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UN Global Compact: a Global Action Network Case Study

Posted by Steve Waddell in Net Dev on January 25, 2012

UN Global Compact Executive Head Georg Kell became frustrated with the lack of understanding about how the Compact differs from government agencies.  It leads to wrong-thinking about how it should be “run” and what it can and cannot do.  He understands it is a Global Action Network (GAN), so he asked me to write a paper to explain how it works. 

The product titled The Global Compact: An Organizational Innovation to Realize UN Principles, is an up-date of a book chapter I wrote in 2004.  It was shared with the Compact’s donor group in October and is now available on the Compact’s web-site.  It explains that as a GAN, the Compact’s:

“…primary concern is healthy harmonization between the sectors (business-government-civil society).  The concept of “healthy” is defined by those participating, and GANs’ over-arching goals of creating sustainability of the (political-economic-social) systems and the environmental one, in which they are embedded.  “Sustainability” certainly does not mean a static state, nor does it have a homogenous implication.  True sustainability involves resilience and ability to adapt to, and create, positive changing environments.  It means responding to diverse cultural qualities and contextual factors.  Moreover, sustainability and system harmonization mean successful outcomes for the different temporal frameworks of the three sectors." 

This harmonization role can lead a GAN to be attacked by all three organizational sectors.  Government officials might see the Compact as not aggressively enough pushing the UN resolutions;  some NGOs accuse it of “blue-washing” – providing the UN’s protective mantel and reputation to the corporations that it is working with;  some businesses undoubtedly see it as interfering in the proper role of business. 

In fact, the Compact’s success and legitimacy depend in part on it being able to successfully address these concerns.  It must maintain support from its multi-stakeholder constituency, for it to do its work successfully.  Without this, it can go the way that the Kimberley Process (addressing conflict diamonds) appears to be heading:  into irrelevancy because it lack support from a cross-section of stakeholders. 

Georg is doing a pretty good job at working with these high-stake tensions.  Government support comes from his country donors who pay for his core operations, a biennial resolution from the General Assembly, the role of the Secretary-General as Chair of his board, and administrative support from a UN inter-agency group.  His business support comes through their donations to a foundation that pays for special projects, provision of regular reports on progress in implementation of actions to give life to the UN principles, and participation in various programs.  NGO support comes as participation in programs as well

This is not at all easy.  Thousands of businesses were de-listed as UN participants because they didn’t fulfill the minimal reporting requirement.  The Compact must always create a dynamic tension to continually raise the performance bar, which it is doing now with a three-tier differentiation strategy between “LEAD” companies, active companies and participating companies.  A constant challenge is to not fall into the trap of equating success with an ever-increasing number of corporate signatories, but rather paying attention to the quality of commitment of its signatories and the actions that they take.  This is the critical “voluntary leadership” definitional characteristic of GANs that separates them from organizations like trade associations. 

After describing the Compact in terms of the seven definitional GAN strategic characteristics, the case paper looks at the Compact as a UN change agent with a distinctive role.  It does this by exploring core “logics” of the Compact:  the usually unwritten assumptions that are the basis for developing an organizational structure and taking action;  logics are dimensions of the mental model that distinguish GANs from traditional UN implementing agencies.

The table from the paper summarizes these logics.  It notes that:

“It is very common for an individual who has not experienced working in one type of organization to apply inappropriate assumptions to it.  Often, for example, we hear that “government must act more like a business”.  Of course government can adapt some tools of business, but pressure to make government adopt core business logics will produce confusion and contradictory actions that will fail and, if taken repetitively, severely debilitate a governmental organization. “

This is why I was so happy to contribute this paper.  For GANs to reach their potential, their distinctive qualities must be recognized and nurtured.