Defense by Arthur Mühlen-Schulte

PhD defense

For the defense of the PhD degree, Arthur Mühlen-Schulte, Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, has submitted his thesis entitled:

Organising Development: Power and Organisational Reform in the United Nations Development Programme

This dissertation looks at the reform of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) against the backdrop of fundamental shifts in the global governance architecture and more specifically changes to the process of ‘development’. In recent decades the UNDP has faced serious changes in the composition of its funding, its relationship to private interests, and in how it orders and organises its staff. The dissertation concentrates on changes from 1999-2009, following the process of organisational reform initiated after the Cold War. It draws on upon extensive fieldwork including interviews, archival research and existing literature of the UNDP and explicitly adopts a problem-driven analytically eclectic approach to understanding the constraints placed upon the organisation.

Supervisors

Associate Professor Hans Kruse Hansen, Department of Intercultural Communication and Management

Professor Len Seabrooke, International Center for Business and Politics

Assessment Committee

Chair, Professor Anna Leander, Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, CBS

Professor Desmond McNeill

University of Oslo

Associated Professor Jens Ladefoged Mortensen

University of Copenhagen