Your search
Results 195 resources
-
We think that, applied well, theory of change can support charities and funders to take a systemic approach to their work. This report identifies five common pitfalls that organisations fall into when using theory of change, and walks through five rules of thumb that will help organisations to use the approach to tackle complex problems. We think that, applied well, theory of change can support charities and funders to take a systemic approach to their work. This report identifies five...
-
Anna L. Ahlers and Gunter Schubert, ’Adaptive Authoritarianism’ in Contemporary China: Identifying Zones of Legitimacy Building, in: Deng Zhenglai and Guo Sujian (eds), Reviving Legitimacy: Lessons for and from China, Lanham: Lexington Books (2011),
-
Last month, Duncan Green was kind enough to post my overly ambitious multi-book review on complexity thinking in development on his From Poverty to Power blog. It covered three books: Ben Ramalingam’s Aid on the Edge of Chaos; Jean Boulton, Peter Allen, and Cliff Bowman’s Embracing Complexity; and Danny Burns and Stuart Worsley’s Navigating Complexity in International Development. It...
-
Systems thinking is an approach to integration that is based on the belief that the component parts of a system will act differently when isolated from the system’s environment or other parts of the system. THIS PAGE PROVIDES PLENTY OF RESOURCES ON SYSTEM THINKING
-
As with all public policy work, education policies are demanding. Policy workers need to ‘know’ a lot—about the problems they are addressing, the people who need to be engaged, the promises they can make in response, the context they are working in, and the processes they will follow to implement. Most policy workers answer questions about such issues within the structures of plan and control processes used to devise budgets and projects. These structures limit their knowledge gathering,...
-
Global development is seeing an exciting paradigm shift. Increasingly, leaders and practitioners recognize that development is not a “complicated” challenge that can be neatly parsed out into separate problems and siloed departments, like assembling a car. Rather, the various tasks of development—poverty eradication, improving governance, climate action, gender equality, and so on—are all connected, making development a “complex” challenge.
-
Before markets opened in 1978, China was an impoverished planned economy governed by a Maoist bureaucracy. In just three decades it evolved into the world's second-largest economy and is today guided by highly entrepreneurial bureaucrats. In How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, Yuen Yuen Ang explains this astonishing metamorphosis. Rather than insist that either strong institutions of good governance foster markets or that growth enables good governance, Ang lays out a new, dynamic framework...
-
The primary goals of environmental monitoring are to indicate whether unexpected changes related to development are occurring in the physical, chemical, and biological attributes of ecosystems and to inform meaningful management intervention. Although achieving these objectives is conceptually simple, varying scientific and social challenges often result in their breakdown. Conceptualizing, designing, and operating programs that better delineate monitoring, management, and risk assessment...
-
Getting serious about systems change
-
Recent advances in the study of complexity have given scientists profound new insights into how natural innovation occurs and how its power can be exploited. Now two pioneers in the field, Robert Axelrod and Michael D. Cohen, provide leaders in business and government with a guide to complexity that will help them make effective decisions in a world of rapid change. Building on evolutionary biology, computer science, and social design, Axelrod and Cohen have constructed a unique framework...
-
It is generally recognized that life is becoming more complex. This article analyzes the human social environment using the "complexity profile," a mathematical tool for characterizing the collective behavior of a system. The analysis is used to justify the qualitative observation that complexity of existence has increased and is increasing. The increase in complexity is directly related to sweeping changes in the structure and dynamics of human civilization—the increasing interdependence of...
-
In this lecture, adapted from his May 2012 Kapuściński Lecture, Owen Barder explores the implications of complexity theory for development policy. He explains how traditional economic models have tried and failed to understand why some countries have managed to improve living standards while other countries have not.
-
In the last of a series of three blog posts looking at the implications of complexity theory for development, Owen Barder and Ben Ramalingam look at the implications of complexity for the trend towards results-based management in development cooperation. They argue that is a common mistake to see a contradiction between recognising complexity and focusing on results: on the contrary, complexity provides a powerful reason for pursuing the results agenda, but it has to be done in ways which...
-
Why is the very kind of knowledge that people need to live well ― practical wisdom ― often the least understood, the hardest to learn, and the most devalued kind of knowledge?In this book five distinguished practical theologians examine the wisdom that is basic for faithful Christian living, question why it has been largely devalued, and advocate for its renewal. After first showing several concrete situations in which this kind of wisdom is visible ― marriage, church, community, culture,...
