system of international relations intended to maintain peace, develop friendly relations based on the principle of equal rights and self-determination, achieve international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian cooperation, and to establish a stable and global financial and monetary system.

In the second part of the twentieth century the number and complexity of intergovernmental organizations progressively grew to encompass more than 250 formal IIs, a UN system composed of more than 30 separate entities, several regional and global Development Banks (among the only remaining institutions to have a triple-A credit rating) and “supra-national” institutions, to whom states delegate entire areas of their sovereignty, such as the European Union.

The very existence of IIs as autonomous entities has long been debated. White (2005), for example, asks “how can an intergovernmental organization made by states which do not have superiors in international law be independent of the will of its own member states?”. IIs are subject to international law to the extent that a separate “will” is conferred through treaties of the member states that established them. The character of international law distinguishes IIs from other less formal unions of states (for example the G8) and gives them the power to make decisions that are legally binding to their membership, including the states that did not directly agree to a given decision. The decisions of the UN Security Council are a classic example of this: the 15 members, representing a global membership, make decisions that are legally binding and to be respected by all members.

In this chapter we will classify IIs by their mandates, areas of intervention and main institutional features. We will identify several “families” of organizations and describe their main operational characteristics in order to present an overview of the management challenges facing modern IIs.

1.2 Towards a definition of International Institutions

1.2.1 Minimal characteristics

Perhaps the most widespread and accepted definition of an International Institution (II) is offered by the Yearbook of International Organizations which identifies three minimal conditions for an organization to be considered an II. An II must:

1. be based on a formal instrument of agreement between the governments of nation states;
2. include three or more nation-states as parties to the agreement;
3. possess a permanent secretariat performing ongoing tasks.

Being funded by a treaty or other formal agreement between governments confers to the organization the public international law personality needed to operate with legitimacy and based on a recognized mandate by sovereign states. The second condition confers to the II its “multilateral” character. The third requires the II to have a permanent secretariat and a stable organizational structure to perform ongoing activities in pursuit of its institutional mandate.

1.2.2 A more comprehensive definition

Over time, scholars have developed a more comprehensive list of requirements to identify IIs (Wallace and Singer 1970; Jacobson, Reisinger and Mathers 1986; Shanks, Jacobson and Kaplan 1996; Pevehouse and Goldstein 2005). Their main aim was to isolate IIs from other types of cooperative arrangements, such as ad-hoc agreements and ongoing collaborative meetings between states that are not institutionalized (e.g. G8 meetings or committees composed of states without an organizational structure). Volgy et al. (2006) have offered the most comprehensive effort to date to define the characteristics of IIs. The authors define a “formal” II based on the set of criteria on membership, governance, structure and organization and budgeting in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Set of criteria to define a “formal” II

Criterion	‘Formal’ International Institution
Membership
Number of states Mix	Three or more
Mix	Predominantly states; no veto on collective decision by non-state members
Representation	Representing central government or its sub-units
Governance
Rules of governance	Specified in charter or constitutional act
Meetings	Routinized and meeting at regular intervals
Structure and organization
HQ/Secretariat	Permanent
Staffing	Independent of any other organizations or any single state Non-symbolic; paid by the organization itself
Budgeting
Funding mechanism	Financial resources periodically established and regularly available
Amount	Sufficient to cover adequate administrative support and core operations
Source	Majority funding not controlled by another organization or by one state
Source: Adapted from Volgy et al. (2006)

In terms of membership, the authors explicitly allow the inclusion of non-state subjects with the condition that they do not have veto power on collective decisions. The inclusion of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and representatives of business or civil society or social groups (i.e. unions) in II’s membership is not uncommon; examples include the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the ITU.

The need for a codified set of Rules of Governance to be specified in the Charter of the organization is pivotal to ensure that the organization has clear decision-making and can therefore operate with effectiveness. Regularity of the governing bodies’ meetings is a minimum condition of the constituencies’ interest and active participation in the organization.

This definition also requires organizations to have a permanent secretariat and staff independent from the member states, of adequate number, to fulfill the organization’s mandate and paid for with the II’s own resources.

Finally, IIs need to be able to count on stable financial resources allocated by members through a regular budgeting process, sufficient to continuously cover its program of work and its administrative structure and to be independently managed. Stability and predictability of funds is a critical factor for modern IIs in light of the escalation of voluntary funding and the high volatility of this kind of resources. While it is common for IIs to be mainly funded through the contribution of few main donors (in certain UN organizations about 80 percent of the financial resources come from the top 10 state donors), if the institution is almost exclusively financed by one member or another institution it does not qualify as a separate and independent entity.

1.3 Possible classifications of International Institutions

1.3.1 Classifications based on membership, scope, sector and mandate

To date there is not a common classification for intergovernmental organizations, and different criteria can be applied.

Based on the scope of their membership, IIs can be grouped into the following broad groups:

1. Universal membership organizations, that have a widespread, geographically balanced membership, management and policy control.
2. Intercontinental membership organizations, whose membership and focus exceed that of a particular continental region, although not to a degree justifying its inclusion in the previous type.
3. Regionally defined membership organizations, whose members or preoccupations are restricted to a particular continent or sub-continental region.
4. Cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious, or historical organizations, open to members based on some cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious, or historical link. Examples include the Commonwealth of Nations, La Francophonie, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Latin Union, or the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Alternatively, IIs can be classified based on their sector of intervention. Some organizations are focused on one sector while others are “multipurpose”. A classic example of the former type is the World Food Programme (WFP), with a clear mandate to “fight hunger” through different means, from provision of food in emergencies to resolution of food insecurity situations. An example of the latter category is the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), a specialized agency with five main program areas ranging from protection of cultural heritage to environmental studies to promotion of basic education for all.

A univocal categorization of sectors of operation for IIs is yet to be identified. At a high level, literature and practitioners usually refer to the dichotomy between “humanitarian” and “development” organizations although in reality organizations mainly operating in one of the two fields often bridge over the other. One of the most reliable classifications was issued by the UN system Chief Executive Board for Coordination in 1979 and is still currently utilized for consolidation of programmatic and financial data on the UN system. Based on this classification, IIs operate along the 20 main programmatic areas shown in Table 1.2. This categorization should also be regarded as a high level political agreement on “world view” of the technical cooperation sector.

Table 1.2 UN Classification of areas of intervention

Political affairs	Transportation	Employment
“General” development issues	Communication	Humanitarian assistance and disaster management
Statistics	Trade and development	Social development
Natural resources	Population	Culture
Energy	Human settlements	Science and technolog...