United Nations

The United Nations - Hierarchy? Or Not?

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ December 29, 2005 ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

The United Nations has a bad reputation for being overly hierarchical and bureaucratic. I agree, but see also an alternative informal organization thriving under the camouflage of formal rules.

In his excellent book on social norms and values - The Great Disruption - Francis Fukuyama places such ’social networks’ in the context of social science and economics. In a nutshell, such networks exist because of some fundamental failings of hierarchies to manage information.

First, it is a big field out there that is characterized by imperfect information. Knowing who is doing what is as much a matter of merit as of chance - of running into someone at a conference or being mailed a reference by a colleague. Hierarchies require that people in charge know everything, which is as impossible in a conglomerate as in the UNDP.

Second, information is increasingly complex. Formal rules cannot easily capture the qualities of a good disaster management specialist, nor capture all the information needed to decide how to respond to a disaster. In such cases, intangible qualities, past experiences, and connections matter as much or more.

Finally, information sharing, while in an organization’s interest, may run counter to individual interest.

Networks solve these problems by allowing information sharing based on informal norms and values, or ’social capital’. It is a shift Fukuyama associates with a move from industrial manufacturing to the ‘information age’.

The United Nations, and the development field, is certainly such a web of connected networks. My boss got to be my boss because of contacts with donors. My replacement is my replacement for a similar reason. The same logic applies when developing projects or granting aid.

The comparison with corporates is tempting because management theory has heralded networks as a new way for corporations to organize themselves, delegating authority to the fringes. The UN, appearently, has been that way for a while, because development work has always been knowledge intensive.

It is an interesting and alternate perspective to the UN as a bureacracy. The UN, indeed the development field, functions as a web of informal connections, with people working only with those they know. Hierarchy exists, but only to legitimize the connections of the network.

I am not sure what the implications of this are? As a network, is the UN highly efficient and adaptive or a potential web of corruption? And what purpose does the hierarchy serve, beyond satisfying the needs of the donors for appearent control of the beast they created?