The Professionalization of Humanitarian Organizations

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN BUSINESS ORGANISATIONAL STUDIES

Günter Müller-Stewens Tami Dinh Bettina Hartmann Martin J. Eppler Fabienne Bünzli

The Professionalization of Humanitarian Organizations The Art of Balancing Multiple Stakeholder Interests at the ICRC 123

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The concept of the industrial organisation is rapidly changing. So does the landscape of what we can and must organise. As a consequence the role and function of organisation in society is subject of a vivid debate. New needs and demands of stakeholders, (governance) scandals and growing depletion of resources all put pressure on established practices. This series addresses a wide variety of the problems and issues related to the contemporary business enterprise. Possible themes could be stakeholder management, risk, sustainable development, recycling and waste, corporate responsibility, multiple value creation, strategic alliances, innovation and change and transition. Manuscripts can address those problems and issues related specifically to a sector—yet this is not mandatory. The ambition is to build over time a series that serves as a landmark.

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Günter Müller-Stewens Tami Dinh Bettina Hartmann Martin J. Eppler Fabienne Bünzli •

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The Professionalization of Humanitarian Organizations The Art of Balancing Multiple Stakeholder Interests at the ICRC

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Günter Müller-Stewens Institute of Management University of St. Gallen St. Gallen, Switzerland Tami Dinh Institute of Accounting, Control and Auditing University of St. Gallen St. Gallen, Switzerland

Martin J. Eppler Institute for Media and Communications Management University of St. Gallen St. Gallen, Switzerland Fabienne Bünzli Institute for Media and Communications Management University of St. Gallen St. Gallen, Switzerland

Bettina Hartmann University of St. Gallen St. Gallen, Switzerland

ISSN 2191-5482 ISSN 2191-5490 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Business ISSN 2570-3439 ISSN 2570-3447 (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Organisational Studies ISBN 978-3-030-03247-0 ISBN 978-3-030-03248-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03248-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960180 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Humanitarian organizations (HOs) are essential for relief work and emergency responses in situations of man-made crises and natural disasters. Their mission is focused on coping with humanitarian problems in our society. And as never before in history, so many people have been dependent on humanitarian emergency relief: Worldwide the number is about 125 million.1 However, skepticism has arisen in recent years as to whether HOs still fulfill their mission in an efficient way: Are they agile enough to respond to the changing demands and conditions in the field? Remember the disputable role of the UN in the Sahara. Or is the victim really at the core of the focus of HOs? Or do they respond sufficiently to the expectations of their donors? Or does their immense growth lead to large inefficient bureaucratic machines? And so on. These kinds of questions challenge HOs. To keep their legitimization, they have to respond to these questions by transforming the management of their organizations. They have to modernize and professionalize their organizations. In general, “professionalization” has a positive connotation. Here, it primarily means taking the institutional logic of private corporations and applying this in the context of a humanitarian organization, a specific case being a principled NGO (or NPO). But this kind of “managerialism” can create specific tensions because of partly conflicting institutional logics.2 There is a challenge in using the advantages of the tools and frameworks inherent in the management of private companies without corrupting their own principles. In this research project, we studied one of the oldest, largest, and most influential HOs in the world: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). We adopted a management perspective for the ICRC, asking: With what kind of 1

Urech (2017, p. 12). Meyer and Maier (2017, p. 104): “Managerialism—understood as a set of normative expectations on how to run organizations on the basis of management knowledge—can be found in organizations of all societal sectors: … it became the object of many hopes as well as fears. Optimists expected that it would make NPOs more efficient and effective, while sceptics warned of colonization by narrow-minded economic thinking.” 2

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challenges is the management team of the ICRC confronted? How do they cope with these challenges? How do they manage change? What we have seen is that the ICRC has a very strong shared core identity— besides all the other identities in the organization—which remains close to what it was in the year of its foundation in 1863. However, the way in which the ICRC is executing its mandate has fundamentally changed. Since 1863, we have seen an organization undergoing fundamental change. This change has primarily been driven by changes in the external context and strong international growth. The consequent alignment of the organization with the new situation has created significant internal challenges and tensions for the management and workforce of the ICRC. This transformation of the ICRC can be mainly understood as a new period of professionalization. On the one hand, this professionalization takes place more or less in the same way as with most other global corporations, but with a time lag of about a decade: The ICRC is changing into a multi-dimensional organizational structure with all the well-known “matrix problems” coming along with it. It is strengthening the corporate functions to build up high-quality expertise as a service for national delegations, but with a side effect of the loss of power and control within local units. There is a building up of regional service centers to realize synergies and to provide the national operations with hopefully more efficient services, but which are, from the perspective of the locals, often not sufficiently close to their specific needs. These include a more intense collaboration and an interaction style between the headquarters and the local organizations, changing the role of the local managers, which is often felt as an increase in bothersome bureaucracy and a disempowerment. This is nothing new, but of course it is challenging for the people involved. On the other hand, we have observed many specifics which are different from large private companies and worthy of consideration and very interesting to describe and to discuss: • Firstly, and perhaps overlaying all the other differences, is the relevance of the normative framework, which has been among the principles of the ICRC since the year of its foundation. If you look at a company like the Volkswagen Group, in the “Diesel scandal” the company cheated in terms of several of their brands, their customers, and the wider public. The company corrupted its corporate values. Yes, it significantly devalued the company’s reputation and it had to pay billions in surcharges—but they survived, and in 2017, the company even generated record sales. If the ICRC was to corrupt its principles significantly, it would probably be existential and it would lose its legitimization in the eyes of most of its stakeholders. • Secondly, we have seen that the ICRC has to act in a much more complex, dynamic, and political setting of stakeholders than before. For example, there are power shifts (e.g., to the victims using social media), new demands (e.g., more detailed reporting to donors to show greater accountability by measuring the impact of the ICRC’s activities in the field), greater interdependencies

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between stakeholders because many responses today are multi-national involving many more stakeholders. The ICRC is in the process of determining efficient ways to act in such new types of stakeholder settings. • Thirdly, we endeavored to determine the nature of the balance of competing stakeholder interests at the ICRC and also when stakeholder interests are in conflict with the “untouchable” principles. We discovered interesting individual decision procedures and some simple rules applied by decision-makers. While the principles are very clearly present and also so is a focus on putting the beneficiaries in the center, the changing environment has led to an increasing importance of subject matter expertise and the ability to seize the window of opportunity in real time. • Fourthly, some of the decision processes and rules we have described above cope with the manner in which the organization endeavors to manage the increasing demand for greater accountability. We have seen that such detailed KPI reporting often creates a moral dilemma for the decision-makers in a HO. While the increase in reports allows the organization to be more transparent, a range of challenges arises such as the difficulties of measuring humanitarian performance, backward engineering, and perceived distraction from the work at hand. We observed high tensions in the organization where many employees felt overwhelmed by increasing technical requirements and they only vaguely see the benefits of being more transparent and setting up internal performance measures. • Fifthly, the ICRC has learned to operate in two different modes: Traditionally, the ICRC used to mainly operate response projects in the context of major humanitarian disasters. This mode is part of the “genetic code” of the organization, and nowadays, it still exists as a more or less standardized “emergency mode.” The present generation of managers loves this mode because acting this way by providing humanitarian aid on the spot and very efficiently is one of the reasons why they joined the fieldwork of the ICRC. But in the meantime, many operations have generally been permanent operations, at least for some decades. Therefore, there is also a need for an operating mode for normal situations (“normal mode”) which incorporates managing all the permanently ongoing operations. These activities are easier to plan, and they can be standardized and controlled with typical management systems (strategic planning, reporting, etc.). In Chap. 3, we will describe the major observations we made in more detail. However, before this, we need to provide in Chap. 1 more information about the characteristics of a HO, the challenges which such organizations face, the nature of our research interests in HOs, and how we organized our empirical study. In Chap. 2, we explain our understanding of our research site—the ICRC—from a managerial perspective. We aim to better understand its external challenges and its changing internal context—its strategy and organizational alignment—which is where we will embed our observations.

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In Chap. 4 a case study shows how technology like social media analytics impact the way that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) engages with its stakeholders in humanitarian crises. The case illustrates the role that social media analytics played in detecting an unexpected stakeholder constellation and in strengthening the ICRC’s presence as protection provider. It shows what “managing stakeholders” means for an international humanitarian nonprofit organization that helps and protects victims of humanitarian crises. The case also demonstrates the significance of social media analytics as a complementary decision-making tool to clarify stakeholder constellations, understand interests of key actors, and engage with them. In Chap. 5 we summarize the implications for the management of a HO or other types of NGOs. This booklet emanates from the NODE Transcultural Workspaces, a joint research project organized in different working groups, undertaken by the University of St. Gallen and the ICRC. The objective of our working group was to better understand strategic decision-making mechanisms in highly complex situations and under time pressure with regard to addressing the interests of multiple stakeholders. The decision context of our ICRC research site changed markedly in recent years. With our observations and insights, we aim to contribute to strategic decision-making in terms of the continuous professionalization of the ICRC and similar organizations while also contributing to the respective discussions in our scientific community. Of course, the following observations and conclusions are the result of the interpretations of outsiders, and the recommendations we make are formulated with total regard to the organization, and they are not made from the perspective of being “wise guys.” Our sincere thanks for making this booklet possible go first to our interviewees for sharing their time and rich experiences with us; second to Yvette Sánchez for launching and running the NODE project; third to our colleagues for their invaluable feedback; and, last, but not least, to Yves Daccord for his ongoing support of the NODE project. St. Gallen, Switzerland

Günter Müller-Stewens Tami Dinh Bettina Hartmann Martin J. Eppler Fabienne Bünzli

References Meyer, M., & Maier, F. (2017). Managerialismus: Eine Herausforderung (nicht nur) für NPOs. Die Unternehmung, 71(2), 104–125. Urech, F. (2017, June 16). Die Krise der Krisenhilfe. NZZ, p. 12.

Contents

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2 The ICRC as a Research Site: An Organization on the Move 2.1 The Strategy and Operating Model of the ICRC . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 Cornerstones of the ICRC Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 What Makes the ICRC Different? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Strategy Execution and Organizational Alignment at the ICRC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Organizational Structure: Providing Sense Making Rationales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Management Systems: Supporting the Transition of Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 Interaction Style: From Command and Control to Greater Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1 Humanitarian Organizations Under Pressure . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Specifics and Challenges of Humanitarian Organizations . 1.2 Our Research Interest and Theoretical Perspective . . . . . 1.3 The Empirical Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 Dealing with More Complex Networks of Stakeholders . . . . . . . 3.1 Shifts in Stakeholder Settings and Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Changing Expectations and Power Relationships . . . . 3.1.2 Disruptions Related to Assumptions and Intensified Stakeholder Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.3 More Dynamic and Interdependent Decision-Making . 3.1.4 From Sequential to Simultaneous Decision-Making . .

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Complexity Reduction by Adopting “Simple Rules” . . . . . . 3.2.1 Subject Matter Expertise: Sketching the Scope of Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 Seizing the Window of Opportunity: Deciding in Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 Putting the Beneficiary in the Center . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.4 Using the “Untouchables” as “Inner Compass” . . . . 3.3 The Changing Role of Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 The Difficulties of Measuring the Performance of Humanitarian Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Increasing External Pressures Lead to More Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Internal Changes Needed Due to More Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.4 Planning for Results at ICRC—Curse or Blessing? . 3.4 Using Dual Modes of Decision-Making and Acting . . . . . . 3.4.1 The Planning Mode: Managing Business as Usual . . 3.4.2 The Emergency Mode: Time Matters! . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3 Finding the Right Balance Between the Two Modes References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Humanitarian Aid 2.0: Social Media Analytics and Stakeholder Engagement at the International Committee of the Red Cross . . 4.1 A Surprising Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 The ICRC Context: Protecting People in More than 80 Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Social Media Analytics: From Nice-to-Have to Essential . . . . 4.4 When Online Presence Makes a Difference on the Ground . . 4.5 The Strategic Importance of Social Media Analytics . . . . . . . 4.6 Measuring Stakeholder Engagement and Resonance . . . . . . . 4.7 Investing in the Digital Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Case Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Managerial Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Increase Capacity and Capabilities in Stakeholder Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Extend Reputation by Fostering Social Innovations . . . . . . . 5.3 Make Ongoing Changes More Comprehensible . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Define Value Propositions to All Relevant Stakeholders . . . 5.5 Reflect on the Moral Dilemmas Which Come Along with Professionalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Align the Internal Diversity to the Increasing External One .

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Follow a Set of Simple Rules to Reduce Complexity for Employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 Link Better Moral and Technical Accountability by Educating Stakeholders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 Take Advantage of Two Strategic Decision-Making Modes . . 5.10 Implications from the Social Media Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Humanitarian Organizations Under Pressure

Humanitarian (aid) operations (HO) have expanded constantly over past decades. Nowadays, they are playing a significant and increasing role in managing the humanitarian problems of our society.1 Even before the end of the Second World War, HOs have become more important than ever. Worldwide more than 125 million people are reliant on humanitarian aid—double the number of 10 years ago. At the beginning of 2016, over 65 million of these people had fled across borders as refugees.2 Not only the number of humanitarian crises has grown, but also their intensity, their duration and their regional dispersion has, often across several countries. At the same time there is an active debate about humanitarian policies and standards, and about the performance of HOs. There has been growing criticism that many HOs are too expensive, too inefficient and not sufficiently flexible. Some critics even see their principles in danger and ask for deep-seated reforms. Peter Maurer, president of the ICRC, even talks of a “crisis of humanitarian aid”.3 This debate is taking place in a much more dynamic and complex world. The types of human crises have changed, the beneficiaries now have different demands, and new and powerful political actors are entering the debate with different interests. And some of the established actors are shifting their attitudes to humanitarian aid. Compared to former times “… national governments affected by situations of violence are taking a more active role in designing humanitarian response strategies and coordinating relief efforts, questioning at times the relevance of independent humanitarian action.”4 This has contributed to an ongoing decentralization and the emergence of more regional humanitarian response models. In the end, we can say that the reality for HOs has changed and it will continue to change significantly. HOs are confronted with increasingly divergent views as to how humanitarian operations should be conducted and how to mobilize governments 1 Walker

and Maxwell (2009). (2016). 3 Urech (2017, S. 12). 4 ICRC (2014, p. 4). 2 Pabst

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 G. Müller-Stewens et al., The Professionalization of Humanitarian Organizations, SpringerBriefs in Organisational Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03248-7_1

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to ensure respect for the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL). The question is: Are HOs already able to align their strategies and organizations to the new reality in order to answer the criticisms directed at them? In this chapter we provide a short description of what a HO is and what makes them different and unique. Further we will briefly look at the major challenges they are facing nowadays. Then we define our research interest in such kinds of organizations and explain the way we organize our research as well as our research site. Finally, are there potential cross-learnings for other types of organizations?

1.1 Specifics and Challenges of Humanitarian Organizations Around the globe, thousands of HOs help during and after man-made crises and during natural disasters caused by war, drought, famine, etc. They do mainly emergency response and relief work. Their intention is to save lives, alleviate suffering and protect human dignity. HOs also want to strengthen the preparedness for such situations. Humanitarian organizations are a specific form of an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization), and an NGO is a specific type of NPO (Non-Profit-Organization). And HOs are different from IOs (International Organizations), such as the international governmental organizations (IGOs), like the United Nations (UN). Some characteristics make HOs unique: (1) They act under tremendous time pressure in an increasingly complex stakeholder environment; (2) Their funding relies heavily on “media attention, political self-interest, the goodwill of (wealthy) world citizens, and the sacrifices of dedicated humanitarian workers”5 ; (3) Most HOs are governed by the key humanitarian principles of: humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence. People working for HOs often acknowledge the importance of ethical and other abstract ideals.6 There is an increasing global presence of humanitarian organizations. More than 5.000 organizations are active in this sector. Very large ones are the World Food Programme (WFP), Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Oxfam International, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and Action Against Hunger (AAH), all with budgets of more than half a billion US$. Their total budget is about 22 billion US$ per year (2017). Some of the larger HOs outsource parts of their work to smaller NGOs or private companies. Several global developments make the work of humanitarian organizations more challenging:

5 Kapila 6 Everett

(2006, p. 13). and Friesen (2010, p. 470).

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• The humanitarian sector has grown rapidly over the last decade. Many new organizations have entered the field. Amazingly some of the donors became—at least indirectly—a participant organization for beneficiaries.7 In the meantime, even criminal organizations are promoting “humanitarian assistance” (e.g. the Mafia in the “refugees business” in Italy). As a result there is increasing competition between HOs which weakens the political power of a single HO. • Sometimes there are hundreds of HOs at the same place competing for access. Of course, in order not to impede each other, it would make a lot of sense to coordinate their efforts for the benefit of the beneficiaries. But sadly, that is not the normal case. Often there is a low willingness to collaborate because they compete not only for access, but they also compete in the market for donations. In 2016 donors covered only half of the US$ 20 billion needed. In such circumstances a HO’s own activities which generate significant media attention are more helpful. • There is also competition between different “business/operating models” of HOs. For example, the ICRC-model, compared to the UN-model, provides humanitarian aid mostly through its own field operations and not by outsourcing it. • There is a politicization of humanitarian aid. De jure donors cannot dictate what the ICRC is doing. They are not part of the board like in a membership organization. But in fact many donor countries want to link their donations more to their political self-interest, specifically their own foreign affairs agenda. However, this is contrary to the principles of impartiality, neutrality and independence of humanitarian aid. Because resources are limited, HOs have to go to the places where they see a need. But some governments have already explicitly questioned the core principles of international humanitarian action in times of crisis. Or some countries connect their donations with an export subsidization of the industries of their home countries. But does it really make sense, in the face of very limited budgets, that expensive US- or Swiss-products are purchased to provide the aid instead of buying products much more cheaply on markets close to the operations? The ICRC is still highly decentralized in the way it purchases the products needed, but expectations are changing. An important side effect of this politicization is the danger to beneficiaries of no longer being at the center of the operations of HOs. • A disintegrating multilateralism can be observed which weakens the possibilities of global humanitarian organizations. • Donors have become more demanding regarding the accountability of HOs. They want to have a much more detailed reporting on the social impact of their donations. But also the public wants more transparency regarding the activities of HOs. Spectacular mistaken investments (like the Rwandan relief effort 1994–96) made the public more critical. The demand for increasing accountability and more transparency are both a result of a general decline in trust of institutions. Do they administer the resources they get in an efficient and effective way? Can’t we do more with the money received? 7 For

example, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NMFA) is the largest donor of the Norwegian Refugee Council, an independent humanitarian organization helping people forced to flee (https://www.nrc.no/).

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• The needs of the beneficiaries are changing. For example, access to free internet is today very important because it keeps victims in contact with their families and friends. This also means that HOs have to ask the beneficiaries what their needs are, before they decide what they will provide. HOs cannot take it for granted that they know what beneficiaries want. • HOs are confronted with an increasingly complex operational environment, which is fragmented (unclear and multiple front lines), volatile, and difficult to predict. • New technologies are changing the way the ICRC works. For example, drones can be used to receive better information or to deliver services. Or the data produced by twittering victims can provide HOs with a better understanding of their needs, and it also makes the whole operations of a HO significantly more transparent. Taking all of this together, HOs have had to grow and professionalize and this trend is ongoing. HOs grow because they have to grow with the market with an increase in demand and needs. They professionalize because specific expertise has been needed to answer all the new questions and challenges. The management of humanitarian aid and assistance has gradually become the business of professionals who work out of headquarters to develop standardized procedures, policies and training to mitigate risks in a coordinated way. For example, because of a strong increase in the number of victims among humanitarian personal (killed, kidnapped, injured),8 new security policies and standards have been needed. It is not only about saving lives, it is also about staying alive. Now most HOs have centralized departments specifically dedicated to protecting the security of their personal assets.9 This process of transformation and professionalization is ongoing. HOs will be managed more like global private companies. But this does not work without specific tensions, because the two types of organizations are very different. For example, in the field of accountability it is the tension generated between the energy spent towards beneficiaries and that spent on their own or institutional structures like efficiency and reporting. And there are also fears that HOs are going to be large bureaucratic machines, mainly self-absorbed, losing the capability to act with flexibility and agility, which is necessary to meet the needs in the field.

1.2 Our Research Interest and Theoretical Perspective There are several reasons why it is interesting to investigate HOs. From our perspective they can help us gain a better understanding of how to decide and act in a very complex stakeholder environment and under strong pressure: How do they interact with their stakeholders to come up with decisions? How do they cope with competing and conflicting stakeholder interests? Are there specific rules applied supporting and facilitating decision-making? How do they adapt their stakeholder 8 Data

from AWDS states, that in 2012 we have seen 4.69 attacks per 10,000 aid workers—until 2002 the rate was quite stable around 1.7. 9 See the articles in Neuman and Weissman (2016).

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management approach to the dynamic environment? What is the role of the key humanitarian principles in their decision-making? HOs also provide insights into the moral or socializing side of management and leadership as well as institutional responsibility.10 In addition, if we look at the activities of HOs from a performance perspective: How do they measure and report their performance and to whom are they accountable in view of the different stakeholders? Finally, HOs are also places of social innovation, which are innovations with a direct link to societal problems and challenges. Do they have innovative ways to run their organizations where we can learn from for other types of organizations? As a theoretical perspective we use the stakeholder theory. Stakeholder theory was first synthesized and introduced in 1984 by R. Edward Freeman in his book “Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach”.11 Freeman observed a shift of the firm from the classical production firm as an input-output entity to the managerial view of the firm as a firm which is embedded in society and exposed to changes coming from internal and external stakeholders. Stakeholder theorists further describe the nature of relationships of the firm and its stakeholders as a network We “understand value creation between firm and stakeholders in the context of relational embeddedness based on mutual and multilateral processes …. We assume that if corporations want to tap their stakeholder potentials as a source of continuous value creation, they need more than bilateral dialogues. Rather they need collaborative procedures to build common ground with their multiple stakeholders in a network view.”12 In this network view, firms move beyond dyadic ties and are able to create and obtain value from their relationships with their stakeholders.13 This definition of a corporation as a nucleus of many different relationships with stakeholders is not only useful for describing and analyzing mechanisms within and around corporations, it is also very suitable to analyze HOs. As they are increasingly under pressure to report and demonstrate their value added to their various interest groups, stakeholder theory provides a fitting framework to locate stakeholder interests and demonstrate interdependencies. Especially as we see a lot of change in the demands coming from internal and external stakeholders of HOs. In this context, collaborative procedures to build common ground with their multiple stakeholders become even more important. Stakeholders in this context are persons or groups with legitimate interests in procedural and/or substantive aspects of corporate activity.14 Stakeholders are identified by their interests in the organization, whether or not the organization has any corresponding functional interest in them. This normative definition of stakeholders entails that “… the interests of all stakeholders are of intrinsic value. That is, each

10 Everett

and Friesen (2010). (1984). 12 Sachs and Rühli (2011, p. 41). 13 Burt (1992). 14 Donaldson and Preston (1995). 11 Freeman

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group of stakeholders merits consideration for its own sake and not merely because of its ability to further the interests of some other group such as shareholders”.15 The most important stakeholders of humanitarian organizations in this case are the beneficiaries, the donors, governments, other NGOs, political parties and of course employees. Their interests vary greatly. Donors for example are interested in doing good and in showing to their respective stakeholders how much and what good they are doing. The beneficiaries on the other hand are interested in receiving the highest quality support possible in their miserable situations. From what we learned in the interviews, employees have a high interest in providing services to the beneficiaries, as they feel accountable to do so.16 The above described interests are only examples of stakeholder interests, which HOs are facing. Of course this list is much longer and it is very likely to change over time. Managers in HOs address these various interests, which often change from one situation to another. They need to make decisions which consider and respond to the different stakeholders’ needs.

