Your search
Results 624 resources
-
Institutional change is part of the theory of change of PDIA – scaling through the diffusion of new ways of thinking and greater problem-solving know-how. And once a community of practice reaches critical mass across an eco-system, a tipping point can happen where the eco-system becomes generally more open to novelty, where success is a more effective route to legitimacy, and where leadership is oriented towards value creation.
-
Locally led development is a complex process that the development community, in the U.S. and around the world, has spent several decades trying to get right. Yet, despite all the experience and lessons learned, it feels like we are barely beyond the starting line. This publication aims to contribute to the ongoing dialogue on locally led development, especially as to how the United States can address the obstacles posed by U.S. law, regulation, policy, and practice. It consists of two parts:...
-
Doing development differently rests on deliberate efforts to reflect and learn, not just about what programmes are doing and achieving, but about how they are working. This is particularly important for an action research programme like Child Labour: Action- Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA), which is implemented by a consortium of organisations from across the research and development spectrum, during a rapidly changing global pandemic. Harnessing the potential...
-
Inclusive and rigorous peacebuilding evaluation is both vital and complex. In this blog we share examples of how we are innovating our methodologies to move towards participatory and adaptive practice.
-
This guidebook codifies the principles and methods of applying systems change and portfolio approaches to complex development challenges with practical tools and examples. It is based on the empirical learning generated from the collaborative initiatives in UNDP Country Offices in Bhutan, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Viet Nam with support from Regional Innovation Centre for Asia and the Pacific.
-
Digitalisation is perhaps the most important strategic challenge that governance will face over the coming decade. The process is delivering digital dividends as well as new exclusions and injustices, with the rapid but uneven increase in access to mobile and internet technologies transforming how social and economic life takes place. This report highlights the key opportunities and challenges arising from digitalisation.
-
Introduction:The Most Significant Change (MSC) technique is a complex-aware monitoring and evaluation tool, widely recognized for various adaptive management purposes. The documentation of practical examples using the MSC technique for an ongoing monitoring purpose is limited. We aim to fill the current gap by documenting and sharing the experience and lessons learned of The Challenge Initiative (TCI), which is scaling up evidence-based family planning (FP) and adolescent and youth sexual...
-
Executive Summary When Christian Aid (CA) Ireland devised its multi-country and multi-year Irish Aid funded Programme Grant II (2017-2022), they opted to move away from a linear programme management approach and to explore an adaptive one. Across seven countries: Angola, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, CA and partner organisations support marginalised communities to realise their rights, reduce violence and address...
-
Motivation In the last decade, a movement formed around making aid delivery more adaptive, relying on principles such as context sensitivity, flexibility, and ownership. The approaches seem promising for civil society organizations (CSOs) to fulfil their mission of fostering social transformation. While several donor agencies have started engaging with such approaches, the authors hardly see their political implications in practice. Purpose The article aims to provide evidence on an adaptive...
-
Executive Summary Understanding how civil society can get government to respond to their needs, preferences and demands, and deliver goods and services to citizens is a central concern in social accountability initiatives. It is widely argued that sanctions make a key difference to service delivery outcomes, and that without them, transparency and accountability interventions are less likely to be effective and less likely to be sustainable (Anderson et al., 2020; Arugay, 2016; Fox, 2020;...
-
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.
-
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
-
Violent conflict and its aftermath are pressing problems, particularly for international development initiatives. However, the results of development in conflict contexts have generally been disappointing and their preventative potential thus questionable. Available Open Access, Lives Amid Violence argues that this is because practitioners adhere to a mental model that emphasises linearity, certainty, and causality, assuming that violence is best addressed through work plans that deliver...
-
This chapter examines good practices in implementing effective Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems within complex international development Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) programs, which are characterized by challenges of non-linearity, limited evidence of theories of change, and contextual and politically contingent nature of outcomes. The chapter presents three cases of MEL systems in complex projects implemented by Pact across distinct and diverse operating...
-
What does governance look like ‘from below’ – from the perspectives of poor and marginalised households? How do patterns of conflict affect that? These were the questions at the heart of the Governance at the Margins research project. Over three years from 2017-2020 we worked to explore this through in-depth study in conflict-affected areas of Mozambique, Myanmar, and Pakistan. Our research teams interviewed the same people regularly over that time, finding out how they resolved problems and...
