Assessing the Impact of Organizational Culture on International Organizations.

How much does the organizational culture of an international organization (IO) matter for explaining IO behavior? For some theorists, organizational culture plays a crucial role in shaping IO behavior, while for others, organizational culture is an unnecessary and absent variable. However, hypotheses explaining the interaction between organizational culture and other variables such as national preferences remain scarce. To address this gap, I first argue that studies of political culture, strategic culture and bureaucratic politics provide valuable insights for understanding organizational culture in IOs. Next, I demonstrate how the lack of clear hypotheses about the interaction between organizational culture and other variables makes it easier for scholars of IOs to both overestimate and underestimate the causal significance of organizational culture. Lastly, I present thirteen testable hypotheses about the relationship between preferences (both national and domestic) and organizational culture in IOs; and the effects of this relationship on IO behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]