Abstract
While intrapreneurship and scaling are key themes in the International Business (IB) discussion, our research is the first to show how these concepts manifest in the context of the United Nations and how learnings from IB may be transferred. The United Nations (UN) organizations are tasked with solving the world’s pressing and difficult problems. These organizations are major players in international governance and are characterized by bureaucratic, globally dispersed and politically driven structures, but are hardly ever considered in IB research. The UN organizations are struggling to create innovative approaches to fulfil their core missions in today’s digital world and evidence shows that intrapreneurship and scaling innovation will be critical for transformation.
Highlights
The United Nations (UN) - the world’s only truly global organization– is tasked with solving the world’s most pressing and difficult problems, such as conflict, poverty, and climate change
Core International Business (IB) themes such as innovation and organizational transformation have been studied in a variety of contexts, but to date, we have not considered how they apply to the UN and what we can learn from its attempts at transformation
UN organizations, such as the World Food Programme (WFP) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), are large, complex entities that provide a rich context to study innovation, and in many ways overlap with multinational corporations (MNCs) as well as international non-profit organizations
Summary
The United Nations (UN) - the world’s only truly global organization– is tasked with solving the world’s most pressing and difficult problems, such as conflict, poverty, and climate change. Technology could play an important role as a connector between stakeholders but incorporating new tools and digitalizing processes is difficult when the UN is increasingly hampered with budget cuts, pressure for clear accountability to donors, and strained by the challenges of a changing technology environment (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016). Like private sector organizations, the UN struggles to embrace digitalization and its specific context creates further distinct challenges to innovation and change management. The interesting case studies of innovation emerging from the UN can shed light on how international organizations with social missions successfully foster internal culture change, restructure towards agility, and develop collaborative cross-sector ecosystems. This article aims to position the context of the UN as a comparative landscape for existing International Business (IB) theories around innovation and change
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