-
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,...
-
Technical assistance is provided to country governments as part of international development programmes to support policymaking or strengthen state capability. This article presents the conceptual evolution of ‘technical assistance’ linked to capacity development, starting with programmes aiming exclusively to enhance individual capacity in the 1950s to 1970s and progressing to complex systems approaches in the past ten years. It also presents some of the frequent challenges in designing and...
-
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...
-
Localisation and locally led international development practice has long been discussed, but has still not been delivered. Systemic barriers have posed challenges, and the term itself is contested. Now, the last tumultuous 18 months could provide a critical juncture to finally move forward with this crucial agenda. The pandemic has highlighted structural inequalities in the global system, and disrupted ways of working in the international development sector. The Black Lives Matter movement...
Explore
Theme
-
Sectors [+]
- Advocacy and Activism (4)
- Agriculture (3)
- Alternative Development (129)
- Cash Trasfers (2)
- Children (8)
- Citizen Engagement (63)
- Climate Change (5)
- Combatting violent extremism (6)
- Economic development (16)
- Education (4)
- Employment (2)
- Environmental Management (32)
- Fragile and Conflict Aflicted Settings (14)
- Gender (9)
- Governance and Accountability (158)
- Health (10)
- Humanitarian Aid (8)
- Inclusion/Disability (1)
-
Innovation (in Development)
(62)
- Funding (1)
- Institutional Capacity & Change (18)
- Institutional Reform (6)
- Judicial systems (3)
- Knowledge to Practice (34)
- Land Reform (1)
- Locally driven development (20)
- Locally led development (3)
- NGOs (28)
- Organizational Change (14)
- Pastoralism (1)
- Peace Building (12)
- Private Sector Development (1)
- Research for Development (R4D) (6)
- Rural development (10)
- Scaling up / Propagating (23)
- Social Accountability (136)
- Social Change (3)
- Social Protection (1)
-
Technology (in Development)
(45)
- Appropriate Tech (6)
- Waste Management (1)
- Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) (1)
-
Adaptive Approaches [+]
(249)
- Adaptive Learning (32)
- Adaptive Management (104)
- Adaptive Rigour (1)
- Agile & Lean approaches (9)
- CLA (Collaborating Learning Adapting) (3)
- Design Thinking / HCD (50)
- Doing Development Differently (6)
- Human Learning Systems (1)
- MSD - Market Systems Development (10)
- Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (2)
- Other Adaptive approaches (6)
-
Other sectors
(6)
- Activism and Social Movements (1)
- Government (1)
- Organizational Management (2)
- Project management (2)
- Sport (1)
- Participation (3)
- PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) (4)
- PEA (Political Economy Analysis) (9)
- Positive Deviance & 2 loops model (1)
- Results Based Management (1)
- Systemcraft (1)
- Systems Thinking / Complexity (39)
- TWP (Thinking & Working Politically) (25)
- Cases (74)
- Courses (2)
-
Development Actors Perspectives
(73)
- AFD (Agence Française de Développement) (1)
- Canada - GAC & IDRC (2)
- China (3)
- DCED - Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (1)
- FCDO/DFID (UK) (10)
- GIZ (Germany) (6)
- Hivos - Netherlands (1)
- IFAD (1)
- ILO (1)
- Irish Aid (1)
- KOICA (Korea's International Co-operation Agency) (1)
- NGO Perspectives (16)
- OECD/DAC - Results Based Management (1)
- Private Companies - Development Industry (3)
- Private Donors (OSF, Hewlett...) (3)
- SIDA - Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (1)
- UNDP, UN Global Pulse, UN... (3)
- USAID (16)
- WFP (1)
