This article combines two strands of literature that both investigate the dark side behavior of and in organizations: organizational behavior studies and those of public administration failures. It highlights two main research gaps: firstly, the insights of the organizational behavior literature have not been applied systematically to public administrations, and, secondly, the characteristics of international organizational settings have been by and large left out of the picture, even though they might be particularly prone to those dark side effects. This article proposes that a closer look at the phenomenon of bureaucratic spoiling and its three basic forms (dissent-shirking, obstruction, and sabotage) might set the stage for an expansion of the research agenda on international public administrations and might inform organizational behavior literature too. Throughout the article, empirical illustrations from United Nations peace operations are used to develop the concept of bureaucratic spoiling and to weigh its plausibility, as peace operations represent a case in which those phenomena of bureaucratic spoiling crystallize.
