Can IOs renew themselves through intrapreneurship?

In response to the various calls for reform and renewal of the United Nations, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has pushed all parts of the UN system to innovate (https://unsceb.org/topics/innovation). New research from management scholars have shown that UN staff are able to initiate innovations in the field that demonstrate positive impact for beneficiaries through a process of intrapraneurship. In scaling these initiatives, however, only those innovators who are able to navigate the administrative processes and politics at headquarters are able to scale up innovations strategically with required resources, structural realignments or mandate reinterpretations (Ambos and Tatarinov, 2021). This paper presents ongoing research comparing different UN departments’ approaches to innovation in the programme planning and budget process and how these are considered by the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee. The project therefore examines the political dynamics of administration, revealing the ways in which complex principals, who aim to make decisions by consensus, interact with a complex agent – multiple UN departments , seeking to make administrative changes in order to scale innovations. The paper therefore seeks to answer the question of whether innovation through intrapreneurship is a realistic means of renewing and reforming the UN.