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1. Introduction
On September 18, 2017, the US President, speaking at the United Nations (UN) for the first time, condemned the UN for its “mismanagement” and “bureaucracy.” That would not be the first criticism of UN inefficiency and ineffectiveness. This criticism is disguised by the UN’s political nature, making its overall performance for change and adaptation difficult to observe and assess. Organizations including the UN are reacting to the unprecedented increasing rate of change. As such, the UN, and in response to the general assembly in September 2000 adopted the following resolution for reform:
[…] to ensure that the organization is provided on a timely and predictable basis with the resources it needs to carry out its mandates.
Moreover, it urged:
[…] the Secretariats to make the best use of those resources.
And made it the center stage issue for management reform where the results had to be presented to the Assembly regularly. Since then, “UN Change,” “UN Innovation” or “UN Reform” have become popular terms in UN papers addressing their response to the call for reform. A positive outcome of the reform was the encouragement of a continuous dialogue between the secretariat and member-states, identifying the areas that need to be transformed and methods. While member-states felt that some of the proposed changes may compromise their position in the decision-making process, the secretariat were cautious in member-states “micro-management” that could negatively affect their management abilities introducing another risk factor to reform efforts.
This tension in dialogue was persistent causing a sense of uneasiness between the member-states and the secretariat, which eventually introduced a general sentiment of distrust. Standing before this backdrop, implementing change management efforts could result in deepening this wedge of distrust in that change it would increase uncertainty for both member-states and secretariat about future responsibilities and accountability.
Considering the above, identifying critical factors for change efforts in the UN are of utmost importance and very timely. Any attempt to transform behavior in the UN cannot ignore the magnitude of the aforementioned influences, namely the relationship between the member-states and secretariat, the UN mandate to change, and the global environment.
While change management literature primarily focuses on the implementation of change in the private sector (Armenakis and Schraeder, 2007), some of them...