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Purpose – This paper aims to look at how organisational partnerships balance knowledge exploration and exploitation in contexts that are rife with paradoxes. It draws on paradox theory to examine the partnership’s response to the explore-exploit relationship.

An update on the previous September 2018 uploaded article

Despite a long-term focus on learning in natural resource management (NRM), it is still debated how learning supports sustainable real-world NRM practices. We offer a qualitative in-depth synthesis of selected scientific empirical literature (N = 53), which explores factors affecting action-oriented learning. We inductively identify eight key process-based and contextual factors discussed in this literature. Three patterns emerge from our results. First, the literature discusses both...

Abstract: This paper critically reviews evidence on ‘thinking and working politically’ in development. Scholars and practitioners have increasingly recognised that development is fundamentally political, and efforts are underway to develop more politically informed ways of thinking and working. The literature does not yet constitute a strong evidence base to link these efforts to more effective aid programming: much evidence is anecdotal, does not meet high standards of robustness, is not...

Although the decisions of policy professionals are often more consequential than those of individuals in their private capacity, there is a dearth of studies on the biases of policy professionals: those who prepare and implement policy on behalf of elected politicians. Experiments conducted on a novel subject pool of development policy professionals (public servants of the World Bank and the Department for International Development in the UK) show that policy professionals are indeed subject...

This article explores the prospects for adaptive governance in a proposed marine transboundary conservation initiative in East Africa. Adaptive governance that involves interdependent state and non-state actors learning and taking action on joint environmental problems is suggested for effective transboundary resource governance. Using the concept of adaptive co-management, the current multi-stakeholder marine governance systems in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania are compared to...

Rather than a glossy brochure that no one reads, your strategy should be an ongoing practice that informs your decisions and adapts as circumstances change. A Viewpoint from the Summer 2019 issue.

There is growing interest in studying processes of human sensemaking, as this strongly influences human and organizational behavior as well as complex system dynamics due to the diverse lenses people use to interpret and act in the world. The Cognitive Edge SenseMaker® tool is one method for capturing and making sense of people’s attitudes, perceptions, and experiences. It is used for monitoring and evaluation; mapping ideas, mind-sets, and attitudes; and detecting trends and weak...

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...

Inadequate Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is often thought to hinder adaptive management of socio-ecological systems. A key influence on environmental management practices are environmental policies: however, their consequences for M&E practices have not been well-examined. We examine three policy areas - the Water Framework Directive, the Natura 2000 Directives, and the Agri-Environment Schemes of the Common Agricultural Policy - whose statutory requirements influence how the environment...

The Scale Up Sourcebook is informed and inspired by the September 2018 conference, Innovations in Agriculture: Scaling Up to Reach Millions, organized by Purdue University, in partnership with the African Development Bank. The Sourcebook consolidates, extends, and disseminates some of the scaling insights presented at the Purdue conference. It is intended as an easy-to-use guidebook targeted to a broad and diverse audience of stakeholders associated with scaling agricultural technologies and...

Global health donors increasingly embrace international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) as partners, often relying on them to conduct political advocacy in recipient countries, especially in controversial policy domains like reproductive health. Although INGOs are the primary recipients of donor funding, they are expected to work through national affiliates or counterparts to enable ‘locally-led’ change. Using prospective policy analysis and ethnographic evidence, this paper examines...

Climate adaptation literature vocalizes the need for transnational municipal networks (TMNs) to expand activities in vulnerable medium-sized cities, but little work has examined the granular extent of city participation and processes constraining TMN growth. This study explores the effectiveness of TMNs in reaching adaptation outcomes and how financial, material, and knowledge exchanges of TMNs tend to exclude adaptation in high-priority intermediary cities. Nearly 40 semi-structured...

There are numerous ways in which to model the underlying theory of programs. In the context of international development evaluation, the most ubiquitous are likely “logframes” and to some extent “theories of change,” both of which may serve to guide program development and management, monitoring, and evaluation. While logframes and theories of change are often developed in parallel, they are rarely fully integrated in their practical application. Drawing on lessons from a recent theory-based...

The use of theories of change (ToCs) is a hallmark of sound evaluation practice. As interventions have become more complex, the development of ToCs that adequately unpack this complexity has become more challenging. Equally important is the development of evaluable ToCs, necessary for conducting robust theory-based evaluation approaches such as contribution analysis (CA). This article explores one approach to tackling these challenges through the use of nested actor-based ToCs using the case...

Flood management and adaptation are important elements in sustaining farming production in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta (VMD). While over the past decades hydraulic development introduced by the central government has substantially benefited the rural economy, it has simultaneously caused multiple barriers to rural adaptation. We investigate the relational practices (i.e., learning interactions) taking place within and across the flood management and adaptation boundaries from the perspective...

In this concluding article, grounded on the exemplary contributions contained in the preceding pages, the guest editors scale the proverbial soapbox and present a manifesto to guide the pursuit and advancement of the next generation of program theorizing. Formulating ten declarations for program theory development and examination, the modest hope of the authors is to motivate and inspire reflective evaluation practitioners to broaden their views, approaches, and techniques for future program theorizing.

Positive deviance is a growing approach in international development that identifies those within a population who are outperforming their peers in some way, eg, children in low-income families who are well nourished when those around them are not. Analysing and then disseminating the behaviours and other factors underpinning positive deviance are demonstrably effective in delivering development results. However, positive deviance faces a number of challenges that are restricting its...

Polycentricity is a fundamental concept in commons scholarship that connotes a complex form of governance with multiple centers of semiautonomous decision making. If the decision-making centers take each other into account in competitive and cooperative relationships and have recourse to conflict resolution mechanisms, they may be regarded as a polycentric governance system. In the context of natural resource governance, commons scholars have ascribed a number of advantages to polycentric...

An increasing number of research programs seek to support adaptation to climate change through the engagement of large-scale transdisciplinary networks that span countries and continents. While transdisciplinary research processes have been a topic of reflection, practice, and refinement for some time, these trends now mean that the global change research community needs to reflect and learn how to pursue collaborative research on a large scale. This paper shares insights from a seven-year...