Bringing International Organization In: Global Institutions as Adaptive Hybrids

Abstract

How can an international organization be made adaptable? Having been designed to fulfil a specific mandate, international organizations should disappear from the world stage once .the initial conditions that led to their establishment no longer exist: their constituents (governments or activists) will not support them when their mandate becomes obsolete or their added value is reduced. Nonetheless, they survive external shocks, resource traps, and even the growing indifference of their founding fathers. The explanation lies in their successful resistance to constituents' control; counter-intuitive adaptation to external change; unplanned expansion through mandate enlargement; and a snowballing albeit unintentional trend to build up networks. Overall, the relative success of international organizations can be measured as a global balance between performance and resilience, exploitation and exploration, autonomy and cooperation. To reach that balanced stage they must be altogether dualistic (coupling the technical with the political); adaptive (converting slack into innovation); organic and ambidextrous (setting new challenges while pursuing current activity). Since they combine components that come from local, national, regional and transnational recipes for survival and performance, they are complex hybrids made up of public agencies, private firms, third sector associations, and expert, activist, or lobbying interest groups.

Stakeholder roles for fostering ambidexterity in Sub-Saharan African agricultural netchains for the emergence of multi-stakeholder cooperatives

“…3. Contextual challenges in the innovation process refer to how exploration and exploitation in innovation networks are managed within spatial, institutional, political, and technological boundaries (Mueller et al, 2013;Schemeil, 2013). When comparing differences between Japanese and Korean firms, for instance, Yoon and Chae (2012) show how decision making structures (decentralisation and control) depend on the nature of the external environment, and that market, clan and bureaucracy influence the management designs to manage paradoxes (different management styles of exploration and exploitation).…”

“…Other innovation boundaries are virtualmediated by ICTs (Ashurst et al, 2012). Managing contextual challenges requires adaptability (Thongpapanl et al, 2012;Weigelt and Sarkar, 2012), adaptive management (Moellenkamp et al, 2010), environmental dynamism and embeddedness, as well as access to organisational capital, human capital (Zhou et al, 2013), social capital and the more political and institutional roles of global institutions (Schemeil, 2013). However, it is less clear who plays which roles to span and mobilise multi-dimensional contextual boundaries (Gupta et al, 2006;Nosella et al, 2012).…”

Devising Strategic Plans to improve Organizational Performance of Intergovernmental Organizations

“…IGOs react by modifying their mandates, missions, values, and organizational mechanisms for survival (Schemeil, 2013). The environment tends to be dynamic, such that demands and expectations on the organization change over time.…”

Des stratégies de changement dans les organisations internationales

“…Les stratégies d'expansion sont les plus fréquentes et les plus étudiées : Yves Schemeil parle ainsi du « potentiel infini d'expansion » du mandat des oi (Schemeil 2007(Schemeil et 2013. Il s'agit là de pratiques quasi routinières, à tel point que l'on peut se demander s'il convient de parler de stratégies.…”