1.3 The Empirical Study To study such questions we were looking for an appropriate empirical research site, and found it with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Decisionmaking at the ICRC takes place in a very challenging context. Their decisions are of: • High complexity—Many very demanding stakeholders are involved (like authorities, victims, donors, wider public etc.) with often competing interests and expectations • High urgency—The victims are waiting for immediate help. • High ambiguity and insecurity—Impossible to foresee the future development of the situation; but also there is physical insecurity for the members of the organization. Decisions at ICRC are guided by the “… ICRC’s working methods, notably its neutral, impartial and independent approach to humanitarian action, and its confidential dialogue, were crucial in enabling access and proximity to those whom it sought to assist, especially in operationally difficult or isolated areas”.17 We focused our empirical study on the management of the field operations of the ICRC, because they are the reference points for complex decision-making. The delegations in the countries are the “lever and tool” for how the ICRC executes and fulfills its purpose and mandate. They have to practice and to demonstrate the ICRC’s neutral, impartial and independent approach to humanitarian action. They also act 15 Donaldson

and Preston (1995, p. 87). 6, 578–579. 17 ICRC Annual Report (2015, p. 15). 16 Interview

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as early-warning and real time information systems regarding what is happening on the ground. For our data collection during the first half of 2017 we conducted 17 informally structured interviews (of 1–1.5 h) with 20 decision-makers at many different levels of the ICRC. Two of these were active as delegates in the field. The others were working in the ICRC’s headquarters in Geneva: Interviewees included Heads of different corporate functions, (deputy) regional directors, the director of operations, the Director-General, etc. Some interviewees were recommended related to our research question, others were self-selected regarding specific open questions we had. All the interviews were taped and transcribed. To be sufficiently concrete with our research we focused our interview questions on specific decisions in which our interviewees were involved. Our criteria for the selection of these decisions were: (1) quite typical for the ICRC, (2) highly complex, (3) multiple stakeholders with competing interests involved, (4) recent decisions. When we describe our observations and conclusions in the following section, we have tried to use original material from our interviews where possible. The interviews were conducted on the basis of anonymity, which in some cases has the disadvantage of a lack of context for the quotes. Apart from the material we obtained from the interviews, we used many documents provided to us by the ICRC and others.

References Burt, R. S. (1992). Structural holes: The social structure of competition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Donaldson, T., & Preston, L. (1995). The stakeholder theory of the corporation: Concepts, evidence, and implications. Academy of Management Review, 20, 65–91. Everett, J., & Friesen, C. (2010). Humanitarian accountability and performance in the Théâtre de L’Absurde. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 21, 468–485. Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Boston: Pitman. ICRC. (2014). ICRC Strategy 2015-2018, Geneva, June 2014. ICRC. (2015). ICRC Annual Report 2015, Geneva, May 2016. Kapila, M. (2006). Liberating the humanitarian spirit, in emergency capacity building project, translating standards into practice: NGO accountability and impact measurement in emergencies, London, pp. 12–15. Neuman, M., & Weissman, F. (Eds.). (2016). Saving lives and staying alive. Humanitarian security in the age of risk management. London: Hurst Publishers. Pabst, V. (2016). Humanitärer Weltgipfel in Istanbul. Umstrittene Neuerfindung des humanitären Rades. In: NZZ, 25. Mai 2016. Sachs, S., & Rühli, E. (2011). Stakeholders matter. Business, value creation and society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Urech, F. (2017). Die Krise der Krisenhilfe. In: NZZ (p. 12), 16.6.17. Walker, P., & Maxwell, D. (2009). Shaping the humanitarian world. London: Routledge.

Chapter 2

The ICRC as a Research Site: An Organization on the Move

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the founding organization of the Red Cross based on the Geneva Conventions. It is the oldest HO in the world, founded in 1863. As a humanitarian non-profit organization domiciled in Switzerland, it has the legal form of an association. The headquarters is located in Geneva. It “is an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence and to provide them with assistance. It directs and coordinates the international relief activities conducted by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement … in situations of conflict. It also endeavors to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles. … The Movement is made up of the following components: the International Committee of the Red Cross, the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)”.1 The IFRC is the coordinating institution of about 190 national societies. Until the end of the 1970s the ICRC was an organization mainly driven by projects which were responses to major, primarily man-made disasters, i.e. man-made disasters, i.e. armed conflict and other situations of violence. The nature of humanitarian action was more sporadic at the time. And if there was a disaster, the ICRC sent “delegates” to the disaster site for a limited amount of time for providing humanitarian assistance. At the beginning of the 1980s, “… the ICRC really becomes, let’s say, a professional permanent organization in the field of humanitarian action. Now it has as well the financial support necessary to carry that out. That’s the paradigmatic change and then onwards, obviously, it has developed and increased thanks to the resources available.”2 This first wave of professionalization also brought the emergence and development of expert knowledge relevant in major humanitarian disasters. “If we take mental health for instance. At that time we are unable to really solve this problem. Which 1 ICRC

Annual Report (2015, p. 546). 7, 188–193.

2 Interview

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 G. Müller-Stewens et al., The Professionalization of Humanitarian Organizations, SpringerBriefs in Organisational Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03248-7_2

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is a big one, if we think about the traumas that victims often have. The problem we identified early, but the response was not there at this time for many reasons. It took quite a number of years to do that. But now we do it.”3 At this time a first generation of career humanitarian delegates grew up in the organization. “Before you would not spend all your life in this job. You would spend there maybe a few months or a few years, but not more”. But now they had permanent structures. “And these permanent structures … deserved a different kind of management procedures. What was requested was a strengthening of the management structure to be able to ensure the different functions that are related to the management issues. Now the conflicts are lasting for years and decades what adds to the notion of permanence of certain delegation operations.”4 Today the ICRC is in a second wave of professionalization. “Things are emerging, we are building a corporate structure, we are becoming a much more global organization.”5 They now face many of the organizational challenges like any other international corporation: How to manage the interfaces between the corporate functions (departments) and the regions/countries? How to shape the interaction between the headquarters and the operations? How to build up a global workforce? How to exploit more synergies between the operating units? Etc. But there are also a lot of very specific challenges. Because of the external trends influencing HOs mentioned above, which are also relevant for the ICRC, the ICRC by itself is challenged in its role and legitimization. Some of these challenges even refer to the host country, to Switzerland. HOs like the ICRC are an important lever for a small actor like Switzerland on the international stage. But the recent refocusing of several important states on their national self-interests and their withdrawal from a lived international solidarity puts this and the fundaments of the ICRC in danger. In the same way, the neutrality of Switzerland was more often questioned in the last years. However, this neutrality was always one of the major reasons why Switzerland is a preferred location for HOs. Neutrality, impartiality and independence are also the core principles of ICRC’s decision-making. To sum it up, for the ICRC it is becoming increasingly difficult to demonstrate its distinctly independent character. In 2015, contributions to the ICRC totaled 1.502 billion CHF. The operating expenditures amounted to 1.489 billion CHF, including 9.1% administrative costs (headquarters). Compared to 2005 it is an increase of 55% (971.8 million CHF), and compared to 1995 it is an increase of 108% (723.5 million CHF) which shows the strong growth of the organization. In 2015, an average of 11,430 resident employees and 2107 mobile employees worked in the field, and 969 (6.7%) staff members worked at headquarters. In 2016 there was another budget increase up to about 1.7 billion CHF. About 90% of this came from government donors, and 10% came from the private sector, corporates, individuals, and high net worth individuals. The annual budgets are not guaranteed. Of course, nations which signed the Geneva Conventions should support the ICRC. But there are no pre-defined or fixed contributions. Every 3 Interview

7, 181–186. 7, 360–373. 5 Interview 12, 628–630. 4 Interview

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year the ICRC has to renegotiate everything. The aim of the ICRC is that 40% of the funding is un-earmarked, which allows for the coverage of all of ICRC’s operations. Budgeting at the ICRC is some kind of “… triangulation of access, capacity to deliver, security and humanitarian needs”.6 In the following we describe how the ICRC is managed. Of course, the idea is not to provide a complete description. We want to focus on the aspects which are changing, which are having a major impact on the organization and which are important, at least from our research perspective. In the following sections of this chapter we provide a short introduction into the strategy of the ICRC in order to gain a better understanding of the case. In Chap. 3 we focus on how strategy execution is organized and how its impact is seen by our interviewees.

2.1 The Strategy and Operating Model of the ICRC To inform and guide the work of the organization the ICRC uses an explicit strategy document called “ICRC Strategy 2015–2018”.7 It positions the ICRC within the larger international humanitarian response to armed conflicts and other situations of violence, particularly in relation to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, United Nations agencies, and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). It shows that there is a certain identity of the ICRC that enables it to work in situations of conflict which makes the ICRC and its operating model different from other HOs.

2.1.1 Cornerstones of the ICRC Strategy In 2014, the ICRC developed its intended strategy for the years 2015–2018 on the basis of consultations with major stakeholders such as the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, major donors, ICRC staff at headquarters and in the field, as well as various professional networks engaged in humanitarian action. This strategy document includes a mission statement for the ICRC. In the mission statement we find what we call the “untouchables” of the ICRC. The ICRC “…is an impartial, neutral and independent organization whose exclusively humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence and to provide them with assistance”.8 This shows that the position of the ICRC as an independent actor has basically not changed. The strategy is structured in five orientations and objectives to respond to the challenges identified above: “(1) Strengthen the ICRC’s capacity to protect through 6 Interview

5, 253–254. (2014). 8 ICRC (2014, p. 3). 7 ICRC

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law, operations and policy; (2) Enhance the ICRC’s distinctive response to growing needs; (3) Secure the widest possible support for ICRC action; (4) Contribute to a more significant response by the Movement to large-scale emergencies; (5) Adapt and strengthen organizational capacities to sustain growth and the continued relevance of ICRC action.”9 Such a strategy document could be improved and extended by adding explicit value propositions to major stakeholders, like beneficiaries, donors, employees, media, etc. If well implemented, this increases transparency and reliability in terms of these stakeholders. As mentioned above the competition in the field of HOs has been increasing for several years. They compete in the areas of funding, access, media attention, etc. For example, in 1998 the United Nations (UN) founded the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to strengthen the UN’s response to major disasters. Its appeals are massive compared to what the ICRC can do. Therefore, a sharply distinct operating model is critical to remain competitive.

2.1.2 What Makes the ICRC Different? The operating model of the ICRC is quite different to other HOs such as the United Nations for example. The local delegations of the ICRC run their operations in order to preserve their capacity to deliver to victims. Normally this ground work is not sub-contracted to other NGOs such as happens with the UN. Consider for example the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) which has its own network of implementers. This is the reason why the ICRC has a strong track-record for being in close proximity to people in war-zones. An operating model like the one of the UN is some kind of “horror scenario” for several long-serving ICRC-employees in the field because they fear they will lose the capacity to deliver on the ground: “Then, we would have more and more so-called specialists and consultants and experts … They are creating a massive machine that is good in getting money from donors … The machine feeds itself and you don’t need the victims anymore, because even without delivering, you get the money. Such a machine is about PR, fund-raising, reporting and making analyses, press-releases and campaigns. … Effectively then, you lose all proximity with the victims.10 If a response is more or less outsourced, the relationship management for the stakeholders on the ground is basically outsourced as well as the ability to negotiate directly with the stakeholders on the ground. In addition, a person or NGO will be mandated to represent the organization on the ground and security will be centralized at the headquarters. “Before outsourcing you have to answer very carefully the

9 ICRC

(2014, p. 13). 9, 470–513.

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question: What do you want to preserve at any cost? At any cost I would never ever outsource relationship management.”11 Of course, some minor parts of the delivery can be done by others without losing the uniqueness of the operating model. “There are situations in terms of human resources, in terms of the best place, where you could ask others to do, you know, water sanitation for you or food …. But the relationship management, the quality control and the security management should be entirely managed by us.”12 Such a vertically deeply integrated operating model also helps to differentiate the ICRC in the eyes of donors: “We have outreach and a network that is interesting for donors to invest in. They invest in our independence. And they invest in a track record of a strong operational footprint.”13 It gives credibility to the donors: “They do really value the fact that we are a bottom-up, needs-based organization. … We tell them: these are the needs, this is what we can do and please give us the money for this and that. What they want is accountability. They will then want to see what we really did! Fine, fair enough.”14 This uniqueness also creates a certain complacency and over-self-confidence at some places in the ICRC which one of the interviewees characterized as: “We are the ICRC. We will always be fine and people will always fund us. We are different. That sort of arrogance could someday get us. People might think, yes, Trump will go after the UN, but no one is going to go after the ICRC.”15 But such a “taken-for-granted” attitude can easily be disrupted and this is why it is indispensable to adapt the ICRC to its changing environment.

2.2 Strategy Execution and Organizational Alignment at the ICRC As we have already seen, the ICRC has shown a very strong growth of its operations over the last decades. We know from any other global corporation that the more multinational organizations expand and diversify, the more they need structures, systems, processes and rules to (re)integrate the organization. They are going to change into a “rule-following bureaucracy”. This has disadvantages like the increase of transaction costs generated by the coordination efforts or more complex decision processes. But there are also advantages like the professionalization of needed expertise or the realization of synergies. And last but not least, it has to be done because of compliance reasons. The major challenge for the ICRC is to walk this path of professionalization without touching its “untouchable” principles. 11 Interview

4, 511–513. 4, 522–527. 13 Interview 5, 129–131. 14 Interview 12, 261–271. 15 Interview 10, 646–650. 12 Interview

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2.2.1 Organizational Structure: Providing Sense Making Rationales The governing bodies of the ICRC are the Assembly, the Assembly Council and the Presidency. They bear the overall responsibility for institutional policy, strategy and decisions related to the development of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). They oversee all the activities of the organization. They also monitor the implementation by the Directorate, the executive body of the ICRC. The operating units of the ICRC are the delegations, sub-delegations, offices and missions in more than 80 countries around the world. They are organized in five geographical regions: Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, and the Near and Middle East. At the ICRC headquarters, a regional director is in charge of the management of each region. The regional director reports to the director of operations who is part of the six man directorate and a direct reporter to the directorgeneral. But the regional director is also in charge of a regional multidisciplinary team representing headquarters services such as Logistics, Law, Communication, Humanitarian Diplomacy, External Resources, Human Resources, and Finance and Logistics. Its aim is to ensure overall coherence in the ICRC’s responses.16 At the level of the headquarters there are five departments: International law and policy, communication and information, operations, financial resources and logistics, and human resources. Some departments, like HR or finance, represent typical corporate functions which exist in all global corporations. Others include very specific expertise needed by the ICRC such as health experts and security experts. This means that the ICRC has a multi-dimensional organization: the regions, the “products” (e.g., jail visits, delivery of food etc.) and the central services, which act like corporate functions. While both the regional and product dimension are well set, the corporate functions appear rather in a “parallel world”. This creates the typical “matrix-tensions” of a multi-dimensional organization. A different feature at the ICRC is that it does not want the headquarters to ensure it maintains certain control over delegations too much given that delegations are meant to act autonomously. However, given their universally accepted autonomy, changes imposed by the headquarters affecting their daily work are often times perceived as constraints of their autonomy. Specific to the ICRC is that the tensions depend very much on the type of situation: normal or emergency? “We have strong professional departments, they know how to build a hospital, how to do surgical operations, how to do weapon contamination, etc. They have strong professional standards and ethics. And then we have the people in Operations and the heads of delegation. They are the line. There is often tension between the line and our professional departments. Because if you are the head of a delegation in a country with a war, the war looks like: Ok, where is the conflict? And where is it, where we as an ICRC have an added value compared to others. Because of privileged access, we could do health or water and sanitation, etc. But in the 16 ICRC

Annual Report (2015, p. 19).

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departments they say no, because they want to uphold their professional standards. This is kind of the normal way of functioning, if there isn’t an emergency. These sorts of tensions sometimes linger on for a very long time. But when we have to respond quickly, we move into task-force or emergency mode. Then we align ourselves very quickly. When there is an emergency situation, the organization becomes all of a sudden flat; there is somebody who is in charge and takes decisions on a daily basis.”17 If the organization is in its normal mode decision-making is obviously much more demanding because everybody wants to get involved: “Sometimes making sure the decisions are happening at the right level is a bit of a challenge for us. Also contributing with our culture of what is just—everyone feels they should have a say.”18 Of course, such a culture of involvement creates commitment and perhaps it is necessary to balance the “military-like style” of the emergency mode. Until now the organization has operated on a vertical basis along the lines of headquarters-region-delegation. However, there are several reasons why the organization also needs to prepare for a more horizontal-based operation and for more cross-unit collaboration. “There are many reasons, why we need the capacity to operate horizontally, not just vertically. We are pretty good in vertical, but we are still learning the horizontal way.”19 And many are convinced that “… there are a lot of things that people can learn through horizontal exchanges.”20 One reason for this is the scope for conflicts and the existence of highly networked people. There is a new geographical dimension to ICRC activities, but at the core of the ICRC mindset are the national delegations. “Many of the conflicts, in which we are operating, are regional conflicts. … You cannot run your delegation anymore just thinking of the sandbox that is yours and the others may not. Today, it’s standard that delegations talk to each other on a daily basis. … There are all these connections. We cannot deal anymore country-by-country. … We had to find responses to a changing environment that allows us to work more horizontally, to make sure that our people in Bangladesh know if we met somebody important of the Shebab in Somalia and they know that this information is shared. Because these are networks that are sharing information among themselves. If they meet an ICRC guy, whom they really think it did not go well with, it will have repercussions. They talk among each other.”21 If they have to work cross-country there are many specific challenges. For example, it often starts with the problem being shared and a precise understanding of the scope for an engagement finding its own role in a very complex setting, and coming up with a rough action plan. Or there are different legal systems. Or because of migration one does not know where the family members are if somebody has problems. Collaborating better is not only about decision-making because at the level of middle management it is more about the capability to convince others. 17 Interview

12, 156–178. 10, 57–59. 19 Interview 12, 455–461. 20 Interview 6, 681–698. 21 Interview 12, 469–473, 492–509. 18 Interview

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A second reason for more collaboration is the exploitation of synergies to perform more efficiently. For that reason the ICRC is building global shared service centers. For example, they offer training, purchasing of goods, logistics, etc. The plan is to do that over time for the entire Red Cross/Red Crescent. As always when offering shared services to local units the question arises whether they are really better than what they already have. For quite small operations it is often a great help. “Those regional positions should exist for delegations, whose operations and budget are too small to have all the technical people that they need.”22 But does it make sense for a large, fully operational delegations? Or may this even result in an opposite effect: “Very often they try to ‘steal’ from me. It made my life more complicated.”23 But the resistance from the larger delegations is often due to a lack of trust in transferring some control out of their own hands. “Here it is a change of culture and it is complex. Because you would have to trust enough your colleagues, even if they are not under your control. And that’s a shift.”24 In the long run, the ICRC has to have such global shared services. It is some kind of devolution, which brings the centralized services closer to their field of application. “The closer we are, the better informed and the quicker we can act. So it’s a positive move.”25 Which services they offer depends on the maturity of the corporate functions. For instance, IT seems to be an appropriate candidate. Of course, these regional hub-like places have to legitimize themselves based on facts by fulfilling service level agreements with their internal clients. They have to challenge operations which are not fulfilling expectations (e.g. to deploy resources in time). If this works well, they can expand in the future from pure cost synergies to other services like running negotiations with local parties: “We have now a center for front-line negotiation. It’s not just about training. It’s about making the best use of the existing experience. Because we realize that we have a wealth of negotiating experience at ICRC, ranging from the president to the field delegate in Taz, who is negotiating with groups, who cross the front-line. This new center is offering platforms for people from different delegations to come and to share experience and to compare notes in order to improve the collective ability to negotiate.”26 It seems to be important that these new units are well communicated and explained to people, “… that they actually understand that there is a design, that they are not just discovering it.”27

22 Interview

9, 94–105. 9, 74–82. 24 Interview 4, 404–406. 25 Interview 7, 225–242. 26 Interview 6, 681–698. 27 Interview 2, 550–555. 23 Interview

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2.2.2 Management Systems: Supporting the Transition of Roles One part of the professionalization of the ICRC is the alignment of its management systems to support the strategy. We are focusing here on management systems, where we think, that they are quite decisive for a successful transformation of the organization: Human resources management, the internal planning process “Planning for Results”, including the much more detailed reporting system of key performance indicators (KPIs), and the communication function. The alignment activities reflect the changes in the environment of the ICRC, but also the strong growth of the organization: “We have gone through a significant period of growth, we had huge budget increases and we realized that we need to build support structures to sustain that size of the organization.”28 To be more agile regarding the changing conditions the new way of managing is not as standardized as it was before. But this is not what management is used to. “The management is very much nurtured into one-size-fits-all. I mean, if you look at the set-up we put in place to go into Syria, or Morocco, it’s fundamentally the same model from a conceptual perspective, from a cultural, from a processing, from a handling, from an analysis, from a forecasting perspective. Whether the delegation is 2.5 million or whether it’s 150 million, it’s the same approach. … And the advantage of that is, it gives a very strong consistency. You have a framework that is relatively well-applied everywhere and consistent. The issue is: How do you transit or navigate from this point to the other one? Because then the people lose their reference point. They start doing improvising things. We need to tell them: Ok, instead of having a kind of ticking box list to apply, you have a kind of framework, but you need to navigate within that framework, within those boundaries. You cannot go outside of these boundaries, but within, you can navigate and do your own interpretation. But we have not trained our staff to do that. And we are not yet there in terms of working. For example, we are now sort of discussing the new HR system, the new job-grading system.”29 Human resources: Extending leadership capacity At the ICRC, HRM is located in a specific department. “The Human Resources Department ensures that the ICRC has a sufficient pool of competent staff to meet its operational needs worldwide. It develops the policies, tools and services for recruitment, compensation, training and talent management to allow for the ICRC’s sustained growth. Its policies are geared towards raising professional standards, developing the particular skills required for humanitarian work and supporting the management and empowerment of a diverse and inclusive workforce through its professional hierarchy. The department strives to promote institutional cohesion by encouraging staff to identify with the organization’s visions and objectives.”30 28 Interview

2, 112–140. 3b, 251–256, 305–317. 30 Annual Report (2015, p. 74). 29 Interview

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In view of the enormous challenges faced by the ICRC, it decided to start a change management process. For the people working for the ICRC, it decided to install a comprehensive “People Management Programme” (PMP). HRM was given the responsibility for this change process. “Our HR department is at a point now where we are much stronger. When we first started the program, it wasn’t very strong. And so they wouldn’t have had the capacity to lead the change. They are stronger now. So we also try to empower the HR department to be able to drive the changes better.”31 The aim of the PMP is to ensure appropriate and adequate staffing worldwide. To professionalize its activities, the HR department was restructured in four divisions: Operations, Shared Services, Talent Management, and Learning and Development. Additionally HRM launched three centers of expertise: Compensation and benefits, framework (for designing HR documents) and compliance, health and well-being. Here the main idea is to streamline and standardize HRM globally. At the structural level these activities look quite similar to what large global corporations did about a decade ago. But when you talk to people of the ICRC you can feel a real difference compared to talking to people from a large private corporation. You can feel the dedication for the mission of the ICRC among most employees. Before they took on more responsibility at headquarters, the vast majority of employees worked for several years in the field and they are still inspired from this time. And if you look at the results of the staff engagement survey, there are always incredibly high scores on ‘I am dedicated and believe in the place that I work in’. But this very devoted workforce is also very challenged by the ongoing transformation. The way people are managing and are managed is changing. “Where the tension points have been, I would say in the last five years, have been very much around our human resources transformation. Because how people are recruited, how they are valued, how they are rewarded, how they are treated, how they are named, how they relate to each other, all of that is the fabric of this organization. And what made this organization what it was for a long time?”32 Such a transformation is never easy to manage and can always be improved. The question is more one of do they have a shared understanding of what is really going on? In our interviews we noticed that there are three main groups of people working for the ICRC: First, the very traditional ones. These are the delegates or expatriates coming from headquarters and having worked for some time in the delegations. Secondly there are the locally recruited people, which are the vast majority. Thirdly there is the increasing number of experts working in the corporate functions of the headquarters helping to professionalize the organization: “You have this whole other species that emerged, that came as the organization professionalizes, … for whom field experience is really not necessary. Be they IT specialists, be they procurement specialists… these people, in order to do a good job within this organization, do not have to have been exposed to the front-line.”33

