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This paper challenges some fundamental aspects of research and conclusions relating to the use of technology for community development. Views of technology, in this case the mobile phone, as a tool for increased economic welfare are often skewed due to extreme reductionism, ambiguous interview questions and poor data sources. Research of complex social systems or sub-systems give the wrong answers when reductionist methodologies are used. To demonstrate such shortcomings, the 2007 paper of...
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Adaptive programming and management principles focused on learning, experimentation, and evidence-based decision making are gaining traction with donor agencies and implementing partners in international development. Adaptation calls for using learning to inform adjustments during project implementation. This requires information gathering methods that promote reflection, learning and adaption, beyond reporting on pre-specified data. A focus on adaptation changes traditional thinking about program cycle.
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The challenges currently facing resource managers are large-scale and complex, and demand new approaches to balance development and conservation goals. One approach that shows considerable promise for addressing these challenges is adaptive management, which by now is broadly seen as a natural, intuitive, and potentially effective way to address decision-making in the face of uncertainties. Yet the concept of adaptive management continues to evolve, and its record of success remains limited....
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Adaptive management has become the tonic of natural resources policy. With its core idea of “learning while doing,” adaptive management has infused the natural resources policy world to the point of ubiquity, surfacing in everything from mundane agency permits to grand presidential proclamations. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that these days adaptive management is natural resources policy. But is it working? Does appending “adaptive” in front of “management” somehow make natural...
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In Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin water reform has been contentious as government attempts to reconcile historical over allocation of water to irrigation with the use of water for environmental outcomes. However, in many aspects, scientific knowledge of the environment is either imperfect, incomplete or environmental responses are unpredictable, with this uncertainty preventing definitive policy and closure of political arguments. In response to uncertainty and knowledge gaps, adaptive...
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Adaptive management (AM) emerged in the literature in the mid-1970s in response both to a realization of the extent of uncertainty involved in management, and a frustration with attempts to use modelling to integrate knowledge and make predictions. The term has since become increasingly widely used in scientific articles, policy documents and management plans, but both understanding and application of the concept is mixed. This paper reviews recent literature from conservation and natural...
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The Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework has been applied to various environmental problems at multiple spatial and temporal scales and attempts have been made to conceptually improve the framework to encompass various stakeholder perspectives. However, recent literature experiences in the field have challenged the inclusive character of the framework applications. In particular, the framework's inability to incorporate the aggregated informal responses of people affected...
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Systems thinking is commonly accepted as the backbone of a successful systems engineering approach. As such, the Body of Knowledge and Curriculum to Advance Systems Engineering (BKCASE) team chose to leverage a systems thinking based tool, called Systemitool, to describe our project to the vast audience that would potentially become involved directly or indirectly in the success of the project. This paper describes the process and steps used by the authors and the BKCASE team to develop the...
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Like artisans in a professional guild, we evaluators create tools to suit our ever evolving practice. The tools we use as evaluators are the primary artifacts of our profession, reflect our practice and embody an amalgamation of paradigms and assumptions. With the increasing shifts in evaluation purposes from judging program worth to understanding how programs work, the evaluator’s role is changing to that of facilitating stakeholders in a learning process. This involves clarifying purposes...
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Unexamined and unjustified assumptions are the Achilles’ heel of development programs. In this paper, we describe an evaluation capacity building (ECB) approach designed to help community development practitioners work more effectively with assumptions through the intentional infusion of evaluative thinking (ET) into the program planning, monitoring, and evaluation process. We focus specifically on one component of our ET promotion approach involving the creation and analysis of theory of...
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Politics has become a central concern in development discourse, and yet the use of political analysis as a means for greater aid effectiveness remains limited and contested within development agencies. This article uses qualitative data from two governance “leaders” – the United Kingdom Department for International Development and the World Bank – to analyze the administrative hurdles facing the institutionalization of political analysis in aid bureaucracies. We find that programing,...
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We must better understand user-centered design’s limitations—not just its strengths—in the context of international development. And we must adapt it from its original uses designing commercial products to solving for social good.
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This paper explores avenues for navigating evaluation design challenges posed by complex social programs (CSPs) and their environments when conducting studies that call for generalizable, causal inferences on the intervention’s effectiveness. A definition is provided of a CSP drawing on examples from different fields, and an evaluation case is analyzed in depth to derive seven (7) major sources of complexity that typify CSPs, threatening assumptions of textbook-recommended experimental...
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Too much teamwork exhausts employees and saps productivity. Here’s how to avoid it.
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Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, not the isolated intervention of individual organizations.
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This final chapter in the volume pulls together common themes from the diverse set of articles by a group of eight authors in this issue, and presents some reflections on the next steps for improving the ways in which evaluators work with assumptions. Collectively, the authors provide a broad overview of existing and emerging approaches to the articulation and use of assumptions in evaluation theory and practice. The authors reiterate the rationale and key terminology as a common basis for...
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Adaptive Approaches [+]
- Adaptive Learning (8)
- Adaptive Management (17)
- Adaptive Rigour (1)
- Agile & Lean approaches (9)
- Design Thinking / HCD (20)
- Other Adaptive approaches (7)
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Other sectors
(9)
- Environmental (6)
- Organizational Management (2)
- Sport (1)
- Participation (1)
- PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) (2)
- PEA (Political Economy Analysis) (2)
- Systems Thinking / Complexity (23)
- TWP (Thinking & Working Politically) (3)
- Cases (5)
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Development Actors Perspectives
(4)
- Canada - GAC & IDRC (1)
- China (2)
- FCDO/DFID (UK) (1)
- World Bank (1)
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Geography
(5)
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Africa
(1)
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Southern Africa
(1)
- South Africa (1)
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Southern Africa
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Asia
(4)
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Eastern Asia
(3)
- China (3)
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Southern Asia
(1)
- Bangladesh (1)
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Eastern Asia
(3)
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Africa
(1)
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MEL4 Adaptive Management
(13)
- Evaluating Multi-project programmes (1)
- Impact evaluation (1)
- Knowledge Management (2)
- Logical Framework (1)
- Mapping Visualization Methods (1)
- Portfolio Management (2)
- Realist Evaluation (1)
- Theory-based evaluations (1)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (2)
- Trans-disciplinary Research (1)
- Utilisation focused evaluation (1)
- Practical (1)
- Sectors [+] (