- World Bank (8)
-
Geography
(71)
-
Africa
(37)
- Central Africa (5)
-
Eastern Africa
(22)
- Kenya (4)
- Malawi (1)
- Mozambique (6)
- Rwanda (2)
- Somalia (3)
- South Sudan (1)
- Tanzania (3)
- Uganda (4)
- Zimbabwe (3)
- Northern Africa (1)
-
Southern Africa
(2)
- Lesotho (1)
- South Africa (1)
-
West Africa
(16)
- Benim (1)
- Mali (1)
- Nigeria (10)
- Senegal (1)
- Sierra Leone (3)
-
Americas
(5)
-
Central America
(2)
- El Salvador (1)
- Guatemala (2)
- Mexico (1)
- South America (5)
-
Central America
(2)
-
Asia
(37)
-
Eastern Asia
(4)
- China (4)
-
South-eastern Asia
(13)
- Cambodia (3)
- Indonesia (2)
- Lao People's Democratic Republic (1)
- Myanmar (6)
- Philippines (2)
- Thailand (1)
- Timor Leste (1)
- Viet Nam (2)
-
Southern Asia
(18)
- Bangladesh (10)
- India (1)
- Nepal (8)
- Pakistan (5)
- Sri Lanka (1)
-
Western Asia
(3)
- Israel (1)
- Jordan (1)
- Lebanon (1)
- State of Palestine (1)
- Syrian Arab Republic (1)
-
Eastern Asia
(4)
-
Europe
(2)
-
Northern Europe
(1)
- United Kingdom (1)
-
Southern Europe
(1)
- Spain (1)
-
Northern Europe
(1)
- Many geographies (2)
-
Oceania
(2)
-
Melanesia
(2)
- Papua New Guinea (1)
-
Melanesia
(2)
-
Africa
(37)
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
(109)
- After Action Reviews (2)
- Capacity Development (2)
- Case Study (2)
- Comparisons/Benchmarking (1)
- Context Monitoring (1)
- Contribution Analysis (3)
- Cost-Benefit Analysis (3)
- Cost-effectiveness analysis (1)
- Critical Friends (1)
- Cross-sectional study (1)
- Data mining (1)
- Delphi Survey (1)
- Descriptive Statistics (1)
- Desk based research/lit review (3)
- Diaries (1)
- Ethnography / Rapid Ethnography (4)
- Ex-post Evaluation (2)
- Feedback Systems (1)
- Focus Group Discussions (3)
- Impact evaluation (5)
- Impact Oriented Monitoring and Evaluation System (1)
- Innovation System Analysis (1)
- Institutional Histories (1)
- Knowing Unknowns (1)
- Knowledge Management (4)
- Logical Framework (3)
- MEL in International Development (10)
- Most Significant Change (1)
- Network Analysis (2)
- Objectives and options analysis (1)
- Outcome Harvesting (1)
- Outcome Mapping (1)
- Participatory Action Research (9)
- Participatory Evaluation (3)
- Participatory Learning and Action - PLA (2)
- Participatory Rural Appraisal - PRA, RRA (2)
- Peers/Peer-Group Review (1)
- Policy Scientific Approach (1)
- Political Economy Analysis (6)
- Portfolio Management (4)
- Power Analysis (1)
- Process Tracing (3)
- Public Management Theory (1)
- Qualitative data analysis and grounded theory (2)
- Quality Improvement (1)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (2)
- Realist Evaluation (3)
- Rigour (2)
- Rubrics (2)
- Scenario Planning (1)
- SenseMaker (1)
- Social Media Metrics (1)
- Stakeholder analysis (2)
- Stakeholder Feedback (1)
- Strategy testing (1)
- Surveys (4)
- Sustainability (2)
- SWOT Analysis (1)
- Systemic Change (12)
- Systems Mapping (7)
- Theory-based evaluations (3)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (11)
- Utilisation focused evaluation (1)
- Value for Money (4)
- Networks and Communities of Practice (7)
-
Practical
(46)
- Tools (4)
Resource type
- Blog Post (51)
- Book (88)
- Book Section (24)
- Conference Paper (11)
- Document (1)
- Journal Article (146)
- Magazine Article (5)
- Presentation (1)
- Report (281)
- Thesis (5)
- Video Recording (1)
- Web Page (10)
Publication year
-
Between 1900 and 1999
(32)
-
Between 1940 and 1949
(1)
- 1948 (1)
- Between 1960 and 1969 (5)
- Between 1970 and 1979 (4)
- Between 1980 and 1989 (8)
- Between 1990 and 1999 (14)
-
Between 1940 and 1949
(1)
-
Between 2000 and 2024
(591)
- Between 2000 and 2009 (51)
- Between 2010 and 2019 (389)
- Between 2020 and 2024 (150)
-
Between 2030 and 2024
(1)
- 2034 (1)
- Unknown (1)