31 Interview

10, 439–449. 2, 59–77. 33 Interview 2, 112–140. 32 Interview

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At the moment the way the ICRC is perceived and the manner in which it manages its workforce are in a deep transition. In the past “… there used to be a large divide between the expatriate staff and the local staff. And one of the things that we’ve worked at in the last 5 years is to shift that. To make it more of a global workforce rather than having this divide.”34 HRM was mainly run from the perspective of a minority, that of the delegates: “A strong injustice that was so built into the system, which really saw the organization through the prism of the 1000 or 2000 mobile employees. The whole human resources approach was built around a small minority. The identity of the organization was built around this minority. Of course, this minority will always remain critical to the identity of the institution and our ability to function. But so is the other part of the organization as well.”35 Also, the role of the classical delegate is changing. Previously, the meaning was that he or she was the “délégué du comité”. There was this small committee of 25 Swiss individuals, and this committee delegated a person to go and accomplish a mission and return. However, this meaning is now on the move. “The notion of delegate, which is one that is rich, it is powerful and it is one that I believe can evolve to mean something else, to mean what we are today. Today the delegate can be somebody, who has never left their country but always served the ICRC in their country. He has a mission—a delegated mission.”36 There was also some kind of myth at the ICRC regarding the head of a delegation. “The model in the delegation is, you have the head of delegation, which is the king of everything and he has people that are in charge of delivering to beneficiaries. But he is also in charge of HR, logistics, for ICT, for operations, for humanitarian diplomacy. So there is a kind of myth in this company, that this person is so special, that it can cope with everything. … I think, ICRC will have to rethink radically its model. The role of the head of delegation shall not be this sort of mythical.”37 If we look at the heads of a delegation today in his or her interaction with the headquarters, we can say “… he is no longer just a representative of operations. He needs to be the ambassador of the entire institution and therefore needs to embrace everything that every department represents and be equipped to represent all of that in a contextual way. He cannot shield themselves from headquarters by saying, well I’ve got my one guy, who is my entry-point at headquarters and that’s it.”38 The skills needed by him can be very different regarding the place and the size of the delegation. “But if you look at the job description, we are not looking for any different skill set. It’s not made explicit. So, we’re going there, but we are going there organically.”39 Quite important as an interface between the headquarters and the regions are the regional directors and their deputies, both of whom are located in the headquarters. Regional managers report to the head of operations who are part of the executive 34 Interview

10, 238–245. 2, 112–140. 36 Interview 2, 81–92. 37 Interview 3b, 394–407. 38 Interview 2, 297–304. 39 Interview 2, 527–542. 35 Interview

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body. A regional manager has not only an internal management role. He or she also has to represent the ICRC’s operations in a particular region to the outside world. He or she has to support the local stakeholder relations management. They travel to the countries, talk to the donors, meet high ranking authorities etc. The deputies of the regional directors are deeply involved in the operations of the countries they cover. On a daily basis they support the delegations by providing them with a myriad of needs which they obtain from headquarters. They also write all the briefing files for the president. Often regional directors know the operations of the ICRC as well, if not better, than people in the field. Previously, these people were not significantly influenced by what was happening outside their areas of operations. “Very few, almost none, were looking at institutional strategy, which they see as something totally in thin air. This is not their turf. And institutional management neither. So, anything that is outside of operations does not exist. And they now start thinking: Oh, there are things that are happening within the institutional strategies that will affect us. What shall we do? So, they have been working in a very strong silo, which they very successfully maintained. And indeed, there is a kind of segregation of duties, which is not formalized.”40 The challenge right now is to manage these transitions where you have to acknowledge all three parts of the organization in the same way with their own specific contributions to the progress of the ICRC. The ICRC still has to recognize the hardship and sacrifice of delegates who in effect accept the roles of being global nomads, moving from one country to the next, and representing the organization in these different places. Yet, the delegates also have to value the presence of experts, even when they have not worked on the frontline. They are building an important new bloc within the ICRC’s workforce. And, last but not least, the delegates have to value the local people, who are very important in keeping the operation running in an efficient way. Linked to this “…there must be a willingness to acknowledge that there is not one typical career path, where everybody has to go through the same steps. I think it’s also important to acknowledge that different delegations require different skill-sets.”41 However, there is still a long way to go. Experts with no field experience continue to be perceived as lacking reputations. People from the field tend to ask: What can they contribute without having being in operations in a country for some years? One expert argued: “I think that logic is still there, but this is not going to be the case in the future. But it takes an acknowledgement that while this person will not be able to contribute with her field experience, she will be very effective at mobilizing the people who can. And also by acting as a convener. And by understanding as well all of the different interests inherent in the relationship with the relevant stakeholders. She will put together the right constellation of people from the organization at the right moment in order to be able to advance the relationship.”42 Of course, such a transformation is a challenge for most people in the organization. There are several reasons for this. For example, life is going to be more complicated 40 Interview

3b, 500–509. 2, 159–164. 42 Interview 2, 168–186. 41 Interview

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because of a much more complex organization. “I think there is a lot of frustration among our field staff, to see, ok, my God, I mean, it was just so easy before. And now everywhere these human resource managers here and the corporate service guy there and we don’t know who is really managing these people.”43 In addition, the organization is moving from being mainly a Swiss organization, to being a global one, which is not easy for some Swiss people: “Today we have only 20% Swiss. When I joined, it was maybe 70 or 80%.”44 This is a call for more diversity, as an answer to the increasing complexity of the environment. “The idea of having a traditional Swiss delegate that can fly around the world, it doesn’t work anymore. The world is bigger, people are more educated, if we want to have access to the people that need help, we need diversity in our staff.”45 Also, the people within the organization do not have the chance to understand the sense-making “big picture” behind this transformation. They only feel the impact it has on their daily business. Because of the changing demands for managers at the ICRC, the question is whether the ICRC still has sufficient managers with the right skills? In the field, experienced managers often complain about this: For example, decisions take too long: “In the ICRC you often hear, we want to put the right people in the right place at the right time. And I am often thinking, yes, good, but we often have the wrong people at the wrong place at the wrong time.46 And the main problem is not the decision-making process. It’s the no decision outcome.”47 Some perceive the main reason for this is that managers are not well prepared and trained for their new tasks. “So you have the worst type of manager in some cases. I mean, they cannot be blamed, because you don’t give them the means for managing … With the fragmentation of the market of today that doesn’t fly.”48 Because of this the project of a “humanitarian leadership and management school” was launched to support managers in the transition of the organization. It provides specific training for senior leaders or leaders who manage a team to build their capacity as leaders and managers in humanitarian work. The course will provide them with better management skills. “This particular program is trying to professionalize a bit the role of a manager and explain what it means to be a manager. We need to empower managers to make the decisions for people.”49 But despite new training, and support activities programs as well, such a change is not easy to “digest” by everybody. Some have doubts whether their experience and skills will still be needed and acknowledged in the future, and whether they will be able to adapt, while others do not know whether they will still want to work in this new organizational setting, and some even doubt whether they will still fit into the changing identity of the ICRC. Others regret having accepted the role of a manager. 43 Interview

12, 628–640. 2, 112–140. 45 Interview 10, 248–250. 46 Interview 9, 223–226. 47 Interview 9, 182–184. 48 Interview 3b, 573–584. 49 Interview 10, 238–241. 44 Interview

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“If I had known, that it is needed to do all of these performance appraisals and payment decisions, then I never would have wanted to become a manager.”50 Like other organizations also, the ICRC is confronted with an increasing and above average number of burn-outs. “There is a lot of that around and surprisingly more at headquarters than in the field. If you look at our staff barometer, people feel more overwhelmed or stressed, and this feeling is significantly higher at the headquarters than in the field. A layman hypothesis for this is that the advantage you have in the field is that you see the results of what you are doing. Here, you are like in turning in a wheel, where there is more and more pressure.”51 Obviously, it seems to be easier to cope with all of these human catastrophes if you are able to be on the spot to help directly. “I think the closer you are to the people you help, the easier it is to deal with hardship. … The fact of being paralyzed, of not being able to act, seeing that people need help, but you can’t it’s our worst. … At headquarters, you put in massive amounts of hours, but you are not sure at the end of the week what you have done? We’ve sat in meetings, we have developed concepts, we have reported and so on …”52 To sum it up: The people working for the ICRC are facing a fundamental change. And of course, like always in a change process, there is definitely some resistance to it. “Now the systems are still fairly agile. But if you think of somebody who has been working a certain way for 30 years, and suddenly … you feel like a sort of headquarters is watching you.”53 Not everybody is clear on where the journey is heading. Probably there is a lack of communication in the organization regarding the alignment activities. Repeatedly, it has to be explained as a complete and integrated concept about what is going on and why it is done in this way. And what is normal for any kind of organization in such a phase of global growth, and what is specific to the ICRC? And it must be clear to everybody, and accepted by everybody, that there are different career paths within the organization. The ICRC offers support with the training of new leadership skills. But more than a few people are feeling overwhelmed by the ongoing change which also touches the identity of the ICRC and the self-understanding of many people. It seems to be difficult to adopt and to make decisions at the pace at which the organization can move with them. The challenge here is to find the right balance. Communication and Information: Be more open to the public The task of communication and information management (CIM) is also centralized in a corporate department. “It aids institutional decision-making by monitoring the environment in which the ICRC operates and tracking its reputation. It conducts strategic internal and external communication activities …, incorporating public relations, online communication and releasing audio-visual content and printed mate50 Interview

10, 216–223. 12, 651–668. 52 Interview 2, 245. 53 Interview 10, 696–703. 51 Interview

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rials. The … department used its media relations, digital communication channels, publications, audiovisual tools and social marketing campaigns to raise awareness of humanitarian concerns… in order to influence and obtain the support of external stakeholders.”54 Because of more challenging stakeholder dialogues and new information and communication technologies the department has undergone a four-year transformation program. The major challenge concerns how to publicly communicate what the ICRC does. In the past the ICRC was often perceived as a secretive organization because it did not have a distinctive public footprint. However, everybody knows the ICRC from their public engagement despite the fact that the ICRC has mostly been positioned as a rather reactive organization. The ICRC had to learn that in order to generate interest and “buy-in” on the part of the different stakeholders of today, the stakeholders needed to be involved. “In order to attract support from the wider public you need to be out there in the public and you need to engage with them. You need to share with them what your challenges are and give them opportunities to support other than just giving a check. They need to understand your dilemmas and your challenges to do that.”55 Such an open way of communication contradicted the past. The real improvement over the years has been in the area of protecting what is confidential. But the ICRC also had to realize that about 80% of what it does is not confidential: “We always used to think in binaries in the past. Like: confidential—public. Actually they go together. … In order to protect what’s confidential, you need to be very open about everything else you are doing. Because if people don’t know you and if you don’t exist in the public sphere, how can you leverage donors to invest in you? How can you leverage the wider public to support you and the communities to know who you are? So, it goes from the context where we operate in war-zones to the capital in Geneva, where the headquarters sits. You need to independently decide when you go public on something.”56 The guiding principle in making these decisions should still be ‘to act in the best interest of the people the ICRC serves’.57 Communication is now seen as an aid which you cannot refrain from. “Everything we do, the humanitarian situation we see, the hardship of civilian population, the stories we hear from civilians about the difficulties, all this is not confidential. … At the end of the day, communication is also an aid, shedding light on a humanitarian situation in the public domain, which also helps the civilian population.”58 On the other hand, communication is also a data producing engine. And to make sense out of this data, new skills are needed at the ICRC. “I think, the other difference is just the explosion of information which is around. So it’s just overwhelming for everyone. And before, few years ago, you could do a google search and have a pretty 54 Annual

Report (2015, p. 70). 5, 103–109. 56 Interview 5, 43–68, 103–109. 57 Interview 5, 73–74. 58 Interview 6, 440–453. 55 Interview

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good idea of what’s around. And now you need data mining expertise. If you really want to be able to work out what’s there, you need a much more expert ability to cut through the noise. It’s a profession now.”59 Further communication has to be adjusted in terms of the intentions of the ICRC: “I think, we don’t look so much in terms of target audiences but in terms of the intention you have in terms of communication. You communicate, why do you communicate? Is it for positioning global influence? Is it for security access? Is it for the people themselves? You know, you can categorize it in terms of what is your intention. Sometimes it’s over-linked.”60 New communication tools also reduce the distance between some stakeholders—sometimes even by cutting out the ICRC as the middle man: “For me it’s this change in terms of social behavior of people with this increased connectivity. It’s the fact that people who were not able to voice their concerns in the past, are now able to address issues directly with us. Or even with donors. We know that donors were sending people into the field to see if a program was well distributed. They can connect on social media and see if the distribution worked well. This is the kind of closing the distance between the recipients of the aid and the donors. … We also transferred cash to beneficiaries without seeing them. Just by phone. And they can do whatever they want with it.”61 However, when it comes to a specific type of public communication, such as when the ICRC decides in favor of a public denunciation of the parties involved in a conflict, the reliability of the denunciation needs to be formally validated. The director of an operation has to give the green light and sometimes even the assembly itself. In such a case the organization has to make sure that from the president down to the head of a delegation everybody is involved and informed and knows what the rationale is that triggered this public communication since this usually has ramifications. The ICRC has to convince the parties involved why it was unavoidable for it to go public. Of course, if the ICRC goes this way, there must be a very low risk of manipulation of information. Usually the ICRC has firsthand information from its own people on the ground.62 If the ICRC is making such kinds of public denunciation, it needs to be predictable for the affected parties, “… that they don’t discover it in the media. They know about it beforehand. … So they can also react and inform their own hierarchy and manage it. … We do the same with Al-Qaida, by the way. Because it’s not just about putting states under pressure but also about putting non-state-armed-groups under pressure. This is navigating neutrality.”63

59 Interview

15, 369–374. 14, 36–42. 61 Interview 14, 350–361. 62 Interview 6, 399–410, 440–453. 63 Interview 6, 728–741. 60 Interview

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Planning for Results: More detailed reporting and measuring of activities The ICRC employs a recently installed results-based management system during its annual internal planning process called “Planning for Results” (PfR). The PfR process assesses context, target groups, problems/needs, risks, constraints and opportunities and sets priorities to ensure an appropriate level of coordination and alignment of action and resources towards the achievement of expected results.64 For example, with the introduction of the PfR methodology it has become necessary to identify the target populations as relevant cost units. Twice a year the management of the ICRC takes stock out of the reporting from PfR. It asks: What are we able to achieve from our objectives? They also endeavor to go beyond the outputs and to obtain a sense of the outcomes and the impact of their work. Of course, they know that in war-torn countries, statistics are not really available and it is not that easy to obtain meaningful figures. “But at least, in terms of what we do in the context we are operating in, we have a good sense of the output and the outcome of our work. And it’s not just about assistance, it’s also about protection, humanitarian diplomacy, and public communication. All this is having the impact that we try as much as we can to measure.”65 Apart from the advantages and necessity of such a controlling tool, there is also the danger of losing focus on the beneficiaries and its principles. The greater the pressure coming from donors and the greater the branching of the KPI system, the higher the risk of an increasing danger of “backwards engineering” (see Sect. 3.3.4). Some people feel overwhelmed with the demands of such a complex and changing stakeholder environment. “Therefore it is so critical that the principle of impartiality and neutrality is well understood and perceived. That is the one defining feature of the ICRC that enables us to operate on both sides of the frontlines. Some of the organizations do what we call ‘dumping of aid’, because they are unable to have proper negotiations. They then compromise on the question of impartiality and only provide assistance that is based on the instructions of the governments, instructions of the parties.”66 Because of this ICRC people can be trained more intensively regarding their capability to listen to stakeholders, and to negotiate with different stakeholder groups in the case of competing interests. They have to learn how to cope efficiently with dilemmas—specifically regarding ICRC’s “untouchables”.67 The principles have to be well understood and applied because they impact on the ICRC in an environment of decreasing trust in institutions. This generates respect for the ICRC and its people because the involved parties can see that the ICRC acts on both sides of the front-lines.

64 Annual

Report (2015, p. 70). 6, 502–511. 66 Interview 8, 270–285. 67 See Müller-Stewens et al. (1997). 65 Interview

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2.2.3 Interaction Style: From Command and Control to Greater Participation With interaction style we describe the way a specific operating unit, like a region, interacts with its stakeholders. For example, how does headquarters interact with the delegations? The way the corporate center interacts with the operating units depends very much on the choice between centralization and decentralization. Many see it as a tradeoff. The more centralization, the less autonomy there is for the delegations. Like most multinational organizations the ICRC has also centralized its organization. Building up a certain level of expertise, as a result out of an increasing specialization in some fields, was one reason, but nowadays it is also easier with modern technologies and tools. With the increasing influence of the departments (corporate service functions) the life of the delegations became more complicated because they then had at least two reporting lines: “The delegations used to see themselves as really only accountable to one department, which was operations. And then the other departments were serving them—communication, logistics, finance, right? The last five year period has broken that to some extent.”68 Some people in the field are under the impression there is an increasing bureaucracy which distracts them from their operations. “We made the world of business far more complicated with much more bureaucracy, with much more paper-work.”,69 as one field manager expressed it. In former times the head of a delegation could act and decide quite independently. The responses were national and s/he had everything under their control. Today many responses are happening in different countries and s/he has to manage crossnationally. S/he used to have to be a “superman” which is no solution for the future. S/he has to accept that they need the support of the departments in headquarters with their professional services. With their knowledge from the field s/he can help to develop the centralized services more in conformance with local needs. This means that now s/he has to collaborate much more to deliver what is expected from them. But such collaborations only function efficiently if there is sufficient social capital, like trust, between the cooperating units. Some people surmise that increasing specialization and greater control mechanisms have made the ICRC slower or even stagnant. “Because the only way to keep things in place is by creating more control. And in the end you have the whole system stuck.”70 An example out of our interviews can demonstrate it: “I had the other day a discussion with one of my water engineers. And the guy was claiming that it’s impossible to drill a well with a Hydro-Geologist. And I asked him, because I did not get it: ‘Well, I mean, we have been drilling wells without Hydro-Geologists all our lives. So, what has changed? You or the well? Are you going to tell me now that 68 Interview

2, 285–290. 9, 270–272. 70 Interview 3, 336–347. 69 Interview

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drilling wells today is more complex than it was 20 years ago? And communities out there in Somalia drill wells by themselves by hands without any geological survey of any kind.’ But now we are told, to drill a well, we need a geological survey, we need three consultants and a Hydro-Geologists. Result: Now we can drill only one or two wells a year, before we were doing 20 or 30. That’s what has changed. We are slower, we are more bureaucratic and we are more expensive.”71 Because of self-dynamics of central units there is always a danger of overspecialization: “It means more and more people request things. Of course there are excuses that donors are asking us for this. And it is true that they ask for more details. But it is also true that we have many more people …, that put more demands on us. And many people have the feeling that we end up working much more for the bureaucracy and for the machinery than for the victims. … What slows me down in delivering are more internal hurdles than external. Al-Shabab, war, all this violence, insecurity… yes, it’s there! But we know how to deal with it.”72 But managers in a delegation also see the positive sides of such a multidimensional organization: “The good side of it is that you are always internally confronted with another perspective, like the different interests are represented internally. So at the end of the day it’s rare that you are going to get it completely wrong.”73 At the moment the intent is more towards decentralization—without giving up the advantages of selected centralized activities and standard setting. “Today we are involved in the nitty gritty of too many decisions that really should be taken locally.”74 Because of the increasing importance of running the complex local stakeholder relationships, and to satisfy the very different local needs, the operating units need enough freedom to act. The idea is to give them the tools and the space to make decisions and to be accountable. “The intent is decentralization. But we are not fully ready to let them go. We are still hanging on.”75 To find the right balance is not easy, “… because headquarters—as any corporate—has another logic of working compared to the field. That complicates quite a lot the internal change capacity and adaptation of this organization.”76 And the right balance always has to be fine-tuned because of the changing expectations of the numerous stakeholders in ICRC activities: “We have to make sure we strike a balance between those technical experts, donors, bureaucracy environments and our capacity to deliver ourselves in the field and be close to the victims and still have those embassies that come to us, because they will tell us: I come to you because I know you are there.”77 If we look at the levels of a delegation, we can observe that the presence and distance of some stakeholders has changed, which has an impact on the tasks of 71 Interview

9, 279–290. 9, 463–473 and 523–529. 73 Interview 2, 428–435. 74 Interview 2, 347–350. 75 Interview 10, 374–377. 76 Interview 3a, 137–140. 77 Interview 9, 470–513. 72 Interview

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a delegation: “At the beginning of the 90s, I didn’t see any donors, because the donors, they were sitting in the capitals. Now, you have donor representatives nearly in all operations where we are present. Therefore our management in the field is expected to ensure good relationship management with the donor-representative on the spot. But there is a huge difference to most of the NGOs in the same situation: They are also responsible for fund-raising. Our heads of delegation, they are not. They have to do relationship-management. And donors are part of their stakeholdermapping as much as the authorities and the non-state-armed groups.”78 Fund-raising is centralized at ICRC headquarters. In general, the ICRC of the past was characterized by a quite hierarchical, vertical leadership style, similar to a military organization. “If you joined this organization, in the first three years you just shut up and you did what you were told. And this is different now. But we grew up in a system, where it was very military, hierarchical…”79 Nowadays leadership has to happen, at least in “normal times”, much more in a participative, horizontal way. This shift in behavior is not so easy for everybody: “Yes, it is difficult. Especially I would say for the older generation. I am unfortunately also part of the older generation. It’s difficult because we grew up in times of command and control.”80 Because of the increase of interactions with all the specialized functional departments, people in the field perceive a more hierarchical decision culture. They see this as being in conflict with a need for greater agility. For many another change is the creeping internationalization of the workforce, which is seen by some as a kind of “Ent-Schweizerung”. Additionally, there is a stressed budgetary framework as a result of the increasing nationalism of some important donor states. And an increasing number of donations are earmarked with some being linked to the political agenda of the donor which reduces the flexibility of the ICRC to use them. But there is also some hope that new powerful donor states (e.g. China) will provide support. In summary, we can say, that the ICRC is in a decision trilemma between the challenges from its external and internal contexts and its normative frame (see Fig. 2.1). It is a complex balancing act with multiple tension fields. This trilemma shows that the position of the ICRC cannot be taken for granted forever. It requires ongoing activities to ensure the continued existence of the ICRC. The ICRC has to adapt to these challenges and it has to come up with social innovations (e.g. the idea of Humanitarian Impact Bonds to increase the types of financing81 ) to solve new types of social issues, and all this without losing its roots and DNA.

78 Interview

12, 277–291. 12, 478–486. 80 Interview 12, 478–486. 81 http://blogs.icrc.org/gphi2/2016/05/24/transforming-aid-one-humanitarian-impact-bond-time/. 79 Interview

References

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The external context: • Disintegrating multilateralism and more national egoism • Increasing competition • More detailed reporting and accountability to stakeholders • Increasing transparency through social media • Stressed budgetary framework and more earmarked donations • New technologies (digitization) • Etc.

The internal context: • Increasing bureaucracy and hierarchical decision culture • Creeping internationalization of workforce • Tensions coming from a multidimensional organization • More time pressure on decision making • Need for more internal collaboration between units • Etc.

Strategic decision making

The normative frame: ICRC’s mission, principles, policies and guidelines, code of ethics and staff security The «untouchables»: neutrality, impartiality, independence

Fig. 2.1 The trilemma of the ICRC

References ICRC. (2014). ICRC Strategy 2015–2018, Geneva, June 2014. ICRC. (2015). ICRC Annual Report 2015, Geneva, May 2016. Müller-Stewens, G., von Krogh, G., & Fontin, M. (1997). The management of contradictions—A new challenge for leadership. CEMS Business Review, 2(Suppl.), S1–S10.

