The UNDP: from a Hierarchy to an Information Based Network Organization
Anne, Holohan
Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles 2002-2004
Marie Curie Incoming International Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Trento, Italy, 2004-2006
[This paper cannot be cited or published without the author’s permission. E-mail:
Abstract
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has, since 1999, been undergoing a restructuring and a transformation from a hierarchical bureaucratic organization to a flatter, more flexible, information based network organization. A Business Re-engineering Team has been established, which is overseeing three organization-wide information technology based projects. One of these is a Portal, an electronic gateway to all the information within the UNDP, which had its initial ‘roll-out’ in June 2002. This paper examines the facilitating and obstructing factors to the success of this project. By extension, I illuminate the facilitating and obstructing factors to the ongoing transformation to a network organization of the UNDP, and indeed the United Nations as a whole.
1.1The UNDP’s Changing Environment
The enormous changes in the private sector in the 1990s are mirrored in the non-profit sector. These changes have been prompted by several factors: the imperatives of rapid developments in information and communication technologies (Davidow and Malone, 1992; Drucker, 1992; Malone & Rockart, 1991), the increase in turbulence in the business and non-business sectors (Huber, 1984), and the rise of the ‘network organization’ both in terms of organizations changing internally to become flatter, more responsive, with information as the key resource, and in terms of organizations collaborating temporarily with other organizations on discrete projects (Jarvenpaa & Ives, 1994; Rockart & Short, 1991; Castells, 1996). The current urgency in the UNDP has arisen from budgetary considerations. The UNDP’s core resources are shrinking dramatically, from $1.1 billion in 1994 to $700 million in 2002. A lot of donors used to be multilateral but now want to be bilateral, going in themselves to the countries where the projects they want to fund are based. There is increased competition from other organizations, and the World Bank in particular has moved into roles that the UNDP has traditionally filled – that of an agency involved in poverty reduction and promoting democratization. The World Bank is a giant organization compared to the UNDP and the UNDP needs to refine and “brand” (VJ, Portal Team) its identity to compete. The UNDP has to capitalize on its unique value that is contained in its knowledge base, particularly the network of country offices in 131 countries around the world. There is a growing realization that success depends on cooperation and collaboration. VJ, a member of the Portal team states:
The UNDP has to become a network organization. Development as it is cannot succeed. Money and resources are scarce. One of the fallacies of development is that you’re in isolated cells. The problem with most developing countries is that you have ‘1001 do-gooders who aren’t coordinated’ which means you have one place in Kenya dealing with HIV and another with micro finance. Now if you are dealing with HIV you need to combine both these things together because in most cases HIV is high in populations with a high density of prostitution. Prostitution is the link factor – provide another income and hence outcome and you may provide a long term sustainable solution.
The role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is seen as central to this, but as of yet there is a disjuncture between what the UN is promoting outside the organization and what it is doing within the organization. This paper documents one part of this attempt to become a knowledge based networking organization.
1.2 Theoretical Context
The increasing importance of linkages and networks has been recognized in the literature on the role of networks in the economy (Granovetter, 1985). Much of the discussion centers on how networking is based on and enabled by information technology (Castells, 1996; Saxenian, 1994). Until now the application of these concepts has been in economic and business relations. They have not yet been applied to non-profit organizational and inter-organizational activity. I argue that they are useful in this area as non-profit organizations share many concerns and issues with economic organizations in the new global networked marketplace. The success of an operation and an organization depends on the organization’s ability to establish and maintain linkages – formal, informal and using information technology. Just as new information technologies allow entirely new, less centralized, and flexible production arrangements (Morton, 1991; Rockart and Short, 1991) so do they enable less centralized and flexible nonprofit management.
Hierarchies are also experiencing the organizational changes wrought by new information and communication technologies. Just as in the private sector, where firms have had to become more responsive and flexible and to focus only on the part of the supply chain that they do best, subcontracting or joining alliances or networks for the rest, so non-profit organizations have had to realize that one organization cannot do all the tasks required in development and humanitarian operations. The architecture and culture of hierarchical organizations – vertical integration, functional work groups, narrow job descriptions, and centralization of key decisions – can militate against successful construction and execution of network organization structures and processes which depend on decentralized decisions, project teams, broader job descriptions and trust. In the literature that concentrates on business firms, the attributes of a network organization are integration across functions, more emphasis on market forces, less emphasis on organizational hierarchy, and flexibility – any member can easily link to any other person, or information, horizontally or vertically (Rockart & Short, 1991). An individual’s contribution to the ‘ad hoc’ teams that arise is based on relevant knowledge, not formal position or title. The organization is information rich, and by connecting information, people and skill (talent) together more effectively within the firm, the firm in aggregate is more effective.
