Staff recruitment and geographical representation in international organizations
| DOI | 10.1177/00208523211031379 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | Yves Steinebach,Steffen Eckhard |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
Staff recruitment and
geographical
representation in
international organizations
Steffen Eckhard
University of Konstanz, Germany
Yves Steinebach
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany
Abstract
What explains geographical representation in the professional staff of intergovernmental
organizations (IOs)? We address this question from an organizationalperspective by con-
sidering IO recruitment processes. In the United Nations (UN) system, recruitment pro-
cesses are designed to ensure bureaucratic merit, with experience and education being
the relevant merit criteria. We develop and test a supply-side theory, postulating that dif-
ferences in countries’supply of well-educated and highly experienced candidates can
explain geographical representation. Drawing on staff data from 34 IOs and supply
data from 174 member states, and controlling for endogeneity and alternative explana-
tions, we find no such relationship for education. However, countries with a high supply
of candidates with relevant working and regional experiences have significantly higher
representation values. These findings offer a complementary narrative as to why some
countries are more strongly represented in the international professional staff than
others. Findings also unveil the nature of bureaucratic merit in the UN, which seems
to emphasize local knowledge and working experience over formal (Western) education.
Points for practitioners
What explains member states’representation in the staff bodies of organizations in the
UN system? Previous work has shown that member state power is a good predictor. But
Corresponding author:
Steffen Eckhard, Politics and Administration, University of Konstanz, Universitätsstr. 10, Konstanz 78457,
Germany.
Email: steffen.eckhard@uni-konstanz.de
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2021, Vol. 87(4) 701–717
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523211031379
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
what about bureaucratic merit? The paper demonstrates that representation patterns
can also be explained when measuring states’supply of candidates with relevant working
and regional experience. Supply of educated candidates plays no significant role.
Bureaucratic merit in the UN seems to emphasize local knowledge and working experi-
ence over formal (Western) education.
Keywords
geographical representation, human resources, international public administration,
recruitment, United Nations
Introduction
This paper addresses the geographical representation of United Nations (UN) member
states in the staff bodies of 34 intergovernmental organizations (IOs) of the UN
system. More precisely, we ask about the factors that explain the distribution of all
31,611 positions in the international professional staff (IPS) of these IOs among their
member states. Officials in the IPS are those who usually make a lifelong career in the
UN system outside their home country, often by serving in different IOs or at least at dif-
ferent duty stations within one IO. A brief glance at the data reveals that among the 193
member states of the UN, 184 are represented in the IPS. At the same time, many nation-
alities are only represented by few individuals whereas the nationality of the USA, France
and the UK appears most frequently. China and Russia, in contrast, two other powerful
permanent members of the UN Security Council, do not even make it into the top 10 list
of nationalities. The question therefore is: what determines how many professional IO
staff positions a country holds?
Previous studies have found that a range of macro forces explain geographical repre-
sentation of IPS positions, in particular member state power politics as well as IOs’
concern for legitimacy and functionality (Badache, 2020; Christensen et al., 2017;
Dijkstra, 2016; Novosad and Werker, 2019; Oksamytna et al., 2021; Parizek, 2017).
However, the literature pays little attention to the administrative procedures conditioning
representation patterns, in particular the recruitment processes of IOs. This is mainly due
to the lack of data restrictions on individual recruitment decisions (but see Christensen
et al., 2017 on the European Union).
Our aim is to address the puzzle of geographical representation from an organizational
lens. Such an organizational perspective considers the internal administrative processes
conditioning aggregated representation patterns. In particular, our focus is on the recruit-
ment process of IOs. Our analysis reveals that these processes are designed to ensure bur-
eaucratic merit, including a series of competitive applicant examinations and interviews
as well as the involvement of multiperson committees in candidate screening and selec-
tion. The relevant merit criteria emphasized by the UN are experience and education. Our
aim is therefore to develop a complementary explanation of geographical representation
702 International Review of Administrative Sciences 87(4)
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