Your search
Results 32 resources
-
Development cooperation has spent decades wrangling over the merits, evidence, and implications of what we may term “the learning hypothesis”: the idea that increased knowledge by development organisations must logically lead to increased effectiveness in the performance of their development activities. Organisations of all stripes have built research and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) departments, adopted a multitude of knowledge management systems and tools, and tinkered with...
-
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...
-
Many business thinkers believe it's the role of senior managers to scan the external environment to monitor contingencies and constraints, and to use that precise knowledge to modify the company's strategy and design. As these thinkers see it, managers need accurate and abundant information to carry out that role. According to that logic, it makes sense to invest heavily in systems for collecting and organizing competitive information. Another school of pundits contends that, since today's...
-
Learning is fundamental to work on transparency and accountability in complex environments. But how can funding practices best support learning?
-
This dissertation examines when initiatives by International Development Organizations (IDOs) are more, and less, successful. The core argument is that allowing field-level agents to drive initiatives – what I call organizational Navigation by Judgment – will often be the most effective way to deliver aid. This inverts what a classical application of the principal agent model – the workhorse of studies of public management and bureaucracy – would predict, with better performance resulting...
-
This technical analysis explores previous and ongoing social learning efforts, best practices, challenges, and lessons in USAID as a foundation for improving the implementation and design of the Agency’s forestry and biodiversity programs. This analysis is particularly relevant as the Bureau of Economic Growth, Education and the Environment’s Office of Forestry and Biodiversity (E3/FAB) begins to develop a Cross-Mission Learning Program under the Measuring Impact initiative, a five-year...
-
This paper presents the case for systemic organisational change in the humanitarian system. The paper firstly shows that that organisational learning has tended to reinforce existing ways of working and has not been able to shift a culture that values action over reflection. As a result, the rest of the paper asks about the most significant changes in the humanitarian sector
-
This report is the second in a program of evaluations that the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) is conducting on the learning that takes place through World Bank projects. Learning and knowledge are treated as parts of a whole and are presumed to be mutually reinforcing.
-
The theme of learning from experience as a means of improving the effectiveness of rural development projects and programmers has been common in recent years. Considerable effort has been put into refining, monitoring and evaluation systems to enhance organizational learning processes. However, an emphasis on normative approaches to evaluation and learning from experience has led to the neglect of research into the actual processes by which rural development agencies utilize experience. The...
-
IN 2013, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) was awarded a grant under the Kanishka Project to develop a handbook for monitoring and evaluating counter violent extremism (CVE) policies and programmes. The aim of this handbook is to support CVE policy-makers and practitioners (those who design, manage and evaluate CVE programmes), by providing them with key terms regarding violent extremism and radicalisation, describing the purpose of evaluation, and...
-
In September of 2014, USAID’s Office of Learning, Evaluation & Research (LER) awarded the Learning and Knowledge Management (LEARN) contract to Dexis Consulting Group and subcontractor RTI International.1 This document—the End of Contract Report—captures five and half years of results and reflections for our stakeholders. Our intention is to share the good and the bad, and while this report would not be considered a “tell all,” we think we have a story worth sharing, particularly to USAID...
-
A classic, important study in the anthropology of development, grounded in the author's own work within USAID, and analysis of the organizational and institutional pressures that constrain and shape development agency employees' cognition and action.
-
Our new guide provides practical advice to help any organisation working in public service apply the Human Learning Systems approach to their work. In doing so, they will be better equipped to explore, learn and respond to the unique strengths and needs of each person, family and community they serve.
-
CARE's Failing Forward initiative is sparking opportunities to showcase the ideas that don't work so we can spend more time implementing the ones that do. It's changing the conversation inside the organization, and leading to changes in the way we design and implement programs.
Explore
Theme
- Adaptive Approaches [+]
-
Sectors [+]
- Alternative Development (11)
- Children (1)
- Citizen Engagement (1)
- Combatting violent extremism (1)
- Economic development (2)
- Employment (1)
- Fragile and Conflict Aflicted Settings (1)
- Gender (1)
- Governance and Accountability (4)
- Humanitarian Aid (1)
- Inclusion/Disability (1)
- Innovation (in Development) (2)
- Institutional Capacity & Change (2)
- Institutional Reform (1)
- Knowledge to Practice (5)
- Locally led development (1)
- NGOs (2)
- Organizational Change (5)
- Rural development (2)
- Scaling up / Propagating (1)
- Social Accountability (3)
- Cases (4)
-
Development Actors Perspectives
(7)
- FCDO/DFID (UK) (2)
- Private Donors (OSF, Hewlett...) (1)
- USAID (2)
- World Bank (2)
-
Geography
(5)
-
Africa
(2)
-
Eastern Africa
(2)
- Kenya (1)
- Mozambique (1)
- Uganda (1)
-
West Africa
(1)
- Nigeria (1)
-
Eastern Africa
(2)
-
Asia
(2)
-
Southern Asia
(2)
- Bangladesh (2)
- Nepal (1)
-
Southern Asia
(2)
-
Europe
(1)
-
Northern Europe
(1)
- United Kingdom (1)
-
Northern Europe
(1)
-
Oceania
(1)
-
Melanesia
(1)
- Papua New Guinea (1)
-
Melanesia
(1)
-
Africa
(2)
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
(14)
- After Action Reviews (2)
- Capacity Development (1)
- Contribution Analysis (1)
- Cost-Benefit Analysis (1)
- Delphi Survey (1)
- Focus Group Discussions (1)
- Impact Oriented Monitoring and Evaluation System (1)
- Institutional Histories (1)
- Knowledge Management (1)
- Logical Framework (1)
- MEL in International Development (3)
- Participatory Action Research (2)
- Participatory Evaluation (1)
- Participatory Learning and Action - PLA (1)
- Peers/Peer-Group Review (1)
- Portfolio Management (1)
- Process Tracing (1)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (1)
- Realist Evaluation (1)
- Strategy testing (1)
- SWOT Analysis (1)
- Systemic Change (2)
- Systems Mapping (1)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (2)
- Networks and Communities of Practice (1)
- Practical (5)
Resource type
- Blog Post (3)
- Book (5)
- Journal Article (6)
- Report (16)
- Thesis (2)
Publication year
-
Between 1900 and 1999
(5)
-
Between 1970 and 1979
(1)
- 1975 (1)
- Between 1980 and 1989 (2)
-
Between 1990 and 1999
(2)
- 1998 (2)
-
Between 1970 and 1979
(1)
-
Between 2000 and 2024
(27)
- Between 2000 and 2009 (5)
- Between 2010 and 2019 (10)
- Between 2020 and 2024 (12)