However, how hierarchical organizations introduce technologies and how the organization responds to them is not predictable. Little is still known about how technology is actually used in organizations (O’Mahony and Barley, 1999) and as Bockowski (2001) pointed out, technology only “affords” certain potential uses (intentional and unintentional), but it is the institutional setting that determines whether these “affordances” are recognized.
Today all organizations face the imperative of organizational innovation due to rapid technological innovation in an increasingly turbulent world, both for profit and non-profit organizations. Information technology is a critical enabler of new ways of organizing. Fluid and flexible patterns of working relationships are based on communication networks, yielding innovative contexts for interaction and collaborative work that span traditional organizational boundaries. “The chief structural characteristic of network organization is the high degree of integration across formal boundaries” (Baker, W.E. 1993:397-429). Point to point communication [communication directly between two people, no intervening person or channels necessary] between groups, often supported by information technology, integrates borders between them.” Firms and organizations, including the UNDP, are spending substantial sums of money on technology with the aim of facilitating the efficient and effective operation of lateral and diagonal ties.
Although “[N]etworked organizations are usually conceived of as communication rich environments, with information flows blurring traditional intra-company boundaries” (Rockart and Short, 1991:191), as Nohria and Eccles (1992) point out, “networked organizations are not the same as electronic networks nor can they be built entirely on them.” Working relations in the networked organization are embedded in a social context made of culture, social norms, practices, habits” (Zack & MacKenny, 1995); in short, the institution of the network is critical, and this institution is itself a hybrid of the network and the hierarchical institutions, as most networks are in reality a hybrid of hierarchies and networks (Ronfeldt and Arquilla, 2001).
Focus and Methodology of the Study
The focus of my research was the business project re-engineering team within the UNDP, drawn from across the different bureaus, led by JW of the Bureau of Management. The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) strategy group was overseeing three large projects: one was introduction of the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) ‘backend’ software, one was e-documentation, and one was getting the Portal to work. In the summer of 2002 the Portal was central as it was being gradually ‘rolled out’, i.e. presented as a functioning tool to the organization. The Portal Implementation Group as the Strategy Group was known while they worked on the Portal had tied to it a group of senior decision-makers in the organization. Hence, the strategy group worked as a recommender, where issues were discussed and recommendations or solutions suggested. It was composed of people from several different bureaus, all of whom had their ‘fulltime job’ within these bureaus also, so there was a fairly wide representation of technical and non-technical people. For this paper, I conducted 8 in-depth interviews with personnel working directly on and/or affiliated with the Portal Implementation Team (there were 15 members of the group but I could not set up and conduct interviews with the remainder in the time frame available). I also conducted a content analysis of group email and online discussions of the group.
I expected to find that the three levels of
- organizational or business design
- information technology
- institutional culture
were equally valid and useful concepts at HQ as in the field for understanding the facilitating and obstructing factors of transforming the UNDP into a network organization. These were not explicitly enumerated and articulated but they were the focus of discussion thematically at all times. It was impossible to “chop them up” (VJ, Portal Team) as they inevitably overlapped and fed into each other and impacted upon each other. I was told by all of the UNDP respondents that the Portal was explicitly seen as business model driven not IT driven, as previous efforts to transform agencies of the UN through introducing information technology had failed dismally. Although they all acknowledged the institutional barriers and the problems these barriers raised, there was not a parallel focus on this. This inadequate attention paid to institutional factors has possible negative consequences for achievement of their goals. I looked at how the UNDP was dealing with each of the three levels outlined above, first in a general way and secondly, with specific reference to the Portal.
1. The Organizational/Business Design
The UNDP is engaged in a top down and bottom up transformation process to move from being a highly bureaucratic, hierarchical and inefficient organization to one based on networks of knowledge. Becoming a network organization for the UNDP is essential given its goal of making the organization’s primary assets its knowledge base and its ability to bring diverse actors together.
