A typology of board design for highly effective monitoring in intergovernmental organizations under the United Nations system

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) system comprises several intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that were established to contribute to the functioning of the overall transnational system of delivering global public goods. However, many IGOs under the UN system are criticized for their failure to accomplish their mandates. Research argues that IGO boards serve as a governance mechanism that should be designed in order to effectively perform the monitoring function to ensure fulfillment of IGO mandates. Thus, using an inductive fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, this study explores 13 IGO boards under the UN system to identify the board designs that are associated with highly effective monitoring. Our findings reveal a board design typology reflecting the interplay of the level of organizational complexity and the extent of the distribution problem in IGOs. This research contributes to our understanding of IGO governance by underscoring the relationship between board designs and highly effective monitoring to help researchers and practitioners improve IGO performance.

Bringing owners back on board: A review of the role of ownership type in board governance

“…Given the role of boards as representatives of an increasingly heterogeneous group of shareholders (Monks & Minow, 2011), they serve as the most important channel for the owners to gain influence on their firms (McCahery, Sautner, & Starks, 2016). Thus, it has become clear that different types of owners have important implications for board governance, reflecting discernable patterns in board structure, composition, and processes (Federo & Saz‐Carranza, 2020) that ultimately affect multiple firm outcomes (Connelly et al, 2010). Conversely, investors might also be attracted to firms with specific board governance practices (Armstrong, Core, & Guay, 2014) aimed at capitalizing on such adopted practices or changing them to unlock the latent value of the target firms (Aguilera, Federo, & Ponomareva, 2020).…”

“…Given the role of boards as representatives of an increasingly heterogeneous group of shareholders (Monks & Minow, 2011), they serve as the most important channel for the owners to gain influence on their firms (McCahery, Sautner, & Starks, 2016). Thus, it has become clear that different types of owners have important implications for board governance, reflecting discernable patterns in board structure, composition, and processes (Federo & Saz-Carranza, 2020) that ultimately affect multiple firm outcomes (Connelly et al, 2010).…”

Qualitative comparative analysis: justifying a neo-configurational approach in management research

“…Researchers will need to identify the most salient conditions that can explain the occurrence of the outcome of interest. A large bulk of studies using QCA is inductive in nature, operating through an exploratory theory-building analysis, which is applicable if the relationship cannot be theoretically established beforehand (e.g., Campbell, Sirmon, & Schijven, 2016;Federo & Saz-Carranza, 2018a, 2018bHaxhi & Aguilera, 2017;Misangyi & Acharya, 2014). In this way, hypotheses or propositions are generated after the analysis.…”

“…Developed initially for case-based analysis in sociology by Ragin (1987), QCA is increasingly applied in different management research sub-disciplines (Wagemann, Buche, & Siewert, 2016) such as organization design (e.g., Grandori & Furnari, 2008), strategy (e.g., Fiss, 2011;Greckhamer, Misangyi, Elms, & Lacey, 2008), marketing (e.g., Frambach, Fiss, & Ingenbleek, 2016;Johansson & Kask, 2017), corporate governance (e.g., Bell, Filatotchev, & Aguilera, 2014;García-Castro, Aguilera, & Ariño, 2013), public administration (e.g., Federo & Saz-Carranza, 2018b;Verweij, Klijn, Edelenbos, & van Buuren, 2013), international business (e.g., Crilly, 2011;Schneider, Schulze-Bentrop, & Paunescu, 2010) and family business (e.g., García-Castro & Aguilera, 2014;García-Castro & Casasola, 2011), among others.…”

Perceived to slack: secondary securitization and multilateral treaty ratification in Israel

“…Indeed, recent literature deems the UN's General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council resolutions as asymmetrical and preoccupied with Israel (Becker et al 2015). Other UN intergovernmental organizations fail to accomplish their mandates (Federo and Saz-Carranza 2018). UN_TREATY (-) flags UN treaties.…”