International NGOs and Global Social Policy: the Strategic Management Dimension

The partial globalisation of social policy is seen in the growth in importance of welfare programs emanating from supranational and global governmental and non-government institutions. Yet, while there is a literature from within the social policy research community on the international institutional response to poverty and the increasing inequality of world resource-distribution, relatively little appreciation is given to the importance of the redesign of organisational management in elevating the importance of global social policy. The primary objective of this paper is to draw conceptual connections between 'strategic management' patterns within the international (super) NGO sector and the fight against poverty. The principal argument is that the recent emulation by international NGOs (INGOs) of the strategic management methods of multinational corporations feeds directly into the delivery of anti-poverty programmes, and that the fight against global poverty calls upon social policy researchers to pay closer attention to the strategies of private sector organisations and managers in assessing the effectiveness of global welfare reform. Primary among the salient management changes have been the increasing use of NGO-Government-corporate strategic alliances, increased contractualism, and various organisational redesign tools. The next phase of the ongoing project of which this paper forms part, will use in-depth fieldwork interviews with key managers within super-INGOs to establish the contours of the link between INGO management strategy and global social policy.