Chapter 3

Dealing with More Complex Networks of Stakeholders

If an outsider takes a deeper look into the ICRC, they will be very impressed by the way it delivers its humanitarian aid to so many people and in so many different places in the world. An outsider is also impressed by the people they meet: Most of them have spent many years in field operations and most are still full of passion for the work they do for such a meaningful organization. Some people have been with the ICRC for more than 20 years already and they have already served in more than a dozen countries. However, it is also easy to imagine that it is a challenging environment encompassing a lot of change with a need for adaptation and social innovation. In the following we describe the major observations we have made regarding strategic decision-making at the ICRC. The ideal decision-making process always places the beneficiaries in the center. And the first questions to be answered are: What are their needs and how can we help them as quickly as possible? The decisions regarding these questions should be made completely independently of the interests of other stakeholders and based on the principles of the ICRC. Although this is the strategic intent and ideal which most endeavor to apply, it will be challenged almost daily by the reality. “You have other stakeholders: the wider public, the humanitarian community, some kind of competitors with us and you have also in the field states and duty bearers or any actors in the field that plays a role. So, whenever we take the decision, it’s never sort of a single road decision.”1 There will not only be more stakeholders, there will also be new stakeholders who nobody has heard of before and who cannot be neglected. Often they come and go. “I think we’ll have a hundred more stakeholders to take into consideration in the coming years because everything is interconnected, everything is global. We’ll have all these very young people like this very young snap chatter who leveraged two million dollars for Somalia. He came from nowhere. And suddenly, he

1 Interview

3a, 76–79.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 G. Müller-Stewens et al., The Professionalization of Humanitarian Organizations, SpringerBriefs in Organisational Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03248-7_3

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pops up in the humanitarian ecosystem. We’ll have more and more of those and we have to take them into consideration.”2

3.1 Shifts in Stakeholder Settings and Relations To be able to operate efficiently in the ICRC’s complex and sensitive environment, it is a vital aspect of the ICRC’s operations that it is able to manage relationships with the salient stakeholders. The ICRC has always had to deal with multiple stakeholders. The victims, the donors, the wider public, the media, or the parties involved in a conflict have always been in focus. There is nothing new in this, but some features and characteristics of this network are changing significantly. First, it is challenging because of an increasing complexity. On each level of the organization larger numbers of stakeholders are involved because of the increasing political, ideological or religious diversity and sensitivity of the responses. For example, on the level of a delegation “… you have many groups, many tribes, lots of weapons and whatever you do—you need to make sure that everybody is in agreement. Otherwise you might run the risk of a security incident. And it happened—what made things more complex.”3 Secondly, the time the ICRC has to react to new human catastrophes is decreasing. Often there is not enough time to carefully think through what is the most effective way to react, because of the dynamics emanating from the interconnectedness of the actors and competitors in the humanitarian field. Thirdly, changing expectations are not only coming from the external environment. Also relevant are new demands from internal stakeholders, different expectations of collaborating, or sub-/super-ordinated organizational units which are impacting managers.4 Fourthly, in an interconnected and global world we have to recognize that some stakeholders are more or less omnipresent. They are relevant in almost all countries in which the ICRC is operating; they have an impact on almost all activities of the ICRC’s departments: “We realized that the US Army was present at almost every single issue we had, from Ukraine to Afghanistan from logistic to internationally emitted law. That was not anymore a question of control, but it was a question of organizing the dialogue with a much broader perspective and approach.”5 The answer can include what is called in global private companies “key account management”. And fifthly, in some cases there are additionally very powerful indirect stakeholders which are omnipresent in many regional conflicts. For example, in one country in the Middle East there is confrontation between several states—a so called proxy war. Both parties are also acting behind the scenes in other Arabian countries. 2 Interview

15, 404–409. 6, 128–133. 4 Interview 2, 55–57. 5 Interview 4, 92–95. 3 Interview

3.1 Shifts in Stakeholder Settings and Relations

33

Bringing this all together and generalizing about it, the increasing complexity and time pressure are probably the most important recent changes which result in decision-making and strategy formulation being different and more challenging. Figure 3.1 illustrates this.

3.1.1 Changing Expectations and Power Relationships The expectations and interests of many stakeholders are changing significantly. Two very important examples in terms of the work of the ICRC are the changing expectations of beneficiaries and donors. Certainly, the needs of the beneficiaries should always be above all. “I think, the most important accountability is the one, that we have vis à vis our beneficiaries—the people we serve. This is for me what is central. And then you have our internal system and audit and internal controls. And you also have the requirement of the donors. You have to accommodate all this. But the first and the most central one is to be sure at all time.”6 But is this easy to realize in our times? Beneficiaries: Always connected In the past the victims had been the most important stakeholder for the ICRC, but a very passive one; today they are still the most important stakeholder, but now they are equipped with modern telecommunication technology and they are very active in social media channels, which creates new communication necessities for the ICRC. Victims of today first want to have direct access to the internet. “Beneficiaries today have access to mobile phones, and not just mobile phones but smartphones. So they Fig. 3.1 Increase of complexity and time pressure in decision-making

High

2010s

Average complexityof stakeholder setting

1980s

1980s

2010s

Low Low

High Average urgency of activities

6 Interview

6.

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can take pictures, they can interact on social media, they can tell the story themselves. If you continue in the traditional way of taking a lot of time to process a certain decision, by that time, you will be already out of time, because the beneficiaries express their need differently. … That’s why I think today with social media, you must be, because everything is now reduced to at around 140 characters or less.”7 In general stakeholders want to have more influence on the ICRC and more control over the impact they have. This changes their role into a more egoistic one. A side effect of this is the change in the power relationships with and between stakeholders. “There is clearly a power-shift. The same power shift that we see in the private sector, where clients have increasingly the capacity to compare prices via the internet. Our beneficiaries are also increasingly connected. So they will compare, they will have increasingly the capacity to compare services they can receive from one organization compared to another. And they will increasingly request these humanitarian services on digital platforms. For example, if they are looking for an uncle or for a father that has gone missing. In the past they had to fill in what is called a missing form. Then we were going to look for. Increasingly these things are done on digital platforms. So there is a shift towards empowering our beneficiaries. … People are connected. People can compare. People know, they get information. This is for us a different situation compared to the one 20 years ago …, where we were almost the only organization. And there was no information available except the one we provided.”8 “You can be challenged by the beneficiaries you want to serve. They will rate what you do for them and say if it’s good or not good.”9 Reading the new data in the right way can help the ICRC to learn more about the identity of the people they interact with: “We all have more and more people that are online. So, the virtual and the physical reading of the environment will become indissociably. I’m of a generation that certainly had my offline presence determining what my online presence would be. But generations now, their offline presence is more and more shaped by their online presence. And so I think that I would become more and more important, because it tells us so much more about people’s identities.”10 Donors: Political agendas and global diversification For example, in the past some donors have acted based on a philanthropic attitude, but now they behave like an investor. They want to have detailed reports on the social returns for their investments. Or they want to earmark more of their donations based on political reasons. “Where there tensions are, is regarding government donors. They are not in our board, which guarantees our independence, but they have political agendas and politically they want to have visibility for what they give to ICRC. And sometimes we have to negotiate that they don’t get visibility they want. The tension

7 Interview

8, 890–895. 12, 392–407. 9 Interview 5, 88–89. 10 Interview 15, 393–400. 8 Interview

3.1 Shifts in Stakeholder Settings and Relations

35

is to tell them to support an entire operation and we decide where we put the money based on needs—not on their political agenda.”11 For the ICRC it also means “how to educate your stakeholder?” The problem for the ICRC is finding solutions, where they do not completely negate the new expectations of donors, but without corrupting their principles. For example, “… our challenge now is to give some visibility to donors on the unearmarked and to tell them: you can explain to your parliament where the unearmarked funding goes. Because the tension now is that donors are under huge pressure from their tax-payers and their parliaments, who want to make sure that the money is not going in the wrong hands.”12 This means the ICRC cannot completely avoid playing the political game—at least for a few weeks. For example, some politicians want to make announcements very quickly. Why not deliver them some figures on “early wins” from their investments? But of course, this is always a sophisticated balancing act and it also involves looking inwards to the ICRC’s own people. Once the ICRC “… connected the narrative with the political interest of governments in Europe. And that was seen as prostituting ourselves by some people internally.”13 For the ICRC it is also important to, firstly, diversify their donor-base so as not to be too dependent on the big donors like the United States, Switzerland, or Germany, and secondly to follow the globalization of the ICRC’s operations. “We are trying to diversify the donor-base and get countries like China and Russia to join. They haven’t joined yet. Diversification is critical, because we are a global organization. We’re no longer a Swiss organization. We’re Swiss-based and based on Swiss law but we’re a global or international organization and we need our support base to be international and it’s not. It’s still very European and western. This year the United Arab Emirates. They support us for the first time.”14 At the end of the day this means the position of the ICRC has weakened in this fractured environment. Because of such diverging stakeholder interests, it is going to be more difficult to get all stakeholder relations balanced and aligned with the principles of the ICRC, the “untouchables” (neutrality, impartiality, independence). But they are the key to gaining access to the victims, and without access the ICRC is losing its mission. “I think if you take the example of Yugoslavia, suddenly you have a huge conflict and you have this phenomenon of fragmentation that we note today. That means to reach a certain area you have a number of actors that are not necessarily under a single command and therefore you are facing a number of risks or difficulties to communicate.”15 Therefore it is so important for the ICRC to keep and protect their long lasting reputation based on its principles. Acceptability depends heavily on reputation and years of trustful cooperation.

11 Interview

5, 135–149, 159–163. 5, 188–192. 13 Interview 5, 338–340. 14 Interview 5, 135–149. 15 Interview 7, 150–154. 12 Interview

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3.1.2 Disruptions Related to Assumptions and Intensified Stakeholder Interactions The way the ICRC operates in the field is very much based on routines. This helps to stabilize the people on the spot in often quite dramatic situations. But management has to make sure that they listen sufficiently diligently to the stakeholders. “How do make sure that you have a good reading of what the issues are?”16 Careful listening increases the ability to judge. A clear understanding of the stakeholder perceptions of the ICRC allows them to leverage reputational strengths and guide the strategic shaping of stakeholder relations. This listening can be done by direct communication. Or surveys can be used.17 Or new sources for “listening” are comments on social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). For analyzing the patterns in these data sources, new skills in the departments are needed. Based on what they hear, people have to be ready to challenge the assumptions their routines are based on. “They have a lot of assumptions in the way that they act—the people—but often these core assumptions are not challenged anymore, because they are based on experience of 20 years. To adapt their core assumption is very difficult for people in the field, because in the field you have so much energy in operating the routines. You don’t want to challenge your core assumption; it’s too much. They fly to the next case and the question is: Does it work or not?”18 For example, take again the case of beneficiaries. Because of their changing expectations it is important for the ICRC to challenge their own assumptions about what their needs are. It is important to listen carefully to what they are saying—or communicating in the social media. “One of the biggest challenges for humanitarians is to factor in, more and more, what the beneficiaries think. Because they now have the means to express it. And they have means to challenge us on the services we offer them.”19 But it is not only a one-way-communication. We have seen that here is a stronger need for more systematic stakeholder interactions in both directions. For some stakeholders it even makes sense to organize regular stakeholder dialogues.20 To be efficient, some of these should be embedded in a specific relations department (e.g. a donor relations department). More evidence-based and standardized procedures and principles for professional stakeholder dialogues have to be developed and improved over time to manage such relations—in spite of the specificity of each dialogue. For example, beneficiary relations have to be a constant two-way dialogue. It’s not just the humanitarian organizations telling them: I know what’s best for you, and this is what you need. They now have the power and knowledge to come up 16 Interview

8, 44. 2008, ICRC has retained GlobalScan to design and conduct its global reputation research (www.globescan.com/clients/case-studies/icrc.html). 18 Interview 4, 103–117. 19 Interview 6. 20 See the articles on stakeholder dialogues at Schreyögg (ed., 2013). 17 Since

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with their own opinion and give voice to this. “They will have more power, they will be able to challenge us. … They will tell you, no, no, no, I don’t need this. It was very impressive, in Syria, when we were able to cross front-lines for those besieged areas, where people for two years didn’t have access to clean water. They didn’t have bread for 6 or 7 month, no electricity, no provision of health care. People were dying, because no dialysis session was available. And we get there with our food parcels. But what were people telling us? Our priority is education. So, it’s important. And then you need to adapt this. We were including kits for kids, who were taking some lessons in the basement, to avoid the direct impact of the conflict. We need to listen more to what the people need and adapt and shape our response to better match it to the needs of the people.”21 In general, new communication technologies and social media will be incorporated much more into the ICRC business, but with a very good understanding of the context of the place. For example, “… in Somalia, everybody has a phone, but not a smart phone. … We use for instance SMS campaigns on hygiene, when there is a Cholera epidemic. We informed 30,000 people about basic practices on hygiene to prevent spreading of the disease and we send it by SMS. … Something that we do now even in Somalia, is mobile cash-transfers. We transfer money to victims through mobile phones.”22

3.1.3 More Dynamic and Interdependent Decision-Making New technology has also increased the complexity and dynamics of decision-making. Managers in the field are much more indirectly influenced by developments outside of their territory which are not under their control. “Within the organization you have the issues of real-time and technology, which has changed clearly the way how we decide today. And outside, what has changed, there is a very clear repartition of responsibility. Before you were in charge of everything for example in Afghanistan. In the world of today, you are very much influenced by what happens in Washington, in Yemen, in Pakistan, almost in real-time. So you need to integrate an increasing number of issues and to rely on competences which are not under your control.”23 But, of course, this complexity depends on the field one is in. There are places of mainly national interest with only limited interdependences. But on the other end there are places with global exposures like, for example, Syria at the moment: “In Syria you have Russia, Iran, the US, the media, the UN Security Council etc. Even if you are the ICRC head of Syria, you are constantly confronted with stakeholders who are changing the position not because they talked to you, but because they are influenced laterally.”24 21 Interview

6, 578–639. 9, 536–547. 23 Interview 4 18–28. 24 Interview 4, 53–57. 22 Interview

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And there are very complex situations, where several countries and humanitarian organizations are involved, like the famine crises in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and Nigeria: “On the one hand we are responding to the crisis on the ground, but at the same time we have significant challenges in aligning the international Red Cross/Red Crescent movement in that response.”25 Important stakeholders in this situation are “…(1) internally the four ICRC delegations, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria, (2) the two regional directors, Middle East and Africa, (3) our cooperation division (this is the division that is attached to the General Director, that is responsible for managing relationships with our movement partners, i.e. the international federation and the national societies), (4) Communications (COMS) and (5) the division that is responsible for donor relationships… External stakeholders are the donors, and our partners of the international Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, that have all their own agendas.”26 An important objective here must be to demonstrate coordinated and aligned behavior in full view of the donors. This means the complexity and dynamics of decision-making varies significantly, depending on the field the ICRC is in. The more international the mandate it has, the more complex and interdependent is the stakeholder setting. Then it becomes closer to the complexity of stakeholder management at the corporate-level of the ICRC. “As long as it is the local and national dynamic which is the major factor of influence and you have been there for a long time, you know how it works. If it is being shifted by international focus, the focus is the media, it’s the UN Security Council, it’s the political interest etc. that is creating another type of exposure. The headquarters over the past 10 years was—as an organization—to be exposed exactly to that.”27 However, we also observe that a faster decision-making is often required, in spite of the extended complexity, and that this faster decision-making is required as close as possible to where the situation occurs. “We really need to ensure that we can make meaningful decisions at the lowest possible level of the organization. Closest to our clients. Because it is there, where the connection with our clients is probably the most significant and important.”28

3.1.4 From Sequential to Simultaneous Decision-Making If speed becomes critical, one way to increase process speed is to move from a time consuming stepwise validation-layer process to a same-time taskforce process which includes all relevant stakeholders in parallel from the beginning. In former times it was usual that the representatives of the ICRC were able to manage the launch of a mandate in a quite confidential and stepwise process. However, this is changing because it is almost impossible to keep something confidential 25 Interview

12, 30–33. 12, 60–71. 27 Interview 4, 63–68. 28 Interview 12, 440–454. 26 Interview

3.1 Shifts in Stakeholder Settings and Relations

39

for long because of a 24/7 media cycle. Everything is posted immediately on social media. It is almost impossible to keep full control over communications. If beneficiaries are not involved early enough in the discussion, they go public. Their role changes from validation layer to co-decision-maker. For example, as has already been mentioned, today many beneficiaries have their own mobile phones. They post real time pictures to illustrate what is happening. They can even organize a “shit storm”. And they know quite well that social media has led to increased competition amongst the humanitarian organizations. Also the wider public has to be integrated to a much greater extent due to the higher visibility of the ICRC’s work. To summarize: Because of several reasons the external pressures on the ICRC have increased dramatically over time. Humanitarian work has become a business with a market (hostages, refugees, etc.). The ICRC is confronted with a more fractured environment (i.e. different split groups) which has made its work more complex. Different and more demanding expectations have made it more challenging to keep stakeholders happy. Previously it was more about having them under control by using them as a validation lever in the decision process. Today the ICRC has to involve them from the beginning as co-decision makers. All these developments are reducing the political negotiation power of the ICRC, and it has to find ways to regain it, or at least to slow down this development. To respond to the changing and more demanding network of stakeholder relationships, the ICRC should increase its capacity and capability for stakeholder management. For example, standardized process frameworks for stakeholder dialogues can help to improve the mutual understanding of the ICRC and its stakeholders. Or people in the field can be better trained regarding the possibilities and limitations of social media. Or a “key stakeholder management” program can be introduced to professionalize and coordinate some emerging omnipresent stakeholders. Or a parallel platform can be developed in the form of a digital workspace for all the stakeholders of a mandate to support the interactions with stakeholders so they are more transparent and this can be done in real time.

3.2 Complexity Reduction by Adopting “Simple Rules” It is known from other cases that in times of high complexity and time pressure organizations are looking for “simple rules” for their decision-making. This means that strategies, which work, do not necessarily need to be complicated or complex. Sull/Eisenhardt (2015) found that simple strategies are often more effective than complex ones. They define these as follows: “Simple rules are shortcut strategies that save time and effort by focusing our attention and simplifying the way we process information.” They give this famous example for simple rules which fits very well within our later research context: “In World War II, the U.S. surgeon general introduced a formal process for prioritizing care in order to reduce deaths—this process is called Triage. Given the complexity of the injuries they encounter, you might think medics use complicated algorithms to classify the wounded. They don’t.

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Instead they rely on a handful of simple rules, to quickly sort injured patients and thus allocate scarce medical resources to where they can do most good.” Simple rules confer the flexibility for an organization to pursue new opportunities while maintaining some consistency. When information is limited and time is short, simple rules make it fast and easy to make sound choices. They allow people who are participating in the decision-making process to synchronize their activities with one another on the fly. And there are cases where they produce better decisions. Taking the examples of successful companies as well as looking at nature and the behavior of people, Sull/Eisenhard (2015) have identified the following categories of simple rules needed to succeed in a complex world: • How-to-rules spell out key features of how a process is executed. What makes our process unique? • Boundary-rules focus managers’ attention on which opportunities to pursue and which ones are out of scope. • Priority-rules help managers rank the accepted opportunities. • Timing-rules synchronize managers with the pace of emerging opportunities. • Exit-rules help managers decide when to pull out of yesterday’s opportunities. At the ICRC we studied whether there are simple rules which are applied in order to take adequate, but especially good decisions. We have seen that employees probably follow many simple rules without doing so consciously. We were able to identify four prominent rules which employees apply when making decisions. First, they use subject matter expertise as a boundary rule to decide where to become engaged. Second, as a timing rule, they see the need to seize the window of opportunity in real time, which entails spotting the window of opportunity in real time, cutting validation layers quickly (less hierarchical), relying on gut feeling and expertise, trust that we will be able to navigate through, decide quickly whether one can delegate or whether one needs to decide, and have communication ready as soon as public attention falls on an area. Third, the ICRC always puts the beneficiaries in the center as a priority rule. And fourth, it uses the principles, the so-called “untouchables”, as some kind of “inner compass” or how-to-rules to guide employees in their daily work.

3.2.1 Subject Matter Expertise: Sketching the Scope of Activities The mission of the ICRC is very clearly defined as: “The ICRC is an independent, neutral organization ensuring humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and other situations of violence. It takes action in response to emergencies and at the same time promotes respect for international humanitarian law and its implementation in national law.”29 People at the ICRC see this mission 29 https://www.icrc.org/en/who-we-are/mandate.

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as a kind of framework, helping them to decide which opportunities are within their scope. “We have a framework, let’s put it this way, which is the scope, the field in which we work—conflicts and other situations of violence that obviously gives us the overall framework in which we are going to act. Then, I would say, protection issues come very high. And in this sense, what we observe is that a conflict has often the same patterns. You know, people are detained, people are displaced, families are separated, maybe the use of all kind of munitions that may have impact on the population and therefore wounded and so on. So, you have, let’s say these global patterns and the ICRC will respond to them. … well, if people are arrested en masse, obviously the ICRC will focus on getting access to these people detained. If it is mass-casualties because of bombardments and so on, so that should be the medical approach. If it is displacement of population as we observe it for instance in South Sudan, then obviously that will be an assistance in the field of food and non-food items because these people do not produce anymore. So, the framework is there. Then, you have to take the context of sort of the partition on which you are going to play, depending on obviously what are the priorities in each context.”30 The activities in which the ICRC has been involved over the past decades are the visits to the detainees, delivery of basic medical care, medical assistance in war areas, providing people with water and habitat, restoring family links and reminding authorities and others of their legal obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law. In recent years, the ICRC has expanded its activities in areas which are close to its mission and where it can draw on its experience from past activities. These activities are by no means exhaustive and include amongst others “addressing sexual violence”, “forensic science and humanitarian action”, and “migrants”. Obviously, the closer the activities in which the ICRC becomes involved are to its mission, the more it can draw on its subject matter expertise and the more effective the organization is in delivering solutions to beneficiaries. “I think, our subject matter expertise is certainly an additional guiding principle. Especially when it comes to engage in unfamiliar areas, whether they are Ebola or migration. The less clear the role of the ICRC, the more the organization should focus on getting engaged in action related to its core topics. Where we know that we can contribute to the betterment of the situation. For example “visiting detainees”. It is not surprising that we took care of detainees during the Ebola crisis, so they don‘t fall ill of Ebola. This is our “bread and butter”. Or also the “missing migrants”, because they are missing. We have a specific expertise in this area. Or again Ebola—we did not take care of the Ebola victims but we took care of all the other diseased, as we have a strength in “basic medical care” and we can adapt that to another context.”31 To ensure effectiveness in fulfilling its mission, the ICRC should continue to further develop a shared understanding of the areas in which it wants to build up and apply subject matter expertise as a boundary rule for deciding where to become involved in an engagement.

30 Interview 31 Interview

7, 295–314. 11, 650–670.

