Course 2024-2025 a.y.

The course will be structured as follows:

• Understanding International Organizations and their environment – this block introduces the main families and the essential characteristics of IOs and focuses on the main features of the United Nations system and its organizations. It also provides an overview of the main trends in international aid, the changing role of IOs and their interactions and partnerships with other main players, the efforts to strengthen system-wide coherence and aid effectiveness and the ongoing tension between coordination and competition among IOs;

• Management systems and reforms – this block tackles the main challenges of modern IOs in strategically positioning themselves to strengthen their relevance and in managing their resources and their operations on the ground. We will focus on understanding what ‘strategy’ means for multilaterals and on developing hands-on knowledge on how organizations operationalize their vision into concrete plans of actions through the results-based management (RBM) approach. We will then analyse the evolution of funding patterns and the implications for managing financial resources, exploring the innovative forms of funding international development. IOs’ main asset is arguably their Human capital and we will analyse the state of practice regarding HR management and talent management. We will then illustrate the challenges of IOs when building and managing a robust and global supply chain, which pre-conditions to manage their ground operations and efficiently serve beneficiaries effectively. Finally, we will talk about ‘innovation’ in IOs intended as new ways to approach and tackle programmatic issues.

• The European Union – this block focuses on the European Union as a Supra-national organization and discusses the institutional, governance and operational features of the main European institutions. The central part of this block tackles the issues of managing strategy and HR in the specific context of the EU institutions and elaborates on the specific managerial practices and challenges faced by them.

• Course wrap-up - in the last session of the course we will discuss organizational change as an ongoing need which needs to be properly interpreted and acted by managers of IOs. We will analyse different types of change, discuss how to develop change ‘capability’ and how to diagnose, design and successfully implement change.

By the end of the course students will learn:

• The institutional setting, policy-making processes, functioning and management practices of the main families of IOs, including the UN system and the European Union;
• The basics of the theory of international organizations and regional integration as a conceptual framework to understand the relevance and need for intergovernmental and supranational organizations;
• The organizational models and policy network analysis upon which to understand the functioning and management of international organizations.

• Use the fundamental concepts and the language of management to understand how international and supranational organizations, as well as transnational partnerships work;
• Assess how the institutional and political environment affects the overall sustainability of international and supranational organizations;
• Leverage on the understanding of the interdependence between public, private and non-profit actors to strengthen global development effectiveness.

• Lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Collaborative Works / Assignments
• Interaction/Gamification

The learning experience of this course includes, in addition to frontal lectures, case discussions, real examples and interactions with guest speakers from international organizations.

During the course, students will have the opportunity to apply conceptual frameworks and tools discussed in class to the concrete challenges of an international organization through a groupwork activity.

Attending students will be assessed as follows:

• Written exam(s) - Two written exams 1st partial (50%) and 2nd partial  (50%) or one general exam (100%). The exam is based on a mix of multiple-choice and open questions related to the contents discussed in class.
• Group project (optional) - the project enables students to add up to 2 points to the final mark resulting from the written exam(s).  Students will be requested to firmly commit to undertaking the group project by the deadline communicated in class by the instructors. 

General written exam (100% of the final grade) based on a mix of multiple choice and open questions related to the full reference list of readings, which aims to assess the student’s learning level of the theoretical models, the understanding of key concepts elaborated in the course readings, and the ability to summarise narrative interpretations from the course readings.  

• Class notes.
• Course slides uploaded on the Bboard platform.
• Selected readings made available on the Bboard platform and E-Library online course reserve.
• Selected chapters from the book Missoni E., Alesani D. “Management of International Organizations”, 2024 will be subject to examination

• List of compulsory readings for not attending students made available on the Bboard platform and E-Library online course reserve.
• The entire book Missoni E., Alesani D. “Management of International Organizations”, 2024 will be subject to examination