Your search
Results 183 resources
-
The current model of public policy-making is no longer right for a government that has set itself the challenge of delivery. Improvements are driven by central policy initiatives which assume a direct relationship between action and outcome - but this is a false assumption. Public services are complex adaptive systems which are subject to the law of unintended consequences, so intervention can make problems worse. That is why the carrot-and-stick approach to reform which links increased...
-
PRA (participatory rural appraisal) and the more inclusive PLA (participatory learning and action) are families of participatory methodologies which have evolved as behaviours and attitudes, methods, and practices of sharing. During the 1990s and 2000s PRA/PLA has spread and been applied in most countries in the world. Among the multifarious domains of application, some of the more common have been natural resource management and agriculture, programmes for equity, empowerment, rights and...
-
Our world seems entangled in systems increasingly dominated by power, greed, ignorance, self-deception and denial, with spiralling inequity and injustice. Against a backdrop of climate change, failing ecosystems, poverty, crushing debt and corporate exploitation, the future of our world looks dire and the solutions almost too monumental to consider. Yet all is not lost. Robert Chambers, one of the ?glass is half full? optimists of international development, suggests that the problems can...
-
The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities. This book introduces the idea of design thinking‚ the collaborative process by which the designer′s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people′s needs not only with what is technically feasible and...
-
This article critically reviews the role of participatory theory in managing development projects and programmes in poor countries. Participation has emerged in response to global demands for greater individual and social control over the activities of state and private agencies, and especially to the manifest failures of traditional ‘top-down’ management systems in LDCs. Claims made on behalf of these participatory methodologies are critically reviewed and a distinction is drawn between...
-
Discussions with traditional developers and managers concerning agile software development practices nearly always contain two somewhat contradictory ideas. They find that on small, stand-alone projects, agile practices are less burdensome and more in tune with the software industry's increasing needs for rapid development and coping with continuous change. Managers face several barriers, real and perceived, when they try to bring agile approaches into traditional organizations. They...
-
The U.K. Ministry of Defense (MoD) has mandated the development of a network enabled capability (NEC) across all of defense, aimed at producing agile military and nonmilitary effects via a network of networks. This paper provides an overview of NEC, representing it as a complex human activity system of systems (SoS), analysis of which cannot rely on purely traditional reductionist engineering approaches, requiring instead a soft-systems engineering approach. A literature review is then...
-
Indigenous groups offer alternative knowledge and perspectives based on their own locally developed practices of resource use. We surveyed the international literature to focus on the role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in monitoring, responding to, and managing ecosystem processes and functions, with special attention to ecological resilience. Case studies revealed that there exists a diversity of local or traditional practices for ecosystem management. These include multiple species...
-
Identification and reporting of critical success factors and program impact in an efficient, yet comprehensive manner is an inherent difficulty facing many evaluators of large-scale evaluations. This paper details how two evaluators encountered such problems in the initial review of a large-scale initiative and then successfully addressed these issues through the application of the Success Case Method in a subsequent evaluation of the same program. The Success Case Method is a down-to-earth...
-
The logical framework approach (LFA) has come to play a central role in the planning and management of development interventions over the last twenty years. Although the logical framework has become universally known, it is far from universally liked. It has been the subject of much criticism over the years, concerning both the theoretical basis of the approach, and the way it is applied in practice. In this review, we have attempted to take stock of the current views of international...
-
Alps is ActionAid’s over arching accountability framework, containing within it our programme planning system. Alps is distinctive in that it is strongly driven by principles, and sets out necessary personal attitudes and behaviours alongside organisational processes for planning, strategy formulation, learning, monitoring reviews/evaluations and audit. Alps defines our standards, not only about what we do but also how we do it. Alps is part of ActionAid’s human rights-based work.
Explore
Theme
-
Adaptive Approaches [+]
(71)
- Adaptive Learning (20)
- Adaptive Management (6)
- Agile & Lean approaches (11)
- Design Thinking / HCD (11)
- Other Adaptive approaches (1)
- Other sectors (8)
- Participation (1)
- PEA (Political Economy Analysis) (1)
- Positive Deviance & 2 loops model (7)
- Results Based Management (1)
- Systems Thinking / Complexity (16)
- TWP (Thinking & Working Politically) (1)
- Cases (2)
- Development Actors Perspectives (8)
-
Geography
(1)
-
Asia
(1)
-
Eastern Asia
(1)
- China (1)
-
Eastern Asia
(1)
-
Asia
(1)
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
(61)
- After Action Reviews (1)
- Appreciative Inquiry (1)
- Beneficiary Assessment/Engagement (1)
- Case Study (2)
- Circular charts applications (radar, pie, sunburst, spiderweb, orbic, etc) (2)
- Contribution Analysis (2)
- Critical Systems Heuristics (2)
- Democratic Evaluation (1)
- Developmental Evaluation (2)
- Empowerment Evaluation (3)
- Ethnography / Rapid Ethnography (1)
- Horizontal Evaluation (1)
- Indicator-based approaches (3)
- Innovation History (1)
- Institutional Histories (1)
- Knowledge Management (1)
- Logical Framework (3)
- Mapping Visualization Methods (2)
- MEL in International Development (1)
- Most Significant Change (3)
- Outcome Mapping (10)
- Participatory Action Research (1)
- Participatory Evaluation (4)
- Participatory Learning and Action - PLA (4)
- Participatory Rural Appraisal - PRA, RRA (3)
- Positive Deviance (1)
- Qualitative Impact Assessment Protocol (1)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (2)
- Realist Evaluation (1)
- Rubrics (1)
- Rules of Thumb (1)
- Scenario Planning (1)
- Success Case Method (1)
- Systems Mapping (1)
- Utilisation focused evaluation (1)
- Networks and Communities of Practice (10)
-
Practical
(2)
- Tools (1)
-
Sectors [+]
(51)
- Alternative Development (14)
- Citizen Engagement (14)
- Environmental Management (8)
- Governance and Accountability (7)
- Health (1)
- Innovation (in Development) (4)
- Knowledge to Practice (4)
- NGOs (2)
- Organizational Change (2)
- Social Accountability (6)
-
Technology (in Development)
(6)
- Appropriate Tech (1)
Resource type
- Blog Post (1)
- Book (46)
- Book Section (10)
- Conference Paper (4)
- Encyclopedia Article (1)
- Journal Article (54)
- Magazine Article (8)
- Report (56)
- Video Recording (1)
- Web Page (2)