Introduction

This chapter offers a brief overview of the United Nations (UN) system to set the stage, a review of the growing importance of knowledge to the UN, an explanation of the different perspectives. The book examines the overarching objectives that have guided such activity and divides UN knowledge into three distinct, but often overlapping and intertwining, categories: knowledge for organizational and social learning; knowledge for norm setting; and knowledge for creation of products and services. The aim of this book is to examine UN use of knowledge and its resulting usefulness with regard to the multiple constituents the UN has to manage: its own staff, its member states, and the public at large. Various UN Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Reports at national and regional levels have also adopted similar themes in the past decade. Knowledge and its strategic application have now become key themes for development as well as for private sector competitiveness.