The UNCTAD Secretariat

This last chapter looks at the UNCTAD Secretariat in relation to the mechanistic conception so often applied to it and describes how remarkably it adheres to this concept in some respects and challenges it in others. An attempt is made to look beyond generalizations in order to identify the sources of idiosyncracies and the effects these have on the organization’s functioning and particularly on its success in meeting the functionally neutral and symbolic goals (whether formally stated or not) discussed in the previous chapter. It looks behind the scenes at those individuals, most of whom never appear on stage in the sense that delegates do, but who since UNCTAD’s inception in 1964 have created the programmes which have been discussed in chapters 2 and 3 and whose attempts to influence their further development have been a theme especially in chapters 4 and 6.