Business continuity, bureaucratic resilience and the limitations of neoliberal survival logics in international organisations

Holmes, Georgina and Newnham, Sarah (2024). Business continuity, bureaucratic resilience and the limitations of neoliberal survival logics in international organisations. Review of International Studies (Early access).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210524000500

Abstract

This article contends that investigating relationalities between business continuity management, staff behaviours and bureaucratic resilience advances understandings of IO survival. Drawing on in-depth interviews, a global staff survey and a discourse analysis of UN reports and applying a postcolonial feminist theoretical approach to the study of IOs, the article examines how the UN Secretary-General’s Alternative Working Arrangements directive to close physical offices and open ‘virtual offices’ was implemented in the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is contended that business continuity management is necessary for IO survival since if the IO bureaucracy is unable to be productive and maintain its spheres of influence during a crisis, it risks losing power and authority. Between March 2020 and August 2021, staff facilitated IO survival organically, from the bottom-up in four ways: demonstrating good performance and productivity; being adaptable and resilient; maintaining personal spheres of influence and building communities of care within the UN. However, the UN’s neoliberal, technocratic approach to business continuity and bureaucratic resilience-building neglected staff care needs. Consequently, IO survival is predicated on staff performing as exploited gendered and racialised ‘neoliberal subjects’, revealing a chronic structural crisis rooted in the UN bureaucracy’s hierarchical composition and unequal employment regime.

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