Early Career Professionals Adjusting to the Work and Lifeworld of the United Nations

Abstract

Large corporations are often formidable and mysterious to people outside them, like giants that populate the earth but can only be seen through their shadows." 2 This is what Rosabeth Moss Kanter remarked in her book Men and Women of the Corporation and she continued as follows: "Corporations are often equally mysterious to the people inside, whose views can be limited and parochial because they rarely get a sense of the whole." 3 This sentence, I assume, still holds true-not only for corporations but also particularly for international organizations like the United Nations (UN) and its agencies. In my research, I seek to shed light on this large international organization focusing especially on its employees. With a look behind the scenes, I aim to better understand the dynamics and work culture(s) in this rather closed-off terra incognita of the United Nations and the practices of men and women working there. 4 Newcomers to the United Nations-introduction This paper deals with the United Nations system 5 as a work and lifeworld. It sets out to explore how early career professionals enter the international organization, how they cope with its hierarchical organizational culture and how they eventually adjust to the United Nations system as a work environment. 1 This paper is based on my SNSF funded research project (working title: "Rituals in an International Work Environment. An Anthropological Research on Cross-cultural Relations and Interactions in United Nations Affiliated Organizations in Geneva and Vienna"). 2 Kanter, Rosabeth M.: Men and Women of the Corporation, New York 1977, p. 4. 3 Kanter, Men, p. 4. 4 Based on Clifford Geertz, I understand "culture" as a human-crated "web of significance". In consequence, being part of an organization means to (re-)create a specific work culture and organizational culture. Geertz, Clifford: The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays by Clifford Geertz, New York 1973, p. 5. 5 Referring to the UN as a 'system' is based on its self-imposed term: "The UN system, also known unofficially as the 'UN family' , is made up of the UN itself and many affiliated programmes, funds, and specialized agencies, all with their own membership, leadership, and budget.

Privileged Precarities

“…In this section, I aim to address and grasp what, from the organization's point of view, could be depicted as the "ideal" UN employee. Therefore, I coined the term homo UN (Mülli 2017b) inspired by Bourdieu's homo academicus (Bourdieu 1988) and according to Weber's conceptualization of an ideal type. The latter represents, as conceived by the sociologist, an absolute abstraction.…”