Tell Me Thy Company: Inter-Organizational Relations in the United Nations System

Barbara Murphy

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/N2X73F

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Tell Me Thy Company: Inter-Organizational Relations in the United Nations System

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For all its significance in world affairs, the United Nations is full of paradoxes. As a system - i.e. as a collection of independent yet interrelated entities - its contradictions derive from the juxtaposition of forces encouraging fragmentation and calls for improved harmonization. On its part, the reality of inter-organizational relations in the United Nations ever portrays a varied landscape: some agencies reveal a higher proclivity to engage in partnerships than others; while those establishing links show certain preferences in their choice of associates. In an inter-organizational context marked by both integrating and dividing forces, which logic explains the relational behavior of United Nations agencies? In quest of an answer, the present analysis engages a resource-based perspective of organizational action. The main contention is that international organizations are purposeful actors that need both material and symbolic resources in order to function and survive. As follows, their relational behavior is strategic, and mainly driven by the effort to acquire and maintain essential capital. The explicit inference is that the proclivity of a given agency to cooperate with its cohorts will be determined by the extent of its resource needs, and its choice of partners by the specific type of asset it lacks. In order to test the suggested argument, a qualitative research method is used to analyze in-depth four United Nations organizations: the World Bank, the World Food Programme, UNICEF and UNESCO. The findings confirm that inter-organizational relations in the United Nations are largely shaped by the strategic decentralized decisions of individual agencies, as guided by their organization-specific asset situation. The broader conclusion is that the (relational) behavior of international organizations mainly responds to a resource-based rationale.

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