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3.2.2 Seizing the Window of Opportunity: Deciding in Time As the ICRC often operates in crisis situations, speed is critical and fast action is important in being able to catch the window of opportunity. We identified several rules which lead to fast responses in crisis situations. Spotting the opportunity The first rule is to constantly monitor situations so action can be taken when needed and so opportunities can be seized as they unfold. Monitoring in this sense means to be aware of the needs and actions of the various stakeholders, such as the needs of victims affected by conflicts, readiness of governments to address these needs and the media’s interest in documenting the situation. “We were monitoring what the donors were saying publicly. And the donors it was no longer the bureaucracy but the politicians.”32 Only if the ICRC perceives the readiness for action on the part of the different stakeholders involved can it connect the dots and become active in filling the gaps where needed. Have communication ready Once an opportunity is spotted and the ICRC has sufficient grounds for becoming active in a situation, it needs to be prepared to communicate very quickly, both internally as well as externally. The narrative needs to be clear to all the parties involved so coordinated action is possible. “And the minute they were making public statements, you would go public on something connected to them. In their domestic markets. And we managed the internal stakeholders, who were screaming at the same time but we were just moving really—we were—speed was critical. But we went publically with it and then we fine-tuned it. And you know, when you’re in crisis mode, you don’t have the perfect narrative outside. You just need to have something.”33 In such heated situations it is not possible to keep everything under control. It means one has to take some risks if one clearly wants to deliver a specific message at that time. “What generated most coverage was the fall of Aleppo in December 2016. We were hugely present in the media at that time, internationally. So, whether we like it or not, we have to be able to take up the opportunities when they arise, because of we have strategic messages to pass at that time. Whether it’s to demand access or to speak about just how grave the situation is, and to push for a better humanitarian conduct by the war leading parties, it depends. But we still got very clear messages to pass at that time.”34 To act in a systematic way the ICRC had to define a list of target groups for its communications. “We do have determined every three months a list of key contacts and key themes where ICRC wants to really be sure that we’re positioning.”35 32 Interview

5, 433–439. 5, 437–451. 34 Interview 14, 165–171. 35 Interview 14, 180–182. 33 Interview

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43

Can I delegate or do I need to decide? Managers need to be able to decide whether they need to take the decisions themselves or whether they can delegate the issue at hand. Thus managers at a high level prevent themselves from being overloaded and decisions are taken by the people who have the right amount of relevant information to take well-informed decisions. “I’m always trying to understand: Is it a one-off, so what is the transaction cost somewhat. And will it be possible to delegate? Which means, is it a decision, which is simple enough and clear enough to allow people to change their practice. Or do I take a decision, which is still so complex that it will most likely take us a year, two years to sort out some of the question.”36 Take Decisions A fourth rule is to be able to catch the window of opportunity and to remain effective, namely, to take decisions. “I mean, a simple rule is: decide. Not leave anything, I mean, whatever you can decide, decide. And if something goes wrong, you correct. A simple rule is: this is not a talk-shop. This is about decision-making. This is a task-force, where we take decisions and where people then have to go away and come back and produce results.”37 This applies not only for the emergency mode, but also for delegations in the field. In order to function properly, delegates need to be able to take timely relevant decisions. One innovation in the organization which has facilitated fast decision-making and a subsequent legitimization of action is the implementation of task forces in crisis situations. And this leads to the fifth rule which is to cut validation layers quickly and move on. Cut validation layers quickly Task forces allow for fast decisions because they bring together the relevant people with the authority to take decisions. “ICRC is like a military organization. So we are very hierarchical. And the big change that happened with the task force is that we moved into a matrix. So we are a matrix and a hierarchical organization. But when it comes to deciding on security issues, you know we are very strong in that: operational issues, the hierarchy moves fast. When it comes to policy, public positioning, funding, these are seen as support things. So, they never get top priority. But they come together. Look at the Aleppo thing end of this year. We were the only organization on the spot. 35’000 people evacuated from Aleppo. At a time where people are getting their 13th salary in Switzerland. So they’re watching the news, they see the ICRC. They can give donations online, they can give it by the government. We made one million Swiss Francs in less than a week digitally. Without doing anything. Just because we’re present in the media. I think, the most simple rule was: can we connect or join the dots in real-time between: operation, policy, public positioning, funding-donor relations.”38 36 Interview

4 314–327. 12, 239–242. 38 Interview 5, 479–493. 37 Interview

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Rely on gut feeling and experience While in past years the ICRC has invested in creating check-lists and systems to facilitate structured decisions, many decisions are still made on the basis of experience. The organization has a large number of employees who have been with the organization for many, many years and in a variety of different positions. “There has been a bigger trend towards doing lessons-learned and trying to create some check-lists and systems. But as it stands now, I think, when the pressure comes on, people don’t refer to them. They refer more to, ok, how did you handle this before, when you were sort of instinct based.”39 Trust in the strength of the organization Similar to the reliance on a gut feeling and on vast experience, employees of the ICRC are also able to rely on the strength and standing of the organization. “Because the profound idea of this organization is: we will be able to navigate through it. This is a fundamental and I think a very helpful and powerful mindset, when you are on the field and you face hostile people that prevent you to gain access to the beneficiaries, to the people you are trying to help.”40 While the seven rules to seize opportunities are quite specific, a more general, but also very central rule is to put the beneficiaries in the center of all decisions and actions.

3.2.3 Putting the Beneficiary in the Center Similar to the simple rule of applying subject matter expertise as a boundary rule, this rule is very much linked to the mission of the ICRC. It makes an employee think of the interests of the affected individuals and communities when making decisions and it also serves to rank the interests of the beneficiaries first if there are conflicts of interest. “Well, at the end of the day it’s the interest of people affected by a conflict and violence. And not: what is in the interest of our organization and donors and… it’s what is in the interest of the communities that are affected? This must be the over-riding rule. If there is a kind of: what do we do, it’s a dilemma.”41 A concretization of the beneficiary-centricity of decisions at the ICRC is the central role of IHL (International Humanitarian Law) as a moral compass. “What helps a lot to navigate dilemmas is always, putting the people we serve at the center. Because this is… and putting also IHL, who is at the end of the day, our moral compass, because IHL as four whole bodies of flows are engineered to protect the most vulnerable. So, when we have dilemmas, this is a good compass.”42 39 Interview

10, 329–333. 3a, 106–110. 41 Interview 12, 249–254. 42 Interview 6, 723–726. 40 Interview

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To put this rule into practice is not always straight forward and obvious. Two challenges were mentioned by the interviewees: First, the distance to the beneficiaries, especially for employees who work at the HQ, and second, the authorities in war-torn countries: (1) No direct contact to beneficiaries: To put the beneficiaries in the center “… works very well when you are in the field, not always but in the field beneficiary means something for you because you are confronted, so you have to reflect. And what is interesting with the ICRC as, and you really have to understand and compare it to other decisions, we do repeat interaction with the same people. Don’t forget that. So I am not doing a one-off and then you don’t see me. I am coming to you and maybe in a week time I am coming to you again. So, I am really careful because I know that if you are not happy with me, I will hear it. So the beneficiary-centric is something, which helps. It’s true as a compass to find the right way. At the global level it’s much more complicated. Because, of course, it’s one element but I am not confronted on the daily base. So of course I have to take into account a large array of different elements which could be internal.”43 So, in general, to put the beneficiaries in the center is a very good rule but as decisions become more detailed and less concerned with the core mission of the organization, additional rules need to be applied to ensure that aligned decisions are made. (2) The authorities in the affected countries: “I would say, the main problem is the authorities, because obviously we are in a state that has problems. Where we work in terms of a conflict, we may have many different parties… It is easier to decide over projects in favor of people affected by the Tsunami than to decide on an operation in an area controlled by the Guerilla. This is something very usual in the ICRC. But this obviously will need a number of green lighting that depends obviously on circumstances that are beyond the scope of the institution. That means authorities may have their own views and there is the issue of access.”44

3.2.4 Using the “Untouchables” as “Inner Compass” Besides the very strong consensus in the organization to put the beneficiary in the center, another fundament on which the organization is based is its principles. From the seven principles, humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality, especially the intouchables “impartiality, neutrality and independence” have a strong influence on decisions and actions within the ICRC.45 They somehow serve as a moral compass for employees. 43 Interview

4, 363–377. 7, 134–141. 45 https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/fundamental-principles-commentary010179.htm. 44 Interview

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As the integral part of this moral compass the intouchables (a) attract employees who believe in the principles and adhere to them in their decisions and actions; (b) strengthen the outward perception of having no other agenda than a clear humanitarian agenda, which in turn (c) provides the organization with the possibility to be able to act on both sides of the front-lines. On the different concepts of morality: Moral compass: Individual (or intra-personal?) system of ethical standards which guide the orientation toward matters of right and wrong. Is needed to incorporate ethical values into action. Moral commitment: The willingness and ability to prioritize and strive for moral goals. Acting consistently and courageously upon moral standards, despite barriers. Moral sensitivity: The ability to re-cognize a moral issue. Moral problem solving: The ability to develop a satisfactory moral course of action that resolves conflicting tenden-cies. Despite the many changes, which the organization has undergone in past decades, there are a few things that have not changed. One of these elements is these principles, which were proclaimed in Vienna in 1965. They bind together the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and guarantee the continuity of the Movement and its humanitarian work.46 “The principles have not changed, fortunately, for the ICRC but they are increasingly questioned and under threat. But this goes up and down. There are periods where they are very much questioned. And there are years, where they are more or less accepted. Fortunately, the ICRC has maintained a very coherent line on that. The basis of our work are the principles and we defend them.”47 The principles also influence employee behavior and decisions. “Especially impartiality and humanity are two of the ones that come into how we make decisions. And you attract people that like that concept. So they naturally doing that and it does come into the way that you work.”48 Although employees perceive the principles as given and as the foundation of their work at the ICRC, the principles are nevertheless very present when decisions are taken. They also lead to discussions on where to become involved and which actions to take or not to take. “This is the case in conflict areas. In Kiev, for example, we feel that we should go ahead and get involved, and perhaps in Moskow we feel that—wow—this would question our neutrality principle.”49 46 https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/fundamental-principles-commentary010179.htm. 47 Interview 9, 310–315. 48 Interview 10, 477–479. 49 Interview 11, 619–648.

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The principles are also relevant and discussed by ICRC employees in refugee crises: “Now, more and more repatriations and repatriation agreements. We therefore sometimes get questioned by governments: If we send people to Afghanistan, what do you do for them? Then we need to assess, how the question at hand relates to our principles. How we as ICRC need to delineate from state policies. How to prioritize our humanitarian work and humanitarian needs? We thus don’t question the principles. They are very present. In any case.”50 Especially in war regions, where the ICRC is involved with various parties in the conflict, as is the case for example in Somalia or Syria, the principles of impartiality and neutrality become particularly important. As all the parties involved know and can perceive that the ICRC acts neutrally, in favor of detainees and victims, and impartially, the ICRC is able to provide services to beneficiaries on all sides of the war. For example, Somalia has shown the exemplary conduct of the ICRC in this regard. “In country X it is so critical that the principles of impartiality and neutrality are well understood and perceived. Because the one thing that we try to emphasize in the context of this operation is that we must be able to act on both sides of the frontlines. Which means that we must be able to act on the side of the armed group and we must be able to act on the side of the government. Now, in a famine situation, you run certain risks and we have seen in the past that because of security constraints, some of the organizations do what we call dumping of aid, because they are unable to have proper negotiations. They then compromise on the question of impartiality and only provide assistance that is based on the instructions of the governments, instructions of the parties. But for the ICRC, we do all the assessments ourselves, we do the distribution directly by ourselves. So that is the main difference. And this is well-understood by the government, but also by the armed groups, who respect this principle, because they see that we act on both sides. And why is it important for armed groups to let us work? Because they know that we visit places of detention in the government-held areas where there people are held. So we haven’t had a lot of blockages.”51 To summarize, the ICRC is still perceived today as an organization, which has no other agenda than a very clear humanitarian agenda.52 The principles of impartiality, neutrality, independence and humanity give the organization a clear direction but also legitimacy to act. Putting the beneficiaries in the center of all actions and relying on the principles gives the employees both a purpose as well as a boundary for their decision-making. This strength of the organization should be maintained and further nurtured. On the other hand, the ICRC has also undergone many changes in recent years in order to respond to a fast moving environment. The two most prominent developments which we perceived in our interviews are, first, the growing importance of subject matter expertise and second the need to be able to seize the window of 50 Interview

11, 619–648. 8, 270–289. 52 Interview 4, 543–544. 51 Interview

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opportunity. Although the ICRC has been restructuring the organization and has developed tools and guidance for employees in order to better equip them to respond to changing needs, many employees still do not see why changes have happened and how they and the organization as a whole benefits from these changes. They only see the short-term additional work which change brings with it. The organization would therefore benefit from making the implemented changes more visible to their employees and by explaining to them why they happen and how the organization will benefit therefrom.

3.3 The Changing Role of Accountability In the corporate world, accountability takes a rather technical form based on a range of measures which ensure organizations and individuals are doing a good job. In turn, this generates efficient and effective outputs and ensures that everything is being well managed. Overall, the intention of “making the invisible visible”53 is actually a benevolent characteristic. However, in the humanitarian context, such a technical form of accountability may have a negative and even “dehumanizing” effect, i.e. there is a negative side effect of such kind of managerialism.54 Technical accountability stands in stark contrast to moral accountability. In fact, increasing (technical) accountability may be perceived as a sign of mistrust rather than a step towards (positively) increasing professionalization. While the moral or humanitarian form of accountability is still strongly present at the ICRC (“Honestly, I am accountable to the victims.”55 ), it is increasingly being challenged by a corporate form of accountability. We also observed this dilemma at the ICRC.

3.3.1 The Difficulties of Measuring the Performance of Humanitarian Activities While one can argue that the world has become more dynamic and complex, which generates more challenges for globally operating organizations such as the ICRC, delegates in the field are still facing the same basic problems: “And we are responding to the same needs that we were responding to in 1863, when the ICRC was founded: water, sanitation, health.”56 Crucial and hands-on operations now seem to be troubled (at least for some ICRC employees) by bureaucratic processes imposed by externally created and increasing 53 Strather

(2000), p. 309. (2010), p. 469; Roberts (1991), p. 364. 55 Interview 9, 365. 56 Interview 9, 302–304. 54 Everett/Friesen

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demand for more accountability. This leaves many within the organization frustrated, given the difficulties, if not the impossibility, of measuring the actual success of humanitarian activities. “I mean, some of these targets definitely, they do make sense. But some of them are a bit of wishful thinking. Sexual violence is something that we are increasingly looking into in situations of conflict. And the stigma that is attached to sexual violence, especially in the Middle East and Afghanistan for instance, makes it difficult to collect reliable data, whether there is more or less sexual violence. And just to measure that, the number of people who come to the hospital or don’t come to the hospital is a proxy indicator but it is not to say: we want to reduce sexual violence and then you use an indicator ‘number of patients who come to a hospital’. They give indications. So I think as humanitarian organizations, we cannot just say: it is impossible to measure. It’s challenging to measure, but we need indicators, we need targets in order to be working towards these targets. As difficult as it may be, I think we need it.”57 We observed that the organization has set up a system that allows it to capture performance despite all its difficulties. “We have KPIs of things that we can control: finance, logistics, in particular. Where it becomes more difficult is to measure the impact of our humanitarian activities. This is often a real challenge. It is easier, for instance, if we do a nutrition program in a prison. We can measure much better what is the impact of such a program, because it is almost a closed system. But it is much more difficult, when you do for instance food or cash distributions in Somalia or South Sudan. There, you are operating in an open system, where people do not just depend on food they receive from humanitarian organizations. They depend very much on their own capacities and coping mechanisms. So, despite the fact that we know the limits of the data that is behind KPIs, we are definitely looking at these.”58 Despite the obvious difficulties of measuring the performance of humanitarian organisations, stakeholders such as donors are increasingly asking for more transparency. So it is not so much the difficulties of measuring humanitarian performance per se (the organisation and employees are aware of the challenges), but rather the fact that more and more external parties are starting to form explicit and implicit contracts based on these measures.

3.3.2 Increasing External Pressures Lead to More Accountability Increasing accountability and providing the inherent additional data and reports gives donors the opportunity to actually see how their money has been spent. However, it also provides them with more power to step into the shoes of an auditor and to actually withdraw money in cases of missed targets. They act like an investor. “So basically we are providing this and full stop. Now donors are asking: Can you do an 57 Interview 58 Interview

12, 373–386. 12, 344–361.

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impact study? Can you measure the impact? How can you measure your value for money? How do you do your risk analysis? How do you integrate a feedback from your beneficiaries? Do you do questionnaires for your beneficiary to see whether your service is empowering? And also they basically are asking: Can you trace the entire path from the moment you receive the money to the point where you handover what we’ve given to you and you’ve transformed either into a service—medical service or into a goody, I don’t know, parcel of wheat or maize. Or cash because we also hand over cash to beneficiaries. Can you trace the whole? Can you make the entire process visible?”59 Clearly, the increasing demand for more transparency and accountability has resulted in many processes having to change or even having to be set up in the first place. We had the impression that while the organization is aware of greater accountability imposing several changes, employees are quite overwhelmed by what this means for their daily work. On the one hand, certain systems do not seem to be set up for these changes as yet, and on the other hand, the shift in power towards donors imposes a completely new relationship that may not be easy to grasp. “And be it on the impact, be it on the value for money and on the end-to-end, we struggle. The way we have designed the financial system is clearly not fit for this new trend, which is relatively reasonable.”60 To make sure that people responsible at the ICRC do actually set up such measures and targets and also use them, the request for such performance measurement has become part of a contractual commitment: “And now it’s becoming: ‘Ah, you are saying: you are doing this. Have you done it? Let us not you—not you—let us check that you’ve done it. By the way—if you have not complied with what you have said, then there is a relation with the funding.’ And that link never existed before and today, within the contract, it is clearly mentioned: you take the contractual commitment to measure your performance, to do an impact study, to be able to have feedback from beneficiaries, to show measurable efficiency. Not to say, oh, we are efficient. But show measurable cost efficiencies and you give us a base-line and you give us a target.”61 We observed that the ICRC does not view increasing accountability as an issue specific only to the organisation. Since the global financial crisis, lack of trust has been a widespread phenomenon. However, what makes this case so special is that such lack of trust is of much wider scope as it seriously impairs the distinct “donorICRC-beneficiary” relationship. “You feel that within the wider financial community, there is a lack of trust. If you look at how the banks behave. And that same lack of trust is also affecting us and hence, more controls. But they also want to make sure that there is actually somebody behind there. The problem is: When you go through partners, we used to give to the partners and goodbye. Now, basically what they are asking us is that the partner should revert to us with a full list, signed by the beneficiaries and then they should get that.”62 This means that the ICRC is now 59 Interview

3b, 40–51. 3b, 55–57. 61 Interview 3b, 68–75. 62 Interview 3a, 325–331. 60 Interview

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being taken into account—end-to-end—in the complete ‘humanitarian value chain’ which includes the outsourcing partners. The increase in accountability has significantly changed how employees of the ICRC view their relationship with donors. Transparent reporting aims at providing clear targets and results for the benefit of those involved. However, the accompanying change in the aforementioned relationships generates a shift in which donors appear more powerful while some employees of the ICRC seem to be left behind with unattainable tasks. “At the end of the period, we come, we measure that target and it’s what they call elegantly ‘performance funding’. It’s if you fail to meet the target, then there is a corresponding effect on the funding. And that link was never so explicitly done. I mean it’s basically in the contract with the donors. Before, it was kind of…ok, I give you money, yes it would be good if you would comply, sort of kind of friendly talk. But nobody ever assessed whether we did or not. And they clearly are under pressure from their own constituencies, parliament, public opinion, very clearly. And since six months, there are really a lot of activities to catch up with some donors that are exactly requesting this. And then they say, ok, ‘we want a study, can you deliver this within two weeks’ time? And then we say: ‘It will be difficult’. But then the first tranche of our funding will come later.”63 In the end it is still up to the ICRC as to how to address these new challenges caused by external pressures. One approach is to take a reactive role by producing impact studies, lengthy reports, and to endeavor to somehow address the requirements, but at the same time perceiving this as a waste of time. Another approach is to meet donors at eye level. “I mean, we try to adapt to the requirements of donors in terms of accountability as much as we can, but we are also honest. So, we cannot promise things that we cannot give to donors. And we have sometimes to remind donors that there are realities on the ground that prevent us from reporting the way they would wish. Sometimes donors also need to be educated that if they want to get this type of reports, they need also to fund additional positions at headquarters for people to do tailor-made reports.”64 The request for such tailor-made reports is in line with an increasing trend towards more earmarked funding in view of the growing number of conflicts. With funding for clearly designated projects, donors are able to also ask for more direct measurement and reports. However, it is the un-earmarked projects that are the bread and butter of the organization because they ensure its independence. “Let’s say that we’ve lost 3 percentage points in un-earmarked funding globally over the past 3 years. Our aim is to maintain 40% of our funding as un-earmarked. And that allows us to do several things: To protect the independence of the organization. If 40% is un-earmarked, then this is a key element. The second thing: it allows us to invest in areas that are on watch for us before a conflict starts. So, for example, Mali, Nigeria. When we set up our operation there, there was nothing. And people were like: Why are you putting money in this context? But we were doing all the analysis, knew that in the years to come, things will deteriorate. And when it deteriorated, we had capacity to… 63 Interview 64 Interview

3b, 75–86. 6, 516–546.

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you know, first responder very quickly we were on the spot. And that un-earmarked money was used for that. So, un-earmarked funding is critical for us. It’s really a life-line.”65 It is therefore vital for the organization to have a substantial amount of unearmarked funding and convince donors that it will use the money responsibly to achieve a real impact. By the end of the day as many interviewees have stated, they are accountable to the victims who are in need of their help. Another source of increasing external pressure leading to greater accountability of the ICRC is social media. New technologies have made it possible for the poorest in the world to see how humanitarian organizations are providing their services. At the same time a much larger public audience can see what they are doing (or not) and how. This has created a new form of accountability right through to the beneficiaries which was unknown previously. “Starting to integrate the dimension that did not exist explicitly before, it’s the beneficiaries. What they want. But also the wider public, so the image that the wider public sees from what we do in Aleppo is now widely seen everywhere in the world and is judged, commented through social websites and is starting to influence.”66 As with donors, there also seems to be a shift in power towards the beneficiaries putting the ICRC in a new position leading to a situation where the organization is increasingly accountable. “I am totally convinced, that given the way our environment is evolving, requiring increasing accountability, not just to donors but to our beneficiaries, to our clients.”67 And indeed it is this downward imposed accountability, i.e. a moral accountability to the beneficiaries, which the ICRC has to place at its center in order to remain respectable. Sometimes it has been seen that HO services are played off against each other. “When Israel started bombing Lebanon in 2006, we delivered to Lebanese families, blankets, food and stuff like this and the Lebanese families told us, these are not comfortable blankets, this is not pleasant food for us. We want something else. And by the way, Worldvision and Medicines Sans Frontières is doing this, you are not doing this. Why? So, they start to be a kind of accountability mechanism, where I’m an affected population, so in the western logic we deliver you good and you should be happy. No—me as affected population, I start questioning you, I start basically making you almost accountable. Why do you do this in this matter? And if they don’t get the answer, then it goes into the public sphere, so media and then it becomes almost unmanageable for the organization. So you certainly have a kind of pressure mechanism that absolutely did not exist previously. And that’s why they are basically becoming a stakeholder. … You could compare it as a shareholder activism except that they are not shareholders.”68 One can unequivocally state that humanitarian organizations, including the ICRC, are facing increasing external pressure leading to more accountability, particularly 65 Interview

5, 202–212. 3a 158–162. 67 Interview 12, 440–442. 68 Interview 3a 188–204. 66 Interview

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in its technical or hierarchical (i.e. towards donors) form. Our analysis above shows that the reasons are manifold, ranging from the growing number of global conflicts which compete for donors’ monies, to social media where humanitarian activities are becoming visible to a wider public and in a very timely manner. This in turn has caused a number of internal changes, be it through longer reports, higher compliance, and risk management, or the tensions of being an (ICRC) delegate versus an (“ordinary” corporate) manager. “And we are now seeing a very, very strong push on compliance, fraud management, and risk management. Risk management was done in a rather unstructured way until three years ago. And now there is a risk manager. There is a process in place and again, internal control. Since the early 90ies we do have formalized control. But they were not following a methodology such as COSO, such as SOX and stuff like that. And which we have been doing since about now 10 years. In a structured way, audited by the auditors. And this mechanism did not exist before. And the visibility throughout mainly the social medias and the YouTube of the like, those, is basically changing the way the organization is shaped.”69 Overall, there is increasing external pressure for the ICRC to be more accountable. We observed the sources of pressure coming from donors, beneficiaries, the wider public, etc., but many interviewees actually feel the pressure also coming from within.