The whole of the UNDP is being reorganized from a product organization to a practice organization. The old UNDP structure was a bureaucratic hierarchy organized into bureaus. These bureaus have not had any structured means of cooperating together. Hence, there has been considerable duplication and overlap. The restructuring of the UNDP has left the bureaus in existence but has involved some reorganizing – finance and administration are now in the same bureau for example, and the post of Chief Information Officer (CIO) was created. The network structure is underpinning and overlying the old structure so that coordination and cooperation is vastly increased and inefficiency is reduced. The new structure of the UNDP is a matrix. The UNDP - as most organizations are doing - is devising means to accumulate employees’ knowledge in electronic databases to use them as repositories of the shared, firm-wide “structural intellectual capital” (Stewart, 1997). Organizational management efforts is on archiving ‘best practices’ for later reference. The network is based on six ‘Practice’ areas in which the UNDP has special expertise and a highly developed knowledge base. These thematic units are centralized in HQ in New York. Within each of the regions there are also Sub-Regional Resource Facilities (SURFs), regional rosters of experts to be called on by anyone in the organization. “A practice organization based on people…the main focus is on collaboration and how you can tie a practice together, because the challenge is we have the practices spread across the globe and we need to find a way for them to work effectively together, to talk together, to come up with the best practices ” (M, Portal Team). For this to happen, information technology and knowledge management is essential. Besides digitizing all documentation the two main applications to be introduced are:
-An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software aimed at significantly improving corporate resource management and enhancing results based management.
-A UNDP portal to underpin knowledge management and to increase the use of e-archiving and e-document handling.
The Portal
So what role was the Portal to play in this transformation? The Portal was to underpin and support the Practice areas. M (Portal Team) described how: “The way we will put the policy is to get the practitioners to submit examples of what they think are the best practices, these documents, submissions, and say “this qualifies as a best practice” but “this does not”, and what qualifies as best practices will get elevated to Best Practices/Policy Level, as in this is how we approach these kinds of problems”.
The communication and information physical structure can be used to improve information transfer and to facilitate cooperative problem solving but by building on rather than replacing traditional forms of networking. Wellman (1996) points out that concerns about whether online ties can be strong ties are wrongly specified. Although internet technologies can transcend time and space, not all ties are either totally online or totally off-line. Much on-line contact is between people who see each other in person and people mix email with face-to-face communication. Conversations started in one medium continue in another. The Portal Implementation Group sees this multi-optional communication to be the intrinsic to the advantages the Portal will bring.
There has been a slow push for such flexibility since the mid 1990s. SG of the Bureau for Development Policy in 1996 came up with Knowledge Networks, basically email groups. These are mailing lists of 200 to 500 people who, when they cannot solve a problem pose a query or ask for a referral. They are used extensively and are seen as very effective. These mail groups are also seen as the core of the eventual Practice Groups. “But” says Martin “for practices you have to have better, closer collaboration, so we’re trying to upgrade the quality of the connection between people. The best quality you get is face to face. When you talk to somebody you get all the impressions. The next best is video conferencing where you have voice and picture, and voice is good. Email is more impersonal and not as personal, the richness of the medium is less. So we put a lot of emphasis on the practitioners meeting at least once a year, to connect, then it’s so much easier for these other mediums to connect later on” (M, Portal Team). However the Portal was seen as the conduit for all but face-to-face exchanges as video-conferencing, messaging and shared desktops are all envisaged in its development. The SURFs were also to be facilitated through the Portal. Thus, until the appropriate leadership at the top arrived, M’s bureau, the Bureau for Development Policy, who had been quietly working away at becoming a network organization for years, could not optimize what they saw as the most effective way of working. “We have a very progressive management in that they’ve pioneered the knowledge networks” (M, Portal Team).
RK, the Manger of the Portal, described the transition of existing knowledge into electronic or digital format in an email to the online group. He talked about how the Portal brings in a new concept in how manuals are produced and published. When single volumes were produced, UNDP’s processes mean that updating manuals is a tedious process that involves the entire manual rather than the applicable sections/policies/guidelines, and therefore the practice of issuing “memos” with updates emerged, resulting in the need to not only consult a manual but an often-long paper trail of memos in order to arrive at the information that is needed. The taxonomy [classification system] developed by the team for the Portal allowed manuals to be broken down into a collection of separate modules, each of which was to be published and categorized separately. The update process would be simplified as only a single document would need updating and finding the relevant information would be easier given the granular nature of their categorization. So for lengthy manuals, the manual was to be broken down into separate documents for the different topic areas and then categorized and published separately.