ABSTRACT
This chapter explores international HRM (IHRM) in a group of important but previously largely unresearched organizations – intergovernmental civil services. Using the United Nations as its exemplar, this chapter outlines some of the characteristics of these organizations that make them unusual and some of the features of their work and their staff that mean that expatriation in these contexts is quite different from that found elsewhere. In particular, the chapter argues that these most international of organizations, where typically people are managed by, and in turn manage, people of a different nationality from themselves, have a series of unique circumstances to deal with in their IHRM policies and practices.The chapter gives examples of the practices of these organizations and outlines some of the problems that they face in the effective management of IHRM.