3.3.3 Internal Changes Needed Due to More Accountability Increased accountability inevitably comes with more reports, ideally based on objective measures. In the humanitarian context some clear short-term goals can be easily measured such as “the number of shelters built, food packages distributed, children inoculated, latrines dug, and the like”.70 These are all objectives which are solely in the hands of the ICRC and therefore easier to manage. This is different once softer skills are requested such as in negotiations with terrorist groups or the like where the ICRC’s impartiality and neutrality are crucial elements. As discussed previously, despite all the difficulties, the organization still tries to set up certain KPIs which can be used to control their activities, be it in finance, logistics etc., but also in more complex areas such as the dialogues with authorities etc. Just as corporate annual reports have become tremendously more comprehensive over the last 10–15 years, the ICRC’s 2002 annual report with 433 pages had increased by 40% up to 603 pages in 2016. While the ICRC is able to address the increasing disclosure demands in such reports, the additional costs and burdens related to these long reports are also viewed quite critically internally. “The time we spend today in compliance is—and it is nothing compared to banks—but it is nothing compared to what we used to do. And still within the company—at the highest level, some people consider that compliance is just a waste of time.”71 69 Interview

3a 271–280. (2010), p. 472. 71 Interview 3a 266–267. 70 Everett/Friesen

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This is also what seems to be a core problem at the organization: while the ICRC has been continuously growing, and because of this there is a requirement for more and more professional processes, there is a trend among delegates in the field and also employees responsible for operational tasks rather than strategic tasks, to be more critical towards these changes. The headquarters is aware of these views but given the challenges in the changing relationships with donors and beneficiaries, the future seems to be heading towards a more professionalized organisation with all its benefits but also with its attendant challenges. The strategy seems to be to equip the organisation with the necessary infrastructure through a range of transformational projects. “Why we also say: we need to change. You know, donors want… we have to be more accountable. To be able to report better. We have to be able to. So, that’s why with a lot of these transformational projects, we also tell people: it’s not that we are changing for the sake of change, we are doing it because we have to. People need to know exactly where their dollar is going, to what beneficiary. It’s not that we are just doing it as headquarters to make it difficult.”72 Clearly, these transformational projects have not univocally been perceived as being positive where much communication within the organisation is and will remain important. “I think at the ICRC in the last few years we have been forced a bit more to open up, which some people embrace and others are a bit more nervous about.”73 “Opening up” also means to be more transparent in a proactive way. “And you can’t sort of hide. And so our communications department has done a lot more proactively and opening up. Whereas before it was: We don’t need to explain it, because we are ICRC and we are managing it. It’s like no—we do! And so like with the donors too, we have to do a lot more proactive reporting in UK donors, which some people resist, but this is just going to be more and more what we have to do.”74

3.3.4 Planning for Results at ICRC—Curse or Blessing? The main tool used by the ICRC for setting up an infrastructure for certain accountability processes at various levels is its annual planning system “Planning for results—PFR”. The system defines objectives that are endorsed by the highest body of the ICRC, the board. First of all PfR is a comprehensive internal control tool, following the logic of similar management systems adopted by private corporations: “Every autumn, PFR is a huge exercise where we look into, what have delegations achieved and what are delegations planning and proposing for next year? And then it comes to the regions: What are the achievements? What is proposed for next year? And then we have to put it all together to develop an operational budget for next year together. We are

72 Interview

10, 660–666. 10, 797–798. 74 Interview 10, 797–810. 73 Interview

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using of course some of the KPIs that are in this planning tool to also see where we should put our priorities and what works and what doesn’t work.”75 However, the KPIs calculated in PfR are also an endeavor to provide answers to the increasing demands of donors to know more about the impact of their investments. Yet one has to wonder, whether what we measure is a reliable indicator of what we want to know. The danger of “backwards engineering” is particularly high in the presence of increasing external pressure, but performance measurement is based on several different KPIs. Here managers are moving their efforts from the area of helping the victims to the question of how they can best beat the system (of KPIs). In the end this would mean the corruption of the ICRC’s own principles.76 The ICRC has to communicate this issue with its donors to gain their understanding of the limits and misleading effects of KPI-systems. “They take it from the end of the line, which is basically the way we report, we comply, are we able to measure impact, are we able to communicate, whether we are efficient and effective. The end of the line, they know that we are not an MBO driven organization. We basically set objectives, but then how we navigate to those objectives and how we measure those objectives of implementation is currently absolutely fuzzy.”77 The challenge is not to produce a ‘data graveyard’ which nobody will use. The organization has to learn what kinds of measurements are useful and give real guidance for its own improvements. “This will be the challenge of this organization—to demonstrate that in some area, this logic (performance reporting) doesn’t make sense. But in other areas, it will be difficult to say.”78 At the same time the ubiquitous focus on accountability and transparency leads to highly inefficient processes at the cost of solving the “real” problems. It seems as if there is no real cost-benefit balance as yet. While increasing transparency may provide necessary information to donors and other stakeholders, the costs of gathering and auditing of data often outweigh the actual benefits. “He heard, we had a fraud, a cash-difference of 135,000 Neira, which is 420 CHF. While, I mean, the ICRC Nigeria budget is 49 million, just to put things in measure. Ok, we had to send probably 10-15 mails, explain, what that 420 CHF cash difference was.”79 “So, ok, but if we start announcing each and any allegation, you will be spammed because we have plenty of allegations. We investigate, we also need to prioritize, which ones are most material. It is entering in a world kind of formalist or formalistic compliance.”80 Overall, more detailed reporting does not just increase bureaucracy but it also actually adds a moral dilemma. To put it differently, as stated before, increasing accountability in humanitarian organizations can have a “dehumanizing” effect. It affects negotiations with donors which eventually impacts the help provided to the 75 Interview

12, 320–330. (1997) was already writing very early about this problem. See Greiling (2017) for the specific approaches and challenges when measuring the performance of an NPO. 77 Interview 3b, 177–182. 78 Interview 3b, 194–195. 79 Interview 3b, 143–147. 80 Interview 3b, 151–154. 76 Power

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beneficiaries. “Then you can negotiate with her boss but then of course I have to make a deal with the boss. Because I have to show her that our quality first of all is much better than the other, of course, she needs to know that our added value is better. So she would make some concession because she thinks without the ICRC it will be difficult. And last but not least, I have to be smart enough also to understand, what the three or four things are where she won’t have a choice. She’ll be crushed by her audit committee. I need to understand and somewhat manage that smartly and to be also strategically in advance. And then that’s how we would organize that. And then of course there are moments where suddenly donors change their behavior. And that’s the most difficult case because it takes a few months. So far we found a way, but again you have to create alliances with other organizations to push back donors or create some dynamic around the donors. And that’s complex.”81 Or to put it differently, increasing technical accountability can have a severe impact on the ICRC’s moral accountability. Notwithstanding well intentioned efforts to measure performance and increase accountability via technical tools, the professionalization of a humanitarian organization has its natural limits. This is mainly the high level of uncertainty which is much more pronounced in such a context and no “planification” process will ever be able to capture this phenomena. “I mean, how much we realize in a year is very high. It’s more than 90% in such contexts. That means that the planning covers most of what we are going to achieve. So this is an indicator. If we realize only 60%, obviously that would be a problem. So this is one issue. Technically, for instance, if we take the field of economic security. They have proper guidelines, means of reporting, selection of beneficiaries, or maintenance of contact with the beneficiaries. There is a whole methodology in place. So there is no problem on that. But if you take South Sudan today, because the front-line is moving, you cannot ensure that the medical facilities that you have rehabilitated in six months from now will not be targeted.”82 The dilemma of managerialism is pronounced in the context of performance measurement in a humanitarian organization. “Making the invisible visible” via corporate planning tools indeed provides opportunities for improving processes and creating a source for reports necessary to satisfy stakeholders who in turn demand greater accountability. However, as outlined above it generates incentives for backwardsengineering, a loss of focus on the victims, and unnecessary costs. Finally, inevitably the use of corporate planning tools in an organization such as the ICRC will always bring with it the difficulties of having to cope with an extremely uncertain and complex environment where the best planning system can reach its limits very quickly. “In this sense, I think, we have to make a clear difference between what the corporate sector expects on results in a normal business environment with proper planification, and the context in which we are working, which is always open to surprises which change the circumstances. So we can indeed improve and we are on technicalities but we will have always a certain element of uncertainty which is that we cannot guarantee, because of the situation that we are in, because of conflicts that it will 81 Interview 82 Interview

4, 287–306. 7, 408–419.

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be properly achieved. So I feel that’s a limitation but I mean, it does make sense. I mean it’s not unusual to think that in the very specific context of our conflict.”83 The challenge with such difficulties is to still address the demands for higher transparency but at the same time to clearly communicate first to employees what the higher purpose of this is, and second to external stakeholders what is doable in terms of measuring and reporting and what is not. To summarize, the ICRC is facing a number of challenges related to the increasing demands of external parties to be more accountable and transparent. First of all, the organization has to find ways to formulate targets and performance measures which can be benchmarked and controlled. This is particularly the case for earmarked funding, which has increased significantly over the last few years and which demands significantly greater technical accountability. However, in an environment of high uncertainty and very distinct missions, measuring performance is extremely difficult. The organization is aware of this need, but it also feels the constraints and rising transaction costs related to it. Part of the problem is that the internal systems do not seem to be set up as yet for the large amount of data and information needed to prepare impact studies and the like. More importantly, the distinct donorICRC-beneficiary relationship is undergoing a significant change. Higher technical accountability does not only increase transparency but it is also accompanied by a sense of distrust, which particularly shifts power away from the ICRC towards donors and other parties, including beneficiaries. Ultimately it may have a negative impact on the organization’s moral accountability. The ICRC has to make sure that employees are well informed about the wider causes of increasing technical accountability. Too many processes seem to be distracted and impeded by the sheer requirements of increased reporting, leaving many within the organization frustrated. It is vital for employees to have the opportunities to share their experiences, discuss the challenges, and have the feeling of being understood and not left alone with the changes. Internal discussion panels would be a good way to provide such scope for discussions. It would also be a way to prevent ongoing frustrations and withdrawals that might end up in burn-outs. The increasing sense of distrust in the donor-ICRC-beneficiary relationship which accompanies such technical accountability can have long-term detrimental effects. At the same time HOs, and especially the ICRC, have unique features. Donors and other external parties need more information on these features in order to acquire a better understanding of the limitations and specifics to measure, report, and control in such an environment. Only then will the organization be able to accomplish its objectives in the area of moral accountability, which is the core of the ICRC and what motivates the majority of its employees. Finally, the ICRC needs to maintain a substantial amount of un-earmarked funding to ensure its independence and convince donors of its importance. Donors need to be assured that such a global budget with a framework of KPIs, rather than narrowly defined targets, can be used responsibly and result in a real impact.

83 Interview

7, 391–399.

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3.4 Using Dual Modes of Decision-Making and Acting The ICRC is confronted with two specific fundamentally different leadership situations both of which require different decision-making modes. “A delegation functioning in two speeds. The normal speed, which is its usual programs and the emergency speed, which is basically to save lives.”84 We will call these two strategy formulation and execution processes the ‘planning mode’—or some call it the “normal mode”—and the ‘emergency mode’—or some call it the “taskforce mode”. Most of the time the ICRC works in the planning mode: “It represents 10%, 15% of our time. So in 85, 90% of our time, as a collective, we are working in an environment which is difficult, but for which you can plan for. And this is complex, because then at stake you have different times of dynamic in terms of power, of decision-making, which makes this moment a bit more complicated. … And I agree that your RACI–responsibility, accountability, etc.—can be different from one to another.”85 These two modes continuously exist in the organization, but the organization itself is not aware of this in an explicit way, even if some people observe it for themselves. The organization does not reflect on it by analyzing, comparing, and improving both modes in a conceptual way. “I think we also have to reflect on that. What is decisionmaking about? Of course it is about to take decision, but it is also very strongly about ownership and consensus building, which is complex. And here we bring in the Swiss culture, specifically in the planning mode.”86

3.4.1 The Planning Mode: Managing Business as Usual The planning mode works in situations where the organization can more or less follow its developed plans. Here “… we try to have a bit more of a structured process of ‘you get your documents two weeks in advance, all decisions are recorded’, it’s quite formal.”87 And there are no major events or developments where the plans have to be revised completely. To run this mode, the organization uses a calendar-based, classical strategic planning process, driven by the headquarters: “The ICRC employs result-based management during its yearly or multi-year internal Planning for Results (PfR) process. It defines the PfR process as a “corporate function that assesses context, target groups, problems/needs, risks, constraints and opportunities and sets priorities to ensure an appropriate level of coordination and alignment of action and resources towards the achievement of expected results. … The management cycle starts with an assessment, which, after analysis, may lead to the formulation/planning, implementation, 84 Interview

8, 127. 4, 158–168. 86 Interview 4, 168–170. 87 Interview 10, 338–341. 85 Interview

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monitoring, review and, in some cases, evaluation of a humanitarian operation.”88 In this mode there is something like a corporate strategy (targets, priorities, etc.) in which the operating units have to embed their own planning.

3.4.2 The Emergency Mode: Time Matters! In the “emergency mode” people realize, there is no way to continue business as usual by escalating every decision and waiting for decision-making. They will never be able to respond in time. These are situations, where the regular business as usual escalation processes do not work anymore. In this case “… you are moving away from your business as usual to an emergency response mode, it means everything else changes. You shift your priorities, you give additional resources, you increase your donor engagement for additional resources, you increase your stakeholder engagement. Because the situation is attracting media attention, attention of the donors, and attention of the other partners, with which we work.”89 From the perspective of headquarters it is described as follows: “We have a rapid deployment mechanism, a rapid response mechanism. If there is a new crisis that breaks out rapidly, we usually use that mechanism to mobilize resources. I am not just saying financial resources, but also human resources around that crisis. If we see that a delegation is not strong enough to respond, to go for example from a 5 million to all of a sudden 70 or a 100 million response, you need to inject resources: human resources, financial resources, communications, exactly like this. And then OP_DIR is taking more or less two weeks, to take the lead in mobilizing the headquarters here, to really focus on that crisis.”90 Typically the emergency mode process is not triggered by the calendar such as in the planning mode, but by a significantly changed situation in one of the operations (see Fig. 3.2): “We started to see a lot of movement of population from the rural areas to internally displaced camps and the ‘under five malnutrition rates indicators’ were starting to appear to be critical. So, immediately, we had to make a decision to say: We need to give the delegation sufficient resources to respond to this emergency. Now, the decision was one to immediately increase the capacity of the delegation to respond and to give the delegation additional resources.”91 Usually in this mode, people have to act very quickly because the window for making a decision is very small. The media and donors are already mobilized. In the delegation, they start to develop a rough strategy document which they send to the regional desk of middle management in the headquarters. Regarding an upcoming drought, a head of a regional delegation described it in the following way: “The decision was taken in a week, in seeing the situation on the ground and after discussing 88 Annual

Report 2015, pp. 24–25. 8, 132–140. 90 Interview 12, 96–106. 91 Interview 8, 119–125. 89 Interview

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Emergency Mode

Inititiate

Headquarters-level

Assembly; Executive Body

Directors; Regional desks

Implementation

Report & adjust

Authorize

Align

Decide Inform Install & lead

Represent Decide Structure

Consult Synthesize Champion

Negotiate with stakeholders

Allocation of resources

Impact evaluation

Coordination Specification

Allocation of resources

Finetuning

Run

Run

Detailled plan & budget

Execution

Departments/ Metiers (HR, logistics, etc.)

Impact communication

Field-level

Taskforce

Delegation/ Mission

Recognize Define

Plan

Impact tracking

Fig. 3.2 The process of the emergency mode

quickly with the team about what needed to be done and what would be the needs that they would have, in order to increase the operations to respond to the drought. And the decision was quickly taken and then we decided to move on, sat down to write the new budget, the new program and we sent it to Geneva for approval. And in Geneva, they were very fast as well. Because we already pre-convinced them of the same through phone calls and early warnings. … If I want my decision to go through, I have to make sure that those in the headquarters support that decision. So, you also prepare that decision in the headquarters by talking to them and warning them beforehand of what’s happening, what’s coming and testing, how they feel about it.”92 At headquarters people enter into immediate consultation to seek an understanding of everyone concerned, to gain a better understanding what is happening in the field, what can be done by the ICRC (security situation, accessibility, etc.), and who will probably support it. This also includes consultations with other HOs like the UN bodies or the World Food Program, in order to share data and coordinate planned activities. After this, the regional delegation receives or does not receive the “green light” for detailed planning and an agreement is reached with the director of operations who coordinates the regions to increase the budget. Before s/he has informed the executive body about the plans, also “… to get the green light of the directorate and Yves Daccord. This has to be validated by the Council of Assembly, which is chaired 92 Interview

9, 159–173.

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by our president, Peter Maurer.”93 It means that they decide upon the budget without having guaranteed the money from possible donors: “I do think that’s the beauty of the ICRC, you put very quickly a number of decisions and let’s say, you don’t wait for the finances to be there.”94 After having the initiative authorized and upon receiving the “green light”, a time-bound taskforce is established at the headquarters and at the delegation level. Both meet very often. There are process templates covering standards for task-force management. The HQ-taskforce is established to align and implement the decisions. In order to do this, they do not have to go back to the hierarchy. The members of the taskforce are nominated by the decision-makers and represent the entire organization. If only one country is involved, the taskforce is usually headed by the deputy of the director of operations in the first two weeks, and afterwards by the regional director. If there are more countries involved the deputy does not head the taskforce but rather the director. Normally after the first two weeks, everything becomes clear. “Then we move into what we are strong, rapid deployment, rapid response. There is nobody who asks any questions then. Here we align ourselves very quickly. It is clear for everybody, now the line will decide. The organization becomes all of a sudden flat. We also agree that some decisions may have to be corrected afterwards, because there is no time to go into lengthy discussions on whether this is a strategic priority and whether this are professional standards. Then we just do. And then it’s really very top-down.”95 Then the formal decision-making process starts. Its main goal is to align the interests of the most relevant stakeholders involved in the response. The core question is: Will they support it and how much are they willing to give? First, in coordination with the regional desk and the functional departments, the taskforce writes a much more detailed and specific plan and a budget for the response. It includes target setting with regard to the expected outcomes and impacts. With the plan they have to justify the request for the budget extension and the initiative itself. Typical criteria for this are the needs in a deteriorating situation and the value proposition of the ICRC, donor and media interests, the ICRC’s capacity to respond, and of course the momentum. Here it is important to show that the ICRC acts independently, “… independent in the sense that we are able to do the needs-assessment ourselves and determine where we are going and whom we are going to support.”96 This is also one of the reasons why the ICRC tries to avoid having one donor fund more than 45% of a particular objective. There are still some risks in allocating a taskforce in this phase of the process. The core question is: Do they get the resources needed? The team cannot put the directorate in front of the ‘fait accomplie’. They can always say: No. They can still block it.97 93 Interview

6, 259–261. 7, 94–96. 95 Interview 12, 184–190. 96 Interview 8, 411–413. 97 Interview 6, 307–318. 94 Interview

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But if they have been given the green light, it is then time to align the resource mobilization and to enforce the dialogue with the top donors depending on which context and response they have an interest in. A good arena for doing this is, for example, where somebody who is interested in the situation (e.g. a state or the FID98 ), calls a donor conference and the president or the Director-General is invited to represent the ICRC. Here it is also important to make the right decisions quickly, but not without reassuring ground level participants. “You don’t have the luxury of time and spending endless hours weighing pros and cons. Of course you have to make sure that your people on the ground are comfortable with strategic decisions, because there are ramifications that are connected to their own security. This is very important to have even if only a quick but a consultative process.”99 After the top management team formally decides to go for this extension of the mandate, the implementation of the plan can start. The deployment of the necessary resources has to be done by the departments and the regional desk. This sounds much easier than it is because it requires significant field experience to balance all the different stakeholder interests: “Of course, it takes time, because you cannot just decide to send a convoy of food to one location to make all the contacts. In addition, we need to make sure that along the route from point A to point B, that all the heads of tribes are informed and won’t take offence of an international organization, carrying out one operation. So, it’s not the most straight forward operation, where you decide to send food and food will reach the place. Because you have today, for instance, from Aiden to Sanaa, close to 100 different check points and at every check point, according to who is running the check point, our people might be challenged: Why are you sending the food here and not there? And leave us some food parcel here, because we are also hungry. There are permanent front-line negotiations by ICRC delegates who have to keep a very firm attitude towards armed groups to the conflict that will always try to manipulate, to instrumentalize humanitarian aid to their own political objectives and narratives. Of course, this is getting more complex as we go because the conflict is getting more entangled, more protracted, more groups, and the needs are greater in the country and the people are more vulnerable, so everything is more difficult.”100 And finally, the actions and their outcomes have to be controlled. Each one of the departments sets their own performance indicators. If there are major gaps regarding the targets, the execution has to be fine-tuned by the departments and the delegation. At the end, the impact has to be evaluated and communicated to the corresponding stakeholders. Sometimes the basic logic of the emergency mode is also applied to acute alert crisis situations. For example, once when there was a hostage crisis, the ICRC activated an incident management team within the delegation, a crisis management team at headquarters, and a strategic committee. “The incident management team was run 98 Fondation

Internationale pour Le Développement. 6, 714–723. 100 Interview 6, 212–228. 99 Interview

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from the first day by the head of delegation and the number one in the country. The crisis management team was run by the regional director in the first days of the crisis. And the strategic committee was run by the director general. So, this is a bit our three tier approach to managing acute alert crisis.”101

3.4.3 Finding the Right Balance Between the Two Modes Over the past years, many specific tools were developed to support and professionalize these decision modes. Also switching the mode “on the fly” is something which managers at the ICRC are used to: “The ICRC delegates, the ICRC managers, they constantly switch. … Even delegations go through these phases”.102 If you talk with people at the ICRC about the two modes, most will tell you: “As an organization, we love the emergency mode. Even if we feel overwhelmed”.103 Most of the decision-makers at the ICRC have a history of being in the field. They know how it feels, to be able to operate and to help. They are valued. “People are socially valued, if they go to an emergency. And there we also have classification. The big one is security. Really dramatic. And then the organization is remarkably aligned. All—zack!!!”104 The charm of the emergency process is also its speed. One does not have to wait weeks for many analyses and meetings where the bureaucracy decides. “We got the green light of the president. The president has the ability before all the paperwork is done to say: yes, go ahead for this extra expenditure that was not foreseen in our field. And this is the beauty of working for the ICRC. So, if my team tells me, there are more needs, there is an opportunity to act, we need it now, they will get it now. Because we will get a quick feedback. And not need to wait for the whole process.”105 But the organization cannot stay too long in the task-force mode even if many people love it. “Because the task-force mode absorbs resources, it’s very intense. People really have to drop everything they do and work. They don’t just come an hour to the task-force. If we would be all the time in task-force, I think people will be dead after 6 months. Especially if we have several task-forces at the same time. So it’s really an instrument that we use when there is really no time.”106 Saying this, we have to take into account that the average duration of a presence of the ICRC in its 10 largest operations is 36 years. “So this is not like moving in quickly and moving out. So everything cannot and has not be done in the taskforce project. We are having longer-term planning cycles.”107 101 Interview

6, 137–144. 8, 779–781. 103 Interview 4, 142–146. 104 Interview 4, 150–152. 105 Interview 6, 308–313. 106 Interview 4, 150–152. 107 Interview 12, 210–226. 102 Interview

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To summarize: The ICRC has in its repertoire of strategic decision-making two different modes which can be applied depending on the situation. Not everybody is aware of this and it can be made more explicit to everybody. And not everybody feels qualified to operate in both modes. Different skills are required. And a deeper look at the capabilities needed to switch between each mode in an efficient way can also help.

References Sull, D., Eisenhardt, K. M. (2015). Simple Rules. Einfache Regeln für komplexe Situationen, Econ: Berlin. Schreyögg, G. (Ed.). (2013). Stakeholder-Dialoge. Zwischen fairem Interessenausgleich und Imagepflege. Berlin: Lit Verlag. Strathern, M. (2000). The tyranny of transparency. British Educational Research Journal, 26(3), 309–321. Everett, J., & Friesen, C. (2010). Humanitarian accountability and performance in the Théâtre de L’Absurde. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 21, 468–485. Roberts, J. (1991). The possibilities of accountability. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 16(4), 355–368. Power, M. (1997). The audit society: Rituals of verification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Greiling, D. (2017). Erfolgsmassstäbe für Nonprofit-Organisationen. Die Unternehmung, 71(2), 126–146.

Chapter 4

Humanitarian Aid 2.0: Social Media Analytics and Stakeholder Engagement at the International Committee of the Red Cross

This is a case study1 which shows how social media analytics impact the way that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) engages with its stakeholders in humanitarian crises. Referring to the organization’s mission in one African context, the case illustrates the role that social media analytics played in detecting an unexpected stakeholder constellation and in strengthening the ICRC’s presence as protection provider. Through the case study, students learn what “managing stakeholders” means for an international humanitarian nonprofit organization that helps and protects victims of humanitarian crises. The case also shows the significance of social media analytics as a complementary decision-making tool to clarify stakeholder constellations, understand interests of key actors, and engage with them. Analyzing this case should enable students to evaluate the role of social media analytics for a humanitarian organization’s mission, understand the challenges of such tools, and to develop strategic communication approaches to make insights from social media analyses actionable.

