This book seeks to explore how the UN has generated, warehoused, disseminated, structured, packaged, expanded, transferred and leveraged its vast resources of accumulated information and experience throughout the decades and, particularly, since the start of the 21st century with the introduction of more connective information and communications technology. It examines the overarching objectives that have guided such activity and divides UN knowledge management into three distinct, but often overlapping and intertwining, categories: knowledge for social and organizational learning; knowledge for norm setting; and knowledge for creation of products and services. Svenson brings together these multiple aspects of UN knowledge management to present a holistic view of how the organization utilizes its global intelligence to educate, advocate and serve member countries’ development. Instead of looking at the UN as an international bureaucracy or as a peacekeeping, policymaking, humanitarian or development entity, this work studies the UN as a generator and purveyor of information, learning and experience in all of these areas. This book will be key reading for all students and scholars of international organizations.

An international journal focusing on third world development problems.

He goes on to tell the story of his advisory missions to Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and the South Pacific. Higgins weaves anecdotal accounts of his adventures in these regions, and gives his personal reactions to these environments along with analysis of the development efforts in which he participated. He explains how professional thinking about economic and social development evolved as experience and knowledge accumulated. The book also includes accounts of the author's experiences with, and reactions to, a variety of multicultural and bilateral aid agencies, thus providing an intimate picture of their operation. In his final chapter Higgins sums up his own views on the current state of economic development, development economics, economics in general, and the role of political and cultural factors in the development process.