The Competency of the United Nations Personnel: Insights and Importance for the Research on the International Civil Service

If the analysis of United Nations (UN) staff is under-invested by scholars in disciplines such as political science or sociology, their competencies remain even more a blind spot for research. Yet, the concept of « competency » is indissociable from the history of UN personnel, being quoted in the article 101 of the UN Charter : « The paramount consideration in the employment of the staff and in the determination of the conditions of service shall be the necessity of securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity » (United Nations Charter, 1945). The term refers, in UN language, to a combination of skills, attributes and behaviours that are directly related to successful performance on the job (Booklet Competencies for the Future, 1999). Today the concept of competency seems particularly relevant for two reasons: first, to approach international organizations (IOs) through one of the classical developments of organizational sociology – organizational performance (Ness & Brechin, 1988), a concept which is still accurate nowadays (Ness & Brechin, 2013); second, because of a turn in international organizations studies since the early 2000’s, taking into account the « expert » authority (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004 ; Nay, 2012). Such trends should have turned staff competency into a cornerstone of IO analysis. However, contrary to other international civil servants who have been studied inter alia through the prism of their competencies (see European Union bureaucrats; Georgakakis, 2010), it seems that the UN staff competency is still not really delineated, delimited nor deepened by scholars. Furthermore, institutional experts such as UN agents are mostly seen in the literature as managers and executors, rather than thinkers and researchers (Niezen, 2017). This contribution aims at seizing the notion of competency through a sum of empirical material (interviews, observation) collected during a doctoral research started in 2014. Based on this material and literature analysis, preliminary results suggest that UN agents’ competency is marginal in the making of UN expertise. This situation not only impacts the UN agent’s career, but also brings the issue of the UN cognitive influence – how much does it rely on the competencies of its staff? Presented as the first and most important resource of the UN (Göthel, 2010), the staff would not be so crucial for the construction of the UN authority. Regarding the topic of the panel, the presentation will tend to provide a renewed theoretical approach in the study of UN staff, approaching competencies through career steps such as academic background, long-life training, entry or departure of the staff. It also aims at showing that an improved knowledge of UN agents’ competency would be not only critical for the research on the international civil service, but also crucial for the understanding and the evolution of the UN cognitive influence model.