4.1 A Surprising Discovery “You need to have a look at this, it’s astonishing!” Valérie, the Head of Analysis & Knowledge at the International Committee of the Red Cross, said while entering Charlotte’s office. She walked straight to the desk of her boss and handed her the results of the Twitter analysis that her team had just conducted. 1 The objective of the case is to show how social media analytics impact the way that the International

Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) engages with its stakeholders in humanitarian crises. The case refers to the ICRC’s mission in one African context and is based on a real experience. It is intended as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of management situations. For teachers a teaching note for this case can be downloaded at the Case Centre (https://www.thecasecentre.org/main/products/view?id=147639). The reference number is 917-0028-1. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 G. Müller-Stewens et al., The Professionalization of Humanitarian Organizations, SpringerBriefs in Organisational Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03248-7_4

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The results were surprising and potentially brought significant implications for the ICRC’s humanitarian mission in this African context. Due to her long experience as Director of Communications & Information Management, Charlotte immediately realized the impact of these insights: “You are right, this militia group is relevant, they are a critical stakeholder for us,” she said after having analyzed the results Valérie had brought to her. It became clear to them that they should inform their delegation on-site even though the analysis had just been initiated to test a concept. Since the ICRC’s on-site delegation had been aiming at strengthening awareness of its programs for protection (as opposed to assistance) with the various local communities, it had asked Charlotte and her team for advice and support in their regional communication efforts. Even though the delegation had tried to engage in a dialogue with the local communities on protection-related issues, it hadn’t been able to fully establish itself within this debate. Thus, the delegation needed to gain a better understanding of who really were the most influential voices and how to engage them. They needed to understand the issues and the concerns expressed by those in need of protection—and those in power. Yet, Charlotte, who happened to be visiting the delegation at the time, thought that this would be a good opportunity to test the potential of social media analytics for such a challenge. As the ICRC did not have the internal tools to do this in 2014, Charlotte and her team decided to outsource part of the analysis to a company that was said to use cutting-edge stakeholder analyses and mapping tools. Based on its analytics, the company had identified a cluster of stakeholders having an impact on protection related issues in this particular African context. Interestingly, their results had shown that a particular group hadn’t been a part of this cluster. The company had concluded that this group was not important and could therefore be ignored. It was only by curiosity (and a bit of instinct) that Charlotte and Valérie wanted to follow-up on that initial analysis. Subsequently, Valérie and her team had set up a Twitter analysis to check who was tweeting on local protection issues in the context and who (and how many) retweeted those messages. They did not anticipate what they would find: the stakeholder group previously labeled as irrelevant turned out to be one of the most influential non-state armed groups in the context. And through their retweet analysis they made another discovery that provided a decisive hint on how to participate in the dialogue on protectionrelated issues, namely which journalists were writing on these issues and thus could be “influencers” to reach important stakeholders. Given these stunning insights, Charlotte and Valérie wanted to first inform the headquarters team covering this region and then immediately inform the ICRC onsite delegation. Thus, they convened a team meeting for that very afternoon. While preparing the documents for the gathering, Charlotte thought about how social media analytics had already impacted their approach to identifying and understanding stakeholders.

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4.2 The ICRC Context: Protecting People in More than 80 Countries Initiating an issue tracking system at the ICRC 15 years ago, Charlotte had always believed in technology’s potential to support humanitarian activities. This seemed ever more true with the advent of social media: potentially based on Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook analytics, the ICRC could generate new insights and significantly improve its situational awareness and subsequent stakeholder management. There was an enormous responsibility related to “managing” stakeholders in the context of humanitarian aid: nothing less than people’s lives was at stake. Children losing their family in civil wars, armed groups isolating whole landscapes from food and medical supplies, or refugees risking their lives travelling—everywhere around the globe, there were humanitarian crises that required help. As a neutral, international humanitarian nonprofit organization, the ICRC’s mission, mandated in international humanitarian law, is to help people affected by conflict and armed violence. The organization is based in Geneva and employs over 16,000 people in more than 80 countries. To do its job and protect those that need it most, finding out who are the influential players in a region and understanding their position (also with regard to the Red Cross) has always been paramount. However, since the ICRC had to “dig for this information”, the identification and the understanding of stakeholders could be described as a difficult process of “stakeholder mining”. Like miners looking for gold, the ICRC had to gather insights on stakeholders that could influence or impact the humanitarian response. These insights no longer just came from one-to-one conversations, but also from virtual communities in social media.

4.3 Social Media Analytics: From Nice-to-Have to Essential With regard to the ICRC’s stakeholder mining, Charlotte considered the role of social media analytics. “Our approach is driven by what our staff in the field requires and not by what we think is good for them”, she thought. Hence, their aim was to provide the delegations with useful, actionable insights—complementary to their own expertise—that enabled them to help victims of humanitarian crises. Thus, gathering publicly available data on stakeholders and analyzing them had reached a whole new level with her team’s social media analytics tool. Being able to examine huge amounts of public digital data such as tweets, videos, articles, comments, user behaviors on social media, and pictures was a major milestone in terms of ICRC’s “stakeholder mining 2.0”. It was amazing what the ICRC could find in open sources like Twitter, Instagram, or Youtube: the information gathered really helped Charlotte and her team to identify and understand stakeholders. Although some channels such as Facebook, had not made their data publicly available, there was a broad spectrum of variables that the ICRC could analyze: ranging from the

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number of followers, political sentiments, and views regarding humanitarian aid, to any demonstration of violence against civilian population. Based on these indicators, the ICRC then prioritized stakeholders according to their influence. Despite the ICRC’s innovative approach to use social media analytics for stakeholder mining, collecting information had remained the dominant way to gather data. Rather than stimulating stakeholders to make a contribution the ICRC mainly collected information already present on the web. Insofar the organization had not yet harnessed digitalization’s full potential. However, this was due to the ICRC’s strict data handling governance and protection standards. “We know that we have to be very careful when it comes to gathering data, especially in humanitarian crises. Often information can be individualized, so we always have to ask ourselves what is the humanitarian purpose for which we are collecting data and what are we intending to do with the data, particularly with regard to the granularity needed. Our approach is protection-driven and conservative because we work in insecure environments”, Charlotte said to a younger colleague who wanted to move further ahead in the ICRC’s use of social media. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons why we are not so adventurous compared to other organizations in terms of using different data gathering approaches. We strive first for ‘do no harm’”, she added.2 Still, when looking at the beginning of social media analytics at the ICRC, they had come a long way. Charlotte had long recognized the huge potential of these tools in terms of stakeholder mining. However, due to a lack of capacities and know-how, they hadn’t had their own tool. So they had to rely on other companies and had outsourced social media analyses. This had not worked as well as she had hoped: none of the suppliers had managed to fulfil all the specific requirements of the humanitarian aid context and at a cost the ICRC could assume. Consequently, Charlotte and her team had decided to find a way to partner in order to develop their own tool tailored to the ICRC (through partnership with a specialized Information Systems Department at a large technical university near the ICRC headquarters). It was then, in the context of a civil war in the Middle East, that they had started to test research on big data analytics and develop a prototype of a tool for the first time. And since they had gathered valuable insights on how the media reported on humanitarian engagement in this context, they had felt encouraged to move further in this direction. Starting to conduct their own analytics and partnering with academics had enabled Charlotte and her team to reduce the outsourcing of social media analyses. Having this capacity internally had also impacted their stakeholder mining, meaning more could be done by looking at large data sets rather than relying solely on traditional media monitoring tools. Nevertheless, the development of the prototype of the tool was still an ongoing process: to advance their approach, and taking it to the next level, they—through their partner—were working on combining it with semantic features. Charlotte remembered Valérie explaining the rationale behind this idea in a recent meeting with the software developers: “We are looking for expressions of humanitarian needs and approaches to go out of our bubble. We have a certain terminology, a jargon. But 2 See

here for the relevance of personal data protection: https://youtu.be/zudjklgBFus or icrc.org.

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when people are expressing needs, they are using other terms. We may speak about ‘food assistance’. But perhaps the person will speak about meals, for instance.” Moreover, Charlotte and her team were about to extend their tool’s functionalities in terms of providing near real-time and multi-language analyses. Letting her thoughts wander and thinking about their initial struggles, Charlotte had to smile. She was happy to see that the social media analytics had shifted from “nice-to-have” to essential. A few years ago, they conducted a Google search and had a good idea of what was happening online. Now, she and her team needed more sophisticated technological expertise. They needed the ability to cut through the “data noise” and track messages and their resonance. No doubt, applying social media analytics had become a profession, a fact that she also realized when learning about Nestlé’s nearby social media center. But Charlotte also reflected on the maturity level of their own approach: “Despite our long-term efforts to draw on social media analytics—how far have we really come? Are we current with our stakeholder mining in terms of identifying and understanding our constituencies?”, she wondered. Was there a way to be faster, more comprehensive, and more fine grained and more actionable in their analysis? To answer these questions, she had to look at their stakeholder analytics from a broader, strategic perspective. Up to this point, the stakeholder mining process at the ICRC consisted of five steps: (1) the setup of the analysis, (2) the data gathering (3) the data analysis, (4) the interpretation (and preliminary sharing) of the results and (5) their wider communication to relevant internal audiences of findings in order to inform engagement strategies. Of course, “human intelligence” still played a major role in all of this, as Charlotte and her team would never rely on social media analytics alone. In a first step, they always consulted with their delegations on-site to get an idea of whom they considered a meaningful stakeholder and which information they needed. They also worked closely with the delegations to understand the local terminology. Based on this, Charlotte and her team would set up the parameters of an analysis (step 1). They also depended on their colleagues to make sense of the results gathered from social media analyses (step 4), since their tool was not yet able to contextualize and interpret findings. Hence, improving the prototype would also mean improving the analytical functions of the algorithm. This could mean providing an approach that efficiently (and iteratively) integrated human knowledge into the automated mining process. In addition, the ICRC would need to improve the capacity to analyze images and particularly emotions or sentiments. Nonetheless, the ICRC’s initial investment in big data and social media analytics had proven to be a potential game changer.

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4.4 When Online Presence Makes a Difference on the Ground Later that day, after all team members had gathered for their meeting, Charlotte briefly outlined the situation and then let Valérie present her findings. Spreading her graphics and charts on the table, she explained what they had just found out on the non-state armed group in the African context. They all hung on Valérie’s words when she was presenting the results: indeed, as the external company had indicated, the non-state armed group did not participate in the virtual dialogue on protection related issues. Accordingly, the company had assumed that this group was not a relevant stakeholder. However, what the company hadn’t seen was even more surprising: first, this stakeholder was a very influential non-state armed group. And second, this community had tried to enter the conversation on protection but had always been pushed aside by other stakeholders. Although they had retweeted the influential stakeholders within the main cluster, those players hadn’t retweeted the non-state armed group. Furthermore, as Valérie explained, the debates revolved around topics such as detention, arrests, bombings, and other terms linked to protection in war. “As you can see in the graphs, there are some bridges between this non-state armed group and the influencers within the cluster”, Valérie revealed. “And these bridges are local journalists and activists. Apparently, they are well-connected and have relationships on all sides since they are retweeted by the non-state armed group as well as by the other stakeholders”, she concluded. Charlotte and her team immediately realized the implications of these findings: they provided an important suggestion on who to consider to participate in the virtual dialogue on protection-related issues in the region. Thinking one step ahead, the insights could be very useful in terms of ICRC’s humanitarian engagement on the ground. Philipp, a skilled communication specialist, therefore outlined how the insights from the social media analysis might impact and strengthen the ICRC’s physical presence in the field: “It could be very interesting then to engage with these local journalists and activists, for instance, if we have a message to pass”. Instead of broadcasting or holding a press conference, the delegation might directly address these local journalists and activists and subsequently communicate in a more targeted way. Given these unexpected findings, Charlotte was very interested in her team’s reflections on the potential of social media analytics at the ICRC. She wanted everyone to think about “stakeholder mining 2.0” as a means to identify and understand their constituencies more strategically. However, as the meeting had been quite intensive, they decided to have a coffee break. Sipping from the steaming mug in her hands, Charlotte thought about the wider implications and benefits of social media analyses in terms of identifying and understanding stakeholders.

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4.5 The Strategic Importance of Social Media Analytics Social media analytics offered new perspectives on stakeholder constellations in humanitarian conflicts. In this context, a recent incident came to Charlotte’s mind. When the ICRC had participated at a humanitarian summit, they had tracked the public discussions around the event. However, based on a Twitter analysis, they had realized that they had overlooked an important stakeholder: an ethnic minority, located at the periphery of the issue cluster. This community had raised its voice against the ICRC and had heavily criticized them. By attending the conference, the ICRC was perceived by them as having endorsed the national government’s oppression against members of their minority—this was the group’s position and interpretation. “It was a strong signal for us. If we had picked it up beforehand, we would have engaged with that group in order to explain why we were there, and why it was important to be at the table. So, the next time such an event takes place in that country, we know that there’s a key group to reach out to. That’s the learning”, Charlotte thought. But social media analytics not only helped them to detect unexpected stakeholder concerns. It also enabled the ICRC to identify formerly unknown stakeholders. “If we are blind to a specific group, that’s where social media analytics come in. The tool even allows us to anticipate a stakeholders’ impact in a predictive sense”, Charlotte was telling a colleague of hers during the coffee break. In addition, the strengths of social media analyses also showed in other contexts. In particular, the ICRC’s prototype tool turned out to be a potential game changer in terms of geolocalizing needs expressed by beneficiaries. Knowing whether people in a specific region struggle with food supply or medical care gave the ICRC a certain time advantage and an overview of the situation. Based on their analyses, they were able to get a clear understanding of the most urgent problems in a geographic area. Thus, using social media analytics for stakeholder mining purposes could potentially enable the ICRC to help people in crises more efficiently and in a more targeted manner. A further advantage could be seen in terms of identifying and understanding influence patterns. In more and more conflicts, there were important stakeholders coming from outside the zone of conflict. That meant even though certain stakeholders were not located within the conflict region, they still could exert a considerable influence. If in the Middle East conflict for instance, clusters of comments were coming from the neighboring or regional countries, the ICRC could then inform the delegations in the related countries and draw their attention to those stakeholders. In addition, social media had become an effective tool to build stakeholder relationships. As a study on the American Red Cross showed, social media were vital to interacting with a broad spectrum of publics ranging from volunteers to the media, and the community.3 By conducting a two-way dialogue through Twitter, Facebook or Blogs, the Red Cross was able to provide faster service for the community, increase media coverage, and receive insightful feedback for organizational decision-making. 3 Briones

et al. (2011).

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However, when engaging with these audiences, a thorough analysis was indispensable to understand their needs and to communicate in a targeted way. Social media analytics were therefore of crucial relevance. When everyone had taken their seats again after the coffee break, Charlotte initiated the discussion on the future of social media analytics at the ICRC. Considering their experiences so far, the team felt that the significance of the “virtual voices” had shifted over the last years. Since more and more people were connected online, the virtual presence increasingly determined people’s offline presence, Charlotte remarked. Thus, not participating in the virtual dialogue could affect the ability to have an impact on the ground. Being able to quickly respond to those online conversations, however, required tools to rapidly process data and read trends in uncertain environments. Subsequently, real time analyses would become vital as an additional and supportive decision-making tool, the team was convinced. Valérie mentioned another interesting aspect. According to her, mastering the huge amount of data and “cutting out the noise” in terms of separating the unimportant from the important information become paramount. “Sometimes, it’s like finding the needle in the haystack”, she joked. Telling by the way everyone in the room was nodding their heads, Valérie’s metaphor hit the point. They all had made similar experiences when it came to handling the information gathered through public sources. Subsequently, there was a broad consensus within the team that dealing with such amounts of data would simply exceed human capacities. Moreover, as people all around the globe were now able to voice their concerns and get in touch with each other, their social behavior had also changed. As some of Charlotte’s team members had observed, a shift regarding who people trusted had also spread to the humanitarian sector. Philipp mentioned an interesting study that the ICRC had recently conducted: Based on a survey among beneficiaries, the organization had examined the use of communication channels in a certain region. It turned out that the great majority of the participants were listening to a local radio station. However, when these individuals had been asked about the information sources that they trust, the ICRC made an unexpected finding: the beneficiaries primarily trusted in the local priest and their neighbors. The radio came last in the credibility ranking. “Hence, we could pass information through this radio and reach many people, but nonetheless, the people wouldn’t believe our messages”, Philipp concluded. “This is due to the fact that people increasingly trust in people like themselves according to research on this field”. So, instead of trusting “experts”, governments, or NGOs the beneficiaries rather believe in what their peers are saying. “As a consequence, literally everyone can become an influential player nowadays. They can suddenly pop up in the humanitarian ecosystem”, Charlotte added. Hence, as influence was not necessarily linked to popularity anymore, social media analytics would most likely gain importance for the ICRC to quickly detect new, formerly unknown players. Ewan, Head of Public Relations at the ICRC, brought in another interesting aspect regarding communication. Due to his long-term experience in this area, he stated that generating resonance increasingly required identifying channels with a high credibility among particular stakeholder groups. Stakeholder-oriented message framing

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seemed to become more and more important. Or as Ewan put it in a nutshelll: “If we want to build long-term relationships and attain our operational goals, we need to hit exactly those words that resonate with and that have a certain significance for our stakeholders. And of course, we assess those words in advance to make sure that we shape our language accordingly.” Given these developments, the relevance of social media analytics would most likely increase as a means to identify the “trusted” channels and to validate the communication vocabulary. In the last few years, the ICRC had undergone a significant change in terms of stakeholder communication—most notably in the way they engaged with beneficiaries—often victims of war. Being responsible for empowering beneficiaries with lifesaving information, Philipp knew exactly what he was talking about. In his view, their approach had shifted from program-driven to stakeholder-driven communication. For a long time, the ICRC’s communication had been attached to a specific mission program. While building infrastructure in a village, the ICRC had provided information on how to wash hands to prevent diseases or how to use sanitary facilities. Yet, in terms of improving their accountability, The ICRC wanted to go beyond this program-driven information dissemination. It wanted to be more responsive towards beneficiaries’ needs and that required to get “closer” to them and to better understand their concerns, interests, and demands. Hence, the ICRC’s delegation in Yemen, for instance, had used WhatsApp as a hotline for beneficiaries to report incidents or request assistance. Receiving those reports, Charlotte’s team at the headquarters then clustered the most frequent and recurring messages and shared it with the delegation on-site. The most urgent messages, such as requests for lifesaving assistance, however, were immediately redirected to the field. Additionally, the ICRC was using a broad range of further social platforms such as Twitter to learn about beneficiaries’ concerns. “But sometimes, of course, it’s difficult to meet all these expectations and to answer all the questions posed. What would you suggest to someone who asks you how to return back home? Or what would you advise a migrant who’s worried whether his kids get access to education. In such cases, we may refer to other humanitarian organizations that are specialized in these fields”, Philipp explained. Listening to his explanations, the team became aware of how hard it would be to handle all the needs expressed by beneficiaries without the help of social media analytics (Fig. 4.1). Another aspect worth noticing was the media’s role in humanitarian crises. In this context, there was a trend that deeply worried Ewan. On the one hand, learning about conflicts—like the intensification of the Syrian civil war in Aleppo—were increasingly media-driven. At the same time however, the media were more and more absent from the frontline. Colleagues from delegations all around the globe portrayed the same picture: journalists were no longer on the ground in many of these areas. “As a consequence, they rely on information coming from the field and being transmitted in real-time, e.g. via social media”, Ewan explained to his colleagues. Since the media were increasingly absent from the frontline, social media had become their primary information source. Hence, social media analytics would gain importance as it enabled the ICRC to track debates and strengthen its position as a communicator. Reflecting on all these strategic issues, Charlotte and her team became aware of how important social media analytics would be in the future. Only by being

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Fig. 4.1 The ICRC in Yemen used WhatsApp as a hotline for beneficiaries (ICRC, The Engine Room, & Block Party (2017): Humanitarian Futures for Messaging Apps, p. 51.)

technologically up-to-date, would they be able to cope with these developments in the humanitarian ecosystem. The discussion had been interesting and insightful, but there were also operational issues to address. Their meeting time was almost up and they needed to come to an end and define who would inform the delegation about the social media findings. Valérie promised to immediately submit the report to her colleagues in the field. After the meeting was finished, the room quickly emptied as everyone was heading back to their desks. Charlotte, however, stood up and decided to go for a brief walk outside. Many thoughts ran through her mind and she wanted to clear her mind before picking up her work again. Mulling over the inputs from her team, she thought about the challenges that their social media based stakeholder mining had to tackle. What worried her was the actionability of the insights gathered through social media analytics. Oftentimes, she and her team had experienced that applying those findings had been trickier than they thought—especially when it came to integrating this knowledge into the various humanitarian programs. There were still some boundaries between stakeholder mining and engagement. Charlotte wondered: “Why are we sometimes still struggling with making social media based insights actionable? What

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adaptions would be necessary to better support our delegations and to help them cutting down their daily work load?” To answer these questions, Charlotte perhaps had to rethink the ICRC’s entire stakeholder management process.

4.6 Measuring Stakeholder Engagement and Resonance Engaging with stakeholders and measuring the performance of the ICRC’s communication was a different challenge from just identifying stakeholders. Charlotte knew this and thought about both issues more in-depth now. By interacting with their stakeholders, the ICRC sought to fulfil its mission and position itself as an impartial humanitarian organization. The ICRC often needed to respond to conflicts whenever they arose: reacting to upcoming crises and incidents was crucial to render their humanitarian aid visible. This also manifested in the Syrian civil war. The ICRC’s media monitoring showed that the ICRC was the most mentioned humanitarian organization during the culmination of the civil war crisis in Aleppo in December 2016. Yet, the ICRC’s communication team also strived for a more proactive, strategic approach. The “Ramadan message of peace”4 illustrated this well: Some time ago, the ICRC’s president, Peter Maurer, had publicly addressed the parties in the armed conflicts in the Middle East, calling upon them to respect the law of war. To make sure that the communication would reach its audiences, the ICRC had targeted its communication to specific media and digital channels whom it believed were likely to be followed by these armed parties. Moreover, Charlotte and her team defined a list of key contacts and key themes where the ICRC wanted to be present. Thus, on the whole, proactive and reactive communication were not two separate or completely opposite strands of engaging with stakeholders, but rather two sides of the same coin (Fig. 4.2) . To keep the overview, the ICRC also monitored their stakeholder management. By considering a broad range of different sources, Charlotte’s team was able to gather a rich picture of all global activities. Their reporting system entailed feedback from the field, quantitative data, such as the number of retweets or media clippings, and anecdotes. The latter referred to situations when, for example, an ambassador visited the ICRC and referred to media coverage that the ICRC had generated. Such moments revealed a direct dependence between what the ICRC had said publicly and what was discussed bilaterally. Thus, those talks served as important indicators showing that the ICRC’s humanitarian public engagement was resonating with their stakeholders. When thinking about the challenges to make social media insights actionable, one possible explanation, Charlotte thought, was also related to the ICRC’s organizational structure and the agility to react to incidents. Since influential players were more and more coming from outside of the conflict zones, stakeholder networks increasingly extended beyond national boundaries. However, as the ICRC was struc4 See

here for “Ramadan message of peace”: https://avarchives.icrc.org/Film/19183.

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Fig. 4.2 ICRC’s internal dashboard provides an overview of the organization’s visibility in traditional media

tured in national and regional delegations, it could not always react quickly. Coordination was required among the delegations to elaborate an appropriate engagement strategy and align actions. Consequently, this could delay the implementation of insights gathered from social media analyses. A further reason could lie in the current visual practices of the ICRC. Even though Charlotte’s team had a sophisticated approach when it came to combining proactive and reactive communication, the ICRC did not use mapping tools to systematically visualize engagement strategies. “People were still overwhelmed with the massive amount of information generated through social media analyses. And therefore, we have to make this information very pertinent and very accessible”, Charlotte thought. Thus, having a mapping tool would perhaps facilitate the application of findings from social media analyses. “Mappings could be particularly interesting when we don’t have physical contact, when we’re not physically present”, Charlotte assumed. It would probably help them to get a more in-depth understanding of the stakeholder constellations and to derive a fitting engagement approach. So far however, they had used mapping approaches more in ad hoc manner, although at times even at the highest level, i.e. for briefing the ICRC president about a stakeholder constellation. Last but not least, another aspect struck Charlotte: their reporting system. Although the ICRC considered different sources to measure their stakeholder man-

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agement performance, they didn’t have a system that integrated qualitative and quantitative information. Charlotte recalled that her colleague Philipp recently addressed this issue in a meeting: “We are trying to get more systematic, more scientific. We have a clear mission and objectives related to it. So we know why we communicate. But to improve our performance, we need to introduce a revised measuring system that links quantitative and qualitative impacts.” He had been right, Charlotte concluded. As the ICRC was not yet able to fully measure the performance of social media based stakeholder mining, their tool probably remained a black box for many delegations. Maybe this could be changed by documenting the benefit of the tool more systematically.

