INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SERVANT MANAGEMENT: A Personnel- Influenced Research Agenda

The intersection of public personnel management, the international civil service, and international civil servants of international organizations (IOs) is a relatively new area of inquiry shaped by two literatures. The first is an established public personnel management literature largely focused on democratic and developed countries. The second is a nascent and often non-comparative international civil service literature focused on the United Nations and, more recently, the European Union and the World Bank. Research is dominated by the politics of personnel management (recruitment/representation, secondment, labour contracts) and less on other typical personnel management concerns. Insufficient attention to an IO’s human resources limits a fuller understanding of its representation, legitimacy, and accountability concerns.