One Organization, Multiple Policy Works: Alignment and Heterogeneity of Policy Work within UNIDO TCS

Diplôme Master One Organization, Multiple Policy Works: Alignment and Heterogeneity of Policy Work within UNIDO TCS eng 2026-01-14 author Yu Li 423558 author Yang Zixiao 423595 director Balsiger Jörg 716235 Service enseignement, recherche, administratif et technique (SdS) (SCSPS) 56 <p>This report is an internship report written based on the three-month internship experience of the two authors inthe Industrial Policy Advice and Capacity Development Division of the United Nations Industrial DevelopmentOrganization, Technical Cooperation and Sustainable Industrial Development Directorate. In the report, we firstintroduce the organizational background and our internship work. Based on our tasks and observations duringthe internship, we then propose our research questions: How is policy work understood and practiced acrossdifferent divisions within the Directorate, and what organizational and contextual factors shape thesedifferences?With support from the Directorate, we collected extensive data on policy work through literature analysis andsemi-structured interviews. Using thematic analysis, we identified six themes: alignment of policy work,fragility of policy work, national context and project design, inter-divisional collaboration practices, knowledgesharing practices, and organizational management. By further analyzing the links between these themes, wefinally developed three core themes. We argue that the organization’s policy work practice is shaped by thecombined influence of external national contexts and internal organizational structures. On the one hand,differences across Member States in institutional capacity, policy maturity, and political environment makepolicy work highly context-dependent in terms of process, depth of engagement, and forms of outputs. On theother hand, the structure of the Organization, its project-based mode of operation, and its key performanceindicator-oriented incentive mechanisms make it difficult for policy knowledge, methods, and experience to beintegrated and accumulated across divisions. On this basis, the long-term nature of policy work, its uncertainty,and its strong dependence on national implementation capacity make policy work fragile in practice. Finally,based on our analysis, we provide several recommendations and directions for future research. We also discussthe limitations of this report and reflect on our internship experience.</p> Dewey 354.3 MIHDS Master in Innovation, Human Development and Sustainability 199 Institut de la gouvernance de l'environnement et du développement territorial TF false 09e60d92-1a0d-447c-b8bc-5efe9c265343 Master thesis Restricted Internship_Report_MIHDS_Li_Yu_and_Z.pdf 691011 application/pdf 948d40cf6badf5b8437e183f5cb4ece279ee9ae1b5fea81f87c1a2ea6f402f40 restrictedAccess Faculté des sciences de la société / Institut de la gouvernance de l'environnement et du développement territorial

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