4.7 Investing in the Digital Future After her stroll around the ICRC campus, Charlotte’s mind was made up: To use the full potential of social media analytics, she and her team needed to develop their infrastructure and improve the actionability of the gathered insights. Achieving these goals, however, would not only require their personal effort, but most likely also financial resources. They had to invest in their prototype tool to keep it cutting-edge and also to extend its capacity by using it in relation to more contexts. Furthermore, to stay ahead of the technological developments shaping humanitarian aid in the 21st century, advancing social media analytics would not be enough in the long-run, Charlotte figured. Given the fact that stakeholders’ interconnectedness had been increasing at an incredibly fast pace, the ICRC also needed to extend its expertise in handling big data. Thus, Charlotte was convinced that big data analytics would more and more gain strategic relevance in terms of providing the information necessary to manage the volatile environment characterizing the humanitarian sector. “In the future, the ICRC’s mission fulfillment will, to a growing extent, depend on our data processing capabilities”, she reasoned. Based on this insight, Charlotte realized that she needed a clear and thorough strategy to convince her organization to champion big data analytics. She hence sat down at her desk, switched on her laptop and started to write a proposal, outlining the rationale for an extension of ICRC’s big data analytics capability to be able to use it more widely. Right at the next Directorate meeting she would hand it in, Charlotte decided.

4.8 Case Questions 1. After taking a quick coffee break, Charlotte met the ICRC’s President in the elevator. “What are you working on?”, he asked her. Charlotte replied that she was building up the ICRC’s social media capabilities. “Sounds interesting, tell me more about it”, the President said. You have 30 s time: tell the ICRC President about the most important developments of social media analytics at the ICRC

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and explain what your goals are. Reflect on the relevance of building up social media analytics capabilities in-house: Argue why social media analytics should not be left as an outsourced service. 2. When examining big data, we can differentiate between three types of data: user-related data (e.g., personal characteristics, preferences, level of activity), content-related data (e.g., topics, ideas, length & style of a contribution), and metadata (e.g., resonance of a contribution in terms of likes, comments, retweets, feedback).5 With regard to the ICRC’s mission, mention for each of these three types of data which information could be useful to gain a better understanding of humanitarian crises? 3. Put yourself in Charlotte’s place and convince the ICRC’s Directorate of big data analytics’ strategic relevance. Argue why the ICRC needs to advance big data analytics and use it more widely. In other words, make a compelling business case for the strategic importance of analytics. More specifically: a. Delineate why the ICRC should extend big data analytics for stakeholder mining purposes (identifying and understanding stakeholders). b. Explain to what extent big data analytics could be used to drive stakeholder mapping and engagement. c. Describe the ICRC’s most important challenges regarding the use of big data analytics and explain how you want to overcome them. d. Outline the potential of social media analytics by describing “secondary uses”: which other purposes could social media analytics in general be used at the ICRC? e. Provide an outlook on the development of social media analytics at the ICRC presenting a “maturity model” of different attainment levels. Describe different maturity levels of stakeholder mining and the related tools used to identify & understand stakeholders at each stage. 4. How could the ICRC convince the delegations in the field of the benefits of big data analytics? How could the headquarters communicate the value added for delegations’ activities? 5. How could the ICRC ensure the actionability of insights generated through big data analytics? 6. What organizational changes could be helpful to increase ICRC’s agility? 7. Which indicators should be part of the communication team’s stakeholder dashboard? Define and explain 3–4 such indicators for crisis and non-crisis contexts and show how they could be visualized. 8. To what extent could visualizations be helpful to break down complexity and make the insights from social media analytics more accessible? What models of stakeholder mapping could be used?

5 Blohm

et al. (2013).

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9. Can you research the latest developments in social media analytics and show how they could (positively or negatively) affect the ICRC’s efforts in stakeholder mining and management?

Social Media and Twitter Analytics Closely related to the increasing proliferation of Internet access, social media have shown a rapid growth of user accounts. Social media can be defined as Internet-based applications that enable users to create, access, and exchange content. Given the fact that these networks allow for a vast spectrum of communication forms, ranging from commenting, liking, following, sharing, downloading, or rating, social media data are characterized by their high volume and their variety. Social media analytics provide tools to support effective decisionmaking by aggregating and analyzing these varied contributions. This involves the automated collection, analysis, and interpretation of data. Depending on the respective goals or research questions, social media analytics can be performed at the following seven levels: texts, actions, networks, hyperlinks, apps, search engines, and location data (Aggarwal 2011, pp. 1–5; Batrinca and Treleaven 2015, p. 89; Khan 2017, p. 94; Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan 2013, p. 1278). Besides other networks like Facebook or Youtube, Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms. Being limited to 140 characters, tweets are comprised of various metadata such as usernames, timestamps, follower and following counts, geo-location coordinates, hashtags, retweets (users reposting others’ tweets), @mentions (communications between users), and hyperlinks. Combining the content of tweets with metadata provides a rich and insightful basis for analyses (Fig. 4.3). Thereby, the broad variety of Twitter APIs (Application Programming Interfaces; i.e., technologies through which data can be accessed) is also mirrored in the growing number of tools and software used for analytics purposes. In order to classify the resulting multitude of approaches, Brooker, Barnett, and Cribbin (2016) provide a useful framework that differentiates between two dimensions: the data collection strategy and the analytic mode. The former term refers to the way Twitter data are collected—either by conducting a query keyword search to capture the semantic content of an issue (semantically-driven strategy) or by tracking specific user groups to find out more about their concerns, interests, or behaviors (user-driven strategy). Thereby, when deploying semantically-driven strategies, sentiment analyses are particularly suited to examine perceptions of and connotations associated with a specific issue. Social network analysis, in turn, is considered a proper foundation for user-driven strategies since it allows to investigate actors’ interconnectedness, influence patterns, and communication flows.

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The second dimension of the framework denotes the way Twitter data are analyzed, that is, whether the gathered data are examined from a time-dependent, event-based perspective (temporal analysis) or a non-time-dependent, topicbased perspective (corpus analysis). When conducting temporal analyses, visualizations like timelines are often used to depict how particular incidents evolve over time. With regard to corpus analyses, in contrast, it is suggested to build thematic clusters in terms of grouping together words with the same or similar semantics. This enables to identify overarching concepts inherent to stakeholders’ communication (Fig. 4.4).

Fig. 4.3 Example of a Twitter analysis (Hashtag Co-Occurence Network) (Zhang 2018, p. 753)

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Fig. 4.4 Combination of different strategies to collect and analyze Twitter data (Broker et al. 2016, p. 5)

References Aggarwal, C. C. (2011). An introduction to social network data analytics. In C. C. Aggarwal (Ed.), social network data analytics (pp. 1–15). New York, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London: Springer Science+Business Media. Batrinca, B., & Treleaven, P. C. (2015). Social media analytics: A survey of techniques, tools and platforms. AI & SOCIETY, 30(1), 89–116. Blohm, I., Leimeister, J. M., & Krcmar, H. (2013). Crowdsourcing: How to benefit from (too) many great ideas. MIS Quarterly Executive, 12(4), 199–211. Briones, R. L., Kuch, B., Fisher Liu, B., & Jin, Y. (2011). Keeping up with the digital age: How the American Red Cross uses social media to build relationships. Public Relations Review, 37(1), 37–43. Brooker, P., Barnett, J., & Cribbin, T. (2016). Doing social media analytics. Big Data & Society, 3(2), 1–12. Khan, G. F. (2015). Social media for government. A practical guide to understanding, implementing, and managing social media tools in the public sphere. Singapore: Springer Nature. Stieglitz, S., & Dang-Xuan, L. (2013). Social media and political communication: A social media analytics framework. Social Network Analysis and Mining, 3(4), 1277–1291. Zhang, X. (2018). Visualization, technologies, or the public? Digital Journalism, 6(6), 737–758.

Chapter 5

Managerial Implications

Because of several reasons, external pressures on the ICRC have increased dramatically over time. Humanitarian work has become a business with a market which includes hostages, refugees, criminal competitors, etc. The ICRC is now confronted with a more fractured environment comprised of different splinter groups which has made its work more complex.

5.1 Increase Capacity and Capabilities in Stakeholder Management Different and more demanding expectations have made it more difficult and challenging to keep stakeholders satisfied. Previously, the challenge had more to do with keeping stakeholders under control by using them as a validation lever in decisionmaking processes. Today it is necessary for the ICRC to involve stakeholders from the beginning as joint decision-makers and co-creators of tailor-made solutions. The ICRC needs to increase its capacity and capabilities in terms of stakeholder management. For example, greater efforts to analyze and better understand stakeholder expectations can be made. Also, having standardized process frameworks for stakeholder dialogues can bring about improved mutual understanding between the ICRC and its stakeholders. Or people in the field can be better trained regarding the possibilities and limitations of social media. Or the role of “key stakeholder management” can be introduced to professionalize and coordinate certain emerging omnipresent stakeholders. Or a digital workspace platform for all the stakeholders relating to a particular mandate can be developed to provide support in parallel and through real time interaction in order to achieve greater transparency. As a result of external developments, the political negotiating power of the ICRC is being reduced and it has to find ways of regaining it or at least find ways of slowing down this development. However, if the ICRC builds up continuous and systematic © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 G. Müller-Stewens et al., The Professionalization of Humanitarian Organizations, SpringerBriefs in Organisational Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03248-7_5

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stakeholder dialogues, it gives it the chance to “educate” its stakeholders and to give them a better understanding of the ICRC’s own situation and intentions, and why it cannot fulfill all stakeholder expectations simultaneously.

5.2 Extend Reputation by Fostering Social Innovations We can say that the ICRC is faced with a decision “trilemma” emanating from the challenges inherent in its external and internal contexts and its normative frame (see Fig. 2.1). It entails a complex balancing act with multiple tension fields. This trilemma shows that the position of the ICRC cannot ever be taken for granted. Ongoing activities are required in order to ensure that the ICRC adapts to changing conditions. The ICRC must adapt to these challenges as they arise. It has to contribute to the agenda setting in the humanitarian field, for example by fostering and introducing social innovations to address the different types of current social issues and solve problems. This means developing new social practices, strategies, concepts, tools, processes, ideas etc. that meet the social needs which come from humanitarian catastrophes. Often new and innovative solutions for the complex civil problems of our time have to be co-created with selected stakeholders. This has to be done in an internationally more visible way—and all of this without losing its roots and DNA. We have seen that the ICRC is already undertaking a considerable amount of work to cope with the ongoing challenges. The ICRC has undergone many changes in recent years to respond to a fast moving environment. The two most prominent developments, which we perceived first hand in our interviews, are: (a) the growing importance of subject matter expertise and (b) the need to be able to seize the window of opportunity. However, the tasks of managing such a transformation and maintaining momentum are not as easy as it might look from the outside. Today the ICRC is in the middle of a new wave of professionalization. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to follow this path if the ICRC wants to master all the new challenges which an HO faces as a result of its institutional environment. However, we have also seen that professionalization has its price.

5.3 Make Ongoing Changes More Comprehensible Although the ICRC has been restructuring the organization and has developed tools and guidance for employees to better be able to respond to changing needs, many employees still do not see why changes have been made and how employees and the organization as a whole benefit from these changes. In the short-term, employees see only the additional work which changes bring along. The organization would therefore gain from making the implemented changes more visible to its employees and explaining to them why the changes were made and how they benefit the organization.

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For people generally in the organization it is not always easy to understand everything that is going on around them and to get the “big picture”. Previously, these people were not greatly influenced by what was happening outside their own areas of operations. However, because of all of the interdependences, it is now necessary that they have a better understanding of the overall organization. The question is: If people within the organization do have the chance to understand the sense-making “big picture” behind the transformation, will they only feel the impact it has on their daily activities? To have such a shared understanding also helps to demonstrate coordinated and aligned behavior in front of stakeholders, which is strongly needed in times of fragmentation. It is clear that the implementation of such an ambitious strategy is demanding. It means that the people working for the ICRC are faced with fundamental changes. And of course, as always happens during a change process, there is definitely some resistance to it. Not everybody is clear where the journey will end. There is probably a lack of communication in the organization with regard to the direction and alignment of activities. The fact that the transformation is a complete and integrated concept needs to be fully explained and continually reinforced in terms of what is going on in the organization and why it has been done in the way chosen. Also, people need to ask what is normal for any kind of organization in such a phase of global growth and what is specific to the ICRC?

5.4 Define Value Propositions to All Relevant Stakeholders To give guidance to people within the organization regarding the transformation, the ICRC has already developed a detailed and explicit mid-term strategy, crafted in a systematic annual strategic planning process and accessible to everybody on the Internet. In terms of the challenges which the ICRC faces in managing and balancing a quite complex setting of stakeholders, such a strategy document could be improved and extended by adding explicit value propositions to major stakeholders, such as beneficiaries, donors, employees, media, etc. If the goals and actions derived from the value propositions are well constructed and well implemented, this increases transparency and reliability in the eyes of these stakeholders. The value propositions could be part of an extended mission statement.

5.5 Reflect on the Moral Dilemmas Which Come Along with Professionalization Professionalization comes with managerialism, the application of the institutional logic of private corporations in a humanitarian context. Not everything should be blindly transferred without taking into account the humanitarian context. We

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observed resistance to change in the organization, but it is not only the “normal” resistance you can observe in most change management projects - some resistance also has a clear moral dimension. There is some fear that the reputation of the ICRC is in danger, that “corporate-world-like”-professionalization can undermine the ICRC’s principles, and that the capital of political donors is aimed at “buying” the ICRC’s moral authority. However, the “moral authority” of the ICRC has, up to now, told the people in the organization what they should do, it has provided them with an inner compass in their decision-making, and it has given them the reasons why they are working for the ICRC. Accumulating, assimilating and protecting this authority and reputation have been some of ICRC’s main achievements. The power which the ICRC still has today comes from this reputation. Of course, the ICRC is still perceived today by most people as an organization which has no other agenda than a very clear humanitarian agenda. The principles of impartiality, neutrality, independence and humanity give the organization a clear direction, but also legitimacy to act. Making beneficiaries the centerpiece of all action and relying on the organization’s principles gives the employees both a purpose as well as a boundary for their decisions. This strength of the organization should be maintained and further nurtured, and it cannot be taken for granted. But we think it would help the organization if these tensions and dilemmas emanating from professionalization were made more visible: The people in the organization should reflect together on how the dilemmas are perceived, which options are open, on how they can cope with them, on how they observe their consequences, etc. For example, reflect on the difference between technical and moral accountability. What advantages are expected from professionalization? What are the dangers? Think about the prices people are prepared to pay, and what price they are not prepared to pay. Finally, talk about the potential and the limits of managerialism in the context of a HO. Apart from the moral challenges, professionalization is progressing with the introduction of new tools, frameworks, processes, etc. These kinds of management innovations need to be explained, interpreted, understood and implemented. This requires time and patience. The ICRC is already doing a significant amount as it moves in this direction, but is it sufficient? Of course, the ICRC already offers support with the training of new leadership skills, but more than a few people are feeling overwhelmed by the ongoing change which also touches the self-perception of the ICRC and of many people. It seems to be difficult to be able to adopt changes and to make decisions at the pace at which the organization would like to move. The challenge here is to find the right balance.

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5.6 Align the Internal Diversity to the Increasing External One The transformation also includes a structural change in the workforce. The diversity of the environment in which the ICRC is operating includes differences in nationalities, religions, age, gender, ethnicity, skill sets, and so on and this should also be reflected in the structure of the workforce. Therefore, depending on the location of operations, it is important to acknowledge that different delegations require different structures and skill-sets. And it must be clear to everybody, and accepted by everybody, that there are different career paths within the organization. For example, it is contrary to the goal of productively moving forward, if experts with no field experience continue to be perceived as lacking a reputation.

5.7 Follow a Set of Simple Rules to Reduce Complexity for Employees The complexity, which the ICRC’s employees face in their environment, is constantly increasing. While it is important to increase internal diversity in response to external demands, it is equally crucial to employees to maintain a certain stability on which they can rely in times of stress and uncertainty. Using a set of explicit and implicit simple rules, on which employees can draw in difficult situations, will help to balance uncertainty with internal strength. The simple rules, which we identify are, first, to clearly define the scope of activities of the ICRC. If the activities in which the ICRC wants to become involved are clear, then relevant subject matter expertise can be built up. Additionally, employees know best where to become involved and where not. This facilitates making decisions and taking action. A second rule is to seize windows of opportunity and to decide within the timeframe available. As part of maintaining the agility to seize chances, employees need to (a) be able to spot opportunities, (b) have communication ready when an opportunity opens up, (c) be able to decide whether they can delegate or whether they need to take action themselves, (d) take the right decisions quickly, (e) cut validation layers quickly, (f) rely on their gut feeling and expertise and (g) trust in the strength of the organization. All of these steps need to be rooted in processes and in the culture of the organization and they are critical because they enable employees to be empowered to decide and act. The third rule is to strengthen the purpose of the organization. Employees of the ICRC are motivated by their purpose of helping beneficiaries. Putting beneficiaries in the center of every decision, communication and change will ensure the satisfaction and commitment of employees further.

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The fourth rule is to sharpen the true north of the organization’s compass. Employees within the ICRC all agree that the values of “impartiality, neutrality and independence” of the ICRC provide the employees with clear guidance on how to behave and act. In addition, these values have safe-guarded the integrity and independence of the organization and are therefore probably the most important foundation of the organization. Providing employees with a set of simple rules which they can rely on when speed is critical will empower managers. This empowerment to act will enhance agility and the strength of the organization.

5.8 Link Better Moral and Technical Accountability by Educating Stakeholders Furthermore, the ICRC is facing a number of challenges related to the increasing demand of external parties to be more accountable and transparent. First of all, the organization has to find ways to formulate targets and performance measures that can be benchmarked, monitored, and controlled. This is particularly the case for earmarked funding, which has increased significantly over the last few years and which demands greatly more technical accountability. However, in an environment of high uncertainty and very distinct missions, measuring performance is extremely difficult. The organization is aware of this need, but it also feels the constraints and rising transaction costs related to it. In part the existing internal systems do not seem to be set up as yet for the large amount of data and information needed to prepare impact studies and the like. More importantly, the distinct donor-ICRC-beneficiary relationship is undergoing a significant change. Higher technical accountability does not only increase transparency but it is also accompanied by a sense of distrust, which in particular serves to shift power away from the ICRC towards donors and other parties, including beneficiaries. Ultimately it may have a negative impact on the organization’s moral accountability. The ICRC has to ensure that employees are well informed as to the greater cause surrounding increasing technical accountability. Too many processes seem to be distracted and impeded by the sheer requirements of more voluminous reporting, leaving many within the organization frustrated. It is essential for employees to have the opportunity to share their experiences, discuss the challenges, and to be satisfied that they are being understood, rather than being left to negotiate changes on their own. Internal discussion panels would be a good way to provide such forums for interaction. Forums would also be a good way to prevent employees from experiencing ongoing frustrations and withdrawals that might lead to burn-outs. The increasing demand for transparency which accompanies such technical accountability needs to be reflected more thoroughly as HOs, and especially the ICRC, have unique features. Donors and other external parties need more information on these unique features in order to acquire a better understanding of the

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limitations and specific items to measure, report, and control in such an environment. Only then will the organization be able to accomplish its objectives in the area of moral accountability, which is at the core of the ICRC and which motivates the majority of its employees. Finally, the ICRC needs to maintain a substantial amount of un-earmarked funding to ensure its independence and convince donors of its important role. Donors need to be reassured that such a large global budget with a framework of KPIs, rather than narrowly defined targets, can be managed responsibly and used to make a real impact.

5.9 Take Advantage of Two Strategic Decision-Making Modes It was very interesting to us that the ICRC has in its repertoire of strategic decisionmaking two different modes which can be applied depending on the situation: the normal mode and the emergency mode. Not everybody is aware of this, and the information should be disseminated more widely so that everybody knows. We observed that not everybody feels qualified to operate in both modes. For example, different skills are required. A deeper look at the capabilities needed to switch between modes in an efficient way would be helpful.

5.10 Implications from the Social Media Case Study Over the past decade, stakeholder management at the ICRC has faced a fundamental change. Having years of experience in the field, or having tight connections with “economic or political authorities” no longer guarantee the success of a mission. Influence is increasingly detached from traditional institutions. Since more and more people are connected online, virtual dialogues shape what happens on the ground in a humanitarian crisis: the resulting dynamics and the fact that influential stakeholders can literally “pop up from anywhere”, represent a major challenge for the ICRC and make sophisticated social media analytics indispensable. To cope with increasingly volatile stakeholder constellations and the sheer overwhelming number of voices, the ICRC needs to build up its capacity to conduct real time and fully automated social media analyses. The organization needs to be able to immediately detect “who matters”, and “what they are talking about”. Besides financial resources, this requires a close cooperation between different organizational units. As the Achilles’ heel particularly lies in the (automated) analysis of images and sentiments, not only IT specialists should be included, but also linguists, communication professionals, or staff members from the field contributing their rich cultural knowledge.

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Given that the ICRC employs over 16,000 people in more than 80 countries, the long-term success of social media analytics depends on whether the insights generated are actually applied by the delegations on-site. This requires that social media analytics are more broadly integrated into processes at different organizational levels: relying on findings gathered through social media analytics needs to become a routine for those on the ground. Therefore, a lot of convincing and communicative sensitivity might be necessary—particularly when employees are skeptical towards the potential of social media analytics or when they perceive such analyses as an attempt by ICRC Headquarters to “tell them what to do”. On the one hand, the ICRC could counter these concerns by promoting “success stories” about specific cases where social media analytics substantially contributed to mission fulfillment. On the other hand, it is crucial to emphasize the “service-oriented” nature of social media analytics. Being geared towards the needs of the delegations, the ICRC’s tool serves as a complementary decision-making foundation. Hence, it is neither intended to take away autonomy from the delegations nor narrow their scope of action. Social media analytics have also significantly changed the ICRC’s communication and engagement with beneficiaries. While humanitarian aid has been traditionally characterized by a program-driven approach, it has more and more shifted towards a stakeholder-driven approach. Based on its analytics tools, the ICRC wants to be more responsive towards beneficiaries’ needs and “getting closer” to them in terms of better understanding their concerns and interests. Being more “demand-oriented”, however, also has implications regarding the ICRC’s understanding as a “service provider”. In this context, a few questions need to be clarified, such as: based on which criteria should “relevant” interests be identified among the myriad of needs articulated by beneficiaries? And whose interests need to be satisfied to speak of a truly “stakeholder-driven” approach? Overall, developing its own social media analytics tool has dramatically changed humanitarian aid at the ICRC and the way it engages its stakeholders. Nevertheless, to use the full potential of the tool, the ICRC is not only required to invest considerable financial and personal resources, but also needs to ensure the support of its “internal stakeholders”—namely the delegations on-site. Of course, everything we have said is based on our interpretation and it is not a definitive history and evaluation. Therefore all our recommendations have their limitations. But we hope they can help to challenge the internal assumptions which exist regarding what has been transpiring at the ICRC and what are the important things to do. There is no organization on the globe which is perfect. In this context it is important to have a shared understanding of priorities and the critical steps to undertake next. We have seen and learned that the ICRC is a great organization which delivers enormous social value to our global society, but it is challenged by many disruptions from many different directions. This means that the ICRC needs significant capabilities and considerable persistence to align itself with the changing world. But the journey is worth it in the end. Why? We wish to leave you, dear reader, with a final

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question: What does the ICRC’s ongoing experience tell us about our own future in a world of globalized capital and transnational corporations, but a world of increasing national egoism?1

Reference Hopgood, S. (2006). Keepers of the flame. Understanding Amnesty International. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

1 See

in a similar way also Hopgood (2006), p. ix.