Explore
Theme
-
Adaptive Approaches [+]
- Systems Thinking / Complexity
- Adaptive Learning (9)
- Adaptive Management (24)
- Adaptive Rigour (1)
- Agile & Lean approaches (2)
- CLA (Collaborating Learning Adapting) (1)
- Design Thinking / HCD (6)
- MSD - Market Systems Development (2)
-
Other sectors
(27)
- Environmental (9)
- Military (7)
- Organizational Management (10)
- Philosophical roots (3)
- Participation (1)
- PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) (1)
- PEA (Political Economy Analysis) (1)
- Positive Deviance & 2 loops model (2)
- Systemcraft (1)
- Cases (7)
- Courses (1)
-
Development Actors Perspectives
(18)
- AFD (Agence Française de Développement) (1)
- China (2)
- DCED - Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (3)
- FCDO/DFID (UK) (3)
- GIZ (Germany) (3)
- KOICA (Korea's International Co-operation Agency) (1)
- OECD/DAC - Results Based Management (1)
- Private Companies - Development Industry (1)
- Private Donors (OSF, Hewlett...) (1)
- UNDP, UN Global Pulse, UN... (2)
- USAID (5)
-
Geography
(14)
-
Africa
(6)
- Central Africa (1)
-
Eastern Africa
(4)
- Mozambique (1)
- Rwanda (1)
- Uganda (2)
-
Southern Africa
(1)
- South Africa (1)
-
Asia
(7)
-
Eastern Asia
(7)
- China (7)
-
Eastern Asia
(7)
- Oceania (1)
-
Africa
(6)
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
(54)
- Action Inquiry/Collective Leadership (2)
- Desk based research/lit review (1)
- Ethnography / Rapid Ethnography (1)
- Impact evaluation (1)
- Indicator-based approaches (1)
- Innovation System Analysis (2)
- Knowing Unknowns (1)
- Mapping Visualization Methods (4)
- MEL in International Development (3)
- Most Significant Change (1)
- Narrative Based Approaches (2)
- Network Analysis (1)
- Outcome Harvesting (1)
- Outcome Mapping (1)
- Participatory Action Research (2)
- Participatory Evaluation (1)
- Political Economy Analysis (1)
- Portfolio Management (2)
- Process Tracing (1)
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis (1)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (2)
- Realist Evaluation (2)
- Rubrics (2)
- Scenario Planning (1)
- SenseMaker (3)
- Stakeholder Feedback (1)
- Surveys (1)
- Systemic Change (26)
- Systems Mapping (6)
- Theory-based evaluations (2)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (8)
- Trans-disciplinary Research (1)
- Utilisation focused evaluation (1)
- Networks and Communities of Practice (1)
- Organizations (1)
-
Practical
(20)
- Tools (3)
-
Sectors [+]
(37)
- Agriculture (1)
- Alternative Development (10)
- Citizen Engagement (1)
- Economic development (1)
- Education (2)
- Environmental Management (2)
- Governance and Accountability (2)
- Health (2)
- Humanitarian Aid (1)
-
Innovation (in Development)
(12)
- Funding (1)
- Institutional Capacity & Change (3)
- Knowledge to Practice (1)
- Locally driven development (1)
- Locally led development (1)
- NGOs (2)
- Organizational Change (3)
- Pastoralism (1)
- Peace Building (1)
- Scaling up / Propagating (5)
- Social Change (1)
Resource type
- Blog Post (20)
- Book (36)
- Book Section (10)
- Conference Paper (1)
- Journal Article (36)
- Magazine Article (9)
- Map (1)
- Newspaper Article (1)
- Presentation (2)
- Report (74)
- Software (1)
- Video Recording (1)
- Web Page (3)
Publication year
-
Between 1900 and 1999
(12)
-
Between 1940 and 1949
(1)
- 1948 (1)
- Between 1950 and 1959 (2)
-
Between 1970 and 1979
(1)
- 1978 (1)
-
Between 1980 and 1989
(1)
- 1985 (1)
- Between 1990 and 1999 (7)
-
Between 1940 and 1949
(1)
- Between 2000 and 2024 (183)