*1.1. Context of Study*

Public institutions and agencies, ranging from the United Nations to municipal institutions, may be perceived to have few vulnerabilities, and are impervious to external pressures and threats (Giblin and Nowacki 2018). Inter-Governmental Organizations (IGOs) (including all types of non-profit organizations, government agencies and state-owned corporations) have to contend with their survival and sustainability and continuously manage challenges such as crisis management, budgeting constraints, downsizing and political pressures. Managers working in IGOs continue to be concerned and are challenged about highly relevant issues related to change and change management, such as organizational decline and performance (Peretz 2021). Moreover, with today's globalization paradigm taking a new form, and global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and heightened environmental disasters, IGOs are facing a new set of challenges and obstacles affecting their missions, strategies, operations and reputation.

In order to demarcate the extent of the problem at hand, let us consider the United Nations, which, in 2017, was criticized for its lack of management best practices and bureaucracy, referencing their problematic performance in their business process efficiencies and effectiveness. This criticism is masked by its global politically driven inter-governmental dynamics, where performance and change management practices are not evident or even transparent (Andrews et al. 2006; Cuganesan et al. 2012). As a response, the UN general assembly in 2000 made the resolution to ensure that the organization and its agencies

**Citation:** Wan, James, Ling Wang, Raafat Saade, Hong Guan, and Hao Liu. 2022. Empirical Analysis of Strategic Management in Inter-Governmental Organization. *Administrative Sciences* 12: 83. https://doi.org/10.3390/ admsci12030083

Received: 26 May 2022 Accepted: 10 July 2022 Published: 18 July 2022

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are provided on a timely and predictable basis with the resources it needs to carry out its mandates, and urged the Secretariat to make the best use of those resources, under such plans as resources mobilization initiatives. This triggered a major management reform movement, whereby results of reform efforts were required to be presented to the UN Assembly regularly. Subsequently, the reform presented the Secretariat with major challenges associated with member states' interference with management, resulting in the serious consequence of potentially deteriorating their strategic management implementation abilities. The interactions between these internal and external pressures are still not well understood and guidance for stakeholders is lacking, with managers continuing to struggle with effective and efficient approaches towards handling the situation. Ever since, pressure for reform has been observed in all public sectors, where IGO governing bodies are increasingly urging their Secretariats to anticipate, engage and manage organizational transformation effectively, to address the continuously emerging global challenges and establish mechanisms to align themselves to the UN sustainable development goals. At present, strategic planning, development and implementation in public institutions are weakly addressed in IGOs' strategic management theory and practice.

For this reason, it is vital for IGOs to establish a strategic management framework that is linked to ongoing performance and management processes. This relationship, in which strategizing is mainly aimed at defining and strengthening overall performance, is coupled with performance monitoring to improve the outcomes of adopted strategy processes. From this view of strategic management, a transformation from the traditional strategic planning view to a more integrated and multidimensional focus is necessary. In doing so, it would be possible to achieve strategic goals along various pathways of decision making—a central theme of coordinated, centralized strategic management challenges that remains unsolved today (Kools and George 2020).
