Your search

Significant proportions of aid already flow through the non-governmental sector, but questions are increasingly being asked about the role of NGOs and whether they can deliver on their ambitious claims. This study examines conditionality and mutual commitment between international aid donors and recipient NGOs, North and South. Fieldwork and case study material from Uganda and South Africa are used to support the authors’ contention that the fast changing aid sector has--in the context of a...

The book Spaces for Change?: The Politics of Citizen Participation in New Democratic Arenas

Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as...

Examining situational complexity is a vital part of social and behavioral science research. This engaging text provides an effective process for studying multiple cases--such as sets of teachers, staff development sessions, or clinics operating in different locations--within one complex program. The process also can be used to investigate broadly occurring phenomena without programmatic links, such as leadership or sibling rivalry. Readers learn to design, analyze, and report studies that...

What's wrong with foreign aid? Many policymakers, aid practitioners, and scholars have called into question its ability to increase economic growth, alleviate poverty, or promote social development. At the macro level, only tenuous links between development aid and improved living conditions have been found. At the micro level, only a few programs outlast donor support and even fewer appear to achieve lasting improvements. The authors of this book argue that much of aid's failure is related...

Rapid Results! shows how to make large-scale changes succeed  by using 100-day results-producing projects to develop this vital implementation capability. Written by Robert H. Schaffer, Ronald N. Ashkenas, and their associates—leaders in the field of change management—Rapid Results! describes an approach that has been field-tested by real organizations of every size and description to improve performance and speed the pace of change. Rapid results projects produce results quickly, introduce...

Our world seems entangled in systems increasingly dominated by power, greed, ignorance, self-deception and denial, with spiralling inequity and injustice. Against a backdrop of climate change, failing ecosystems, poverty, crushing debt and corporate exploitation, the future of our world looks dire and the solutions almost too monumental to consider. Yet all is not lost. Robert Chambers, one of the ?glass is half full? optimists of international development, suggests that the problems can...

This publication is aimed at organisations, community groups, students and academics who wish to use MSC to help monitor and evaluate their social change programs and projects, or to learn more about how it can be used. The technique is applicable in many different sectors, including agriculture, education and health, and especially in development programs. It is also applicable to many different cultural contexts. MSC has been used in a wide variety of countries by a range of organisations....

In this highly insightful analysis of Western and Chinese concepts of efficacy, Francois Jullien subtly delves into the metaphysical preconceptions of the two civilizations to account for diverging patterns of action in warfare, politics, and diplomacy. He shows how Western and Chinese stategies work in several domains (the battle-field, for example) and analyzes two resulting acts of war. The Chinese strategist manipulates his own troops and the enemy to win a battle without waging war and...

Complexity science has seriously challenged long-held views in the scientific community about how the world works. These ideas, particularly about the living world, also have radical and profound implications for organizations and society as a whole. Available in paperback for the first time, this insightful book describes and considers ideas from complexity science and examines their use in organizations, especially in bringing about major organizational change. Author McMillan...

In this concise, illustrated work exploring the dynamics of living in the 21st century, Phil Lawson and Robert L. Lindstrom show us how we individually and collectively shape the future - a future no longer dominated by traditional hierarchies and concentrated power centers. The authors explain why, in this dawning era of interconnection and interdependency, we require a dramatic transformation in the way we see, think and act. Using mythological imagery in the form of The Sphere and an...

How to speed up business processes, improve quality, and cut costs in any industryIn factories around the world, Toyota consistently makes the highest-quality cars with the fewest defects of any competing manufacturer, while using fewer man-hours, less on-hand inventory, and half the floor space of its competitors. The Toyota Way is the first book for a general audience that explains the management principles and business philosophy behind Toyota's worldwide reputation for quality and...

The current model of public policy-making is no longer right for a government that has set itself the challenge of delivery. Improvements are driven by central policy initiatives which assume a direct relationship between action and outcome - but this is a false assumption. Public services are complex adaptive systems which are subject to the law of unintended consequences, so intervention can make problems worse. That is why the carrot-and-stick approach to reform which links increased...

Dao De Jing is one of the richest, most suggestive, and most popular works of philosophy and literature. Composed in China between the late sixth and the late fourth centuries b.c., its enigmatic verses have inspired artists, philosophers, poets, religious thinkers, and general readers down to our own times. This new translation, both revelatory and authentic, captures much of the beauty and nuance of the original work. In an extensive and accessible commentary to his translation, Moss...

Now in its fifth edition, Diffusion of Innovations is a classic work on the spread of new ideas.In this renowned book, Everett M. Rogers, professor and chair of the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico, explains how new ideas spread via communication channels over time. Such innovations are initially perceived as uncertain and even risky. To overcome this uncertainty, most people seek out others like themselves who have already adopted the new idea. Thus...

Knowledge Networks: Innovations Through Communities of Practice draws on the experience of people who have worked with CoPs in the real world and to present their combined wisdom in a form that is accessible to a wide audience. CoPs are examined from a practical, rather than a purely academic point of view. The book also examines the benefits that CoPs can bring to an organization, provides a number of case studies, lessons learned and sets of guidelines. It also looks at virtual CoPs and to...