Your search
Results 198 resources
-
Want to know better how your interventions can contribute to change? A Theory of Change (ToC) approach helps in deepening your understanding - and that of your partners - of how you collectively think change happens and what the effect will be of your intervention. Not only does it show what political, social, economic, and/or cultural factors are in play, it also clarifies your assumptions. Once a ToC has been developed, it can be used to continually reflect on it in ways that allow for...
-
The Theory of Change approach demands a radical shift towards more and better learning in development thinking and practice, creating a productive and much-needed space for critical reflection.
-
Based on the “inverted triangle” framework presented in The Water of Systems Change, this activity is designed to help individuals think systemically about social change, explore what is happening below the surface on issues they care about, and determine how they and their organizations can pursue large-scale change in a disciplined and holistic manner. The exercise is divided into 3 parts: Part I uses the “inverted pyramid” introduced in The Water of Systems Change to perform an...
-
Foundations involved in systems change can increase their odds for success by focusing on the least explicit but most powerful conditions for change, while also turning the lens on themselves. The Water of Systems Change aims to clarify what it means to shift these conditions. We offer the “inverted triangle” framework as an actionable model for funders and others interested in creating systems change, particularly those who are working to advance equity. Top Takeaways Systems change is...
-
The issues of poverty, inequality, racial justice, and climate change have never been more pressing or paralyzing. Current approaches to social change, which rely on industrial models of production and power to "solve" social problems, are not helping. In fact, they are designed to entrench the status quo. In The Systems Work of Social Change, Cynthia Rayner and François Bonnici draw on two hundred years of history and a treasure trove of stories of committed social changemakers to uncover...
-
Adaptive management has been considered a valuable approach for managing social-ecological systems involving high levels of complexity and uncertainty. However, many obstacles still hamper its implementation. Law is often seen as a barrier for moving adaptive management beyond theory, although there has been no synthesis on the challenges of legal constraints or how to overcome them. We contribute to filling this knowledge gap by providing a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature...
-
Collective impact efforts must prioritize working together in more relational ways to find systemic solutions to social problems. Sometimes we lose sight of a simple truth about systems: They are made up of people. Despite all of the frameworks and tools at our disposal and all of our learning as a field of practice, purely technical, rational approaches to systems change will not make much of a dent in shifting power or altering our most deeply held beliefs. If most collective impact...
-
Why is uncertainty so important to politics today? To explore the underlying reasons, issues and challenges, this book’s chapters address finance and banking,
-
In Building Better Systems, we introduced four keys to unlock system innovation: purpose and power, relationships and resource flows. These four keys make up a set. Systems are often hard to change because power, relationships, and resource flows are locked together in a reinforcing pattern to serve the system’s current purpose. Systems start to change fundamentally when this pattern is disrupted and opened up so that a new configuration can emerge, serving a new purpose. In this article...
-
This fresh perspective on crucial questions of history identifies the root metaphors that cultures have used to construct meaning in their world. It offers a glimpse into the minds of a vast range of different peoples: early hunter-gatherers and farmers, ancient Egyptians, traditional Chinese sages, the founders of Christianity, trail-blazers of the Scientific Revolution, and those who constructed our modern consumer society. Taking the reader on an archaeological exploration of the mind,...
-
Development economics is split between macro-development economists - who focus on economic growth, international trade, and fiscal/macro policies - and micro-development economists - who study microfinance, education, health, and other social programs. Recently there has been substantial convergence in the policy mindset exhibited by micro evaluation enthusiasts, on the one hand, and growth diagnosticians, on the other. At the same time, the randomized evaluation revolution has led to an...
-
Steff had the pleasure to co-author the first SenseMaker Practitioner Guide with a group of friends and colleagues supported and published by Oxfam and CRS. This practical guide is for those who wish to use SenseMaker to conduct assessments, monitor progress, and undertake evaluations or research. Drawing on more than a decade of experience, the authors share dozens of examples from international development, providing practical tips and ideas for context-specific adaptations. They show how...
-
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.
-
Transdisciplinarity is not a new science per se, but a new methodology for doing science with society. A particular challenge in doing science with society is the engagement with non-academic actors to enable joint problem formulation, analysis and transformation. How this is achieved differs between contexts. The premise of this paper is that transdisciplinary research (TDR) methodologies designed for developed world contexts cannot merely be replicated and transferred to developing world...
-
This Green Paper intends to review key elements of the problem that Development actors will confront as a new decade opens up ahead of us. It will articulate a solution that we believe should become an inherent feature of Development programs and initiatives. This is the outcome of an intense period of experiences and reflections in the Development space across different geographies and institutional mandates and activities, during which the Foundation has collaborated with institutions such...
-
In the last few years scientists have exposed thinking patterns that may skew our decision-making. How can we counter these biases in humanitarian work?
-
Two great trends are evident in the evolution of life on Earth: towards increasing diversification and towards increasing integration. Diversification has spread living processes across the planet, progressively increasing the range of environments and free energy sources exploited by life. Integration has proceeded through a stepwise process in which living entities at one level are integrated into cooperative groups that become larger-scale entities at the next level, and so on, producing...
Explore
Theme
-
Adaptive Approaches [+]
- Systems Thinking / Complexity
- Adaptive Learning (9)
- Adaptive Management (27)
- 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
(55)
- 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 (4)
- 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 (27)
- 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
(22)
- Tools (3)
-
Sectors [+]
(39)
- 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 Accountability (2)
- Social Change (1)
Resource type
- Blog Post (21)
- Book (36)
- Book Section (10)
- Conference Paper (1)
- Journal Article (36)
- Magazine Article (9)
- Map (1)
- Newspaper Article (1)
- Presentation (2)
- Report (76)
- 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 (186)