International Organizations
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Barnett and Finnemore develop the view that international organizations (IOs) by their very nature have the potential to fall into dysfunction and implement their work in such ways as to yield negative effects, from a violation of mission to inappropriate mission creep, and in any case blazing a trail of failure. Such organizational behavior, which they label pathological, is guaranteed if an organization's bureaucratic structures dominate adherence to appropriate protocols on one hand, or adhere inappropriately to such protocols on the other. The good intentions or original mission conception of an organization are always at risk. That is first of all from the ordinary issues that confront institutional structures. Those issues are covered in the standard literature of organizational behavior. Motivation, morale, power ratios of personnel, and the like can figure just as much in an IO as in a corporate environment. The fact that international organizations have cross-national reach and international sponsorship may contribute to difficulties of resolving management and business-process issues shows that the stakes are higher where the potential for failure or ineffectiveness at any level is concerned.The reasons for the hazards of pathology are containd in "the very nature of bureaucracies, the 'social stuff'" of which an organization is made (1999, p. 719). Barnett and Finnemore start with the sociologist M`x Weber's analyris of bureaucracies and the process of as "ration
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and/or managers to use a coherent set of criteria with which to judge performance of the trust deposited with them. That would be far superior to making groundless statements about bureaucratic failures, even if the failure reasons are not realized.
The argument is that identifying and understanding internal bureaucratic processes is essential to a complete picture of IO behavior and that, indeed, IOs as a class have historically been uniquely immune or opaque to complete understanding. IOs, the authors say, are not mere agents or extensions of their sponsors but discrete, "purposive actors" in bureaucratic functions. The idea that they are subsidiary to states or have a "statist ontology" (Barnett & Finnemore, 1999, p. 726) is challenged by examples showing that their operations are not run through the nation-state filter. Instead, they have a life of their own. The notion of state sponsorship does not capture what is really important about the organizations internally. Internal operational behavior is where the real insight into their workings can be found.
Barnett and Finnemore describe five specific ways in which IOs can fail the test of effectiveness, or, "breed pathologies": irrationality of rationalization, universalism,
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Approximate Word count = 1385
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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