Conceptualising Decision-Making under the Condition of Complexity: The Case of UN Peacekeeping

Peacekeeping operations (PKOs) and the organizational environment, in which they are embedded, are truly complex. Peacekeeping constituents typically disagree on the most legitimate practice. As a consequence, PKOs are often confronted with contradictory pressures. Bringing decision processes to a successful conclusion is inherently difficult under this condition. In this paper, I ask how decision-makers manage multiple and conflicting demands in the process of steering their complex environment towards taking decisions. To address this question, I resort to the sociological institutionalism-strand of organization theory. The general thrust of this literature is that agency is vested in decision-makers’ choice of response strategies vis-á-vis external constituents. However, we know little about how these processes work. Hence, in this paper I introduce a causal mechanism that theorizes the impact of complexity on the organization of decision-making processes and its outputs. Throughout this paper, I offer a number of empirical illustrations from the peacekeeping field.