Despite the scholarly boundaries, ours is not a world of international business or a world of international aid and development but one where sectoral boundaries are increasingly blurred and one where tackling of grand challenges requires collaborative effort. The conditions of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity and a resource-parched environment further exacerbate the challenge, with effectiveness being a persisting condundrum. Adopting a grounded theory method and aided by three sensitising concepts – effectiveness, tensions, and organised hypocrisy – this dissertation examines how mobile professionals navigate the pressures for improved effectiveness within international organisations, with focus on field practitioners in the world’s largest international bureaucracy, the United Nations system. As such, this research contributes to an under-studied sphere concerning international and inter-governmental entities within the global ecosystem of international organisations on one hand, while also addressing the research gap related to individual actors on the other.

The nested pressures for effectiveness, anchored to the international aid effectiveness agenda, i.e., the principles of the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, and to the UN internal effectiveness strategies, pose a challenging equation of seemingly counter-acting forces: an increasingly mobile and diverse workforce, operating in an increasingly resource-parched and fragmented aid marketplace, is expected to operate in a more cohesive and collaborative manner. The study presents the grounded theory of savvy bureaucracy, whereby the workers engage in a “bureaucratic hustle” to get work done. This bureaucratic hustle is powered by the want, facilitated by radical acceptance, and enabled by a sense of agency. Doing the bureaucratic hustle entails engaging in organised hypocrisy; managing boundaries; being agile and adapting; and embracing tensions.

The findings emphasise the central role of a worker’s mindset in the pursuit of results, including tolerance for uncertainty, willingness to be held to account, and view to self as a professional in general, not as an individual in a specific profession in a specific capacity. The results also suggest that gumption and practical staff competencies trump academic credentials and diversity markers in the pursuit of effective work, as operating in dynamic settings requires capacity to mitigate risk and readiness to make difficult decisions, including ones that may, paradoxically, entail breaking the bureaucratic rules in the name of doing the right thing.

The results show how a professional, pragmatic stance to work eclipses the ideal of an altruistic do-gooder – effectiveness is expected, charitability is optional. There is, from the worker perspective, a broadening of the notion of effectiveness, often seen as a binary in the aid discourse or media, towards a more nuanced notion of mattering and adding value. However, this can be in stark contrast with the way effectiveness is viewed and addressed from the organisational perspective in the UN system. The findings suggest that a worker’s motivation, determination, and ability to be effective is not necessarily due to the organisational processes or incentives but rather despite of them. Thus, effectiveness is, on some level, an individual’s choice.

Apart from contributing to research on international organisations and providing insights about individual actors, the study contributes to extant literature on entrepreneurial bureaucracy and expands thinking around “hustle” for effectiveness at work. It also suggests strategies for managing a diverse workforce of mobile professionals, including considerations in recruitment, for the benefit of any type of organisation with international operations. The study further suggests that even in the most complex of organisational settings and no matter how daunting the objectives, workers can feel a sense of mattering and can be, to a degree, incentivised and socialised to operate towards the collective goals, under competent leadership. Micro-actions do matter, even in the business of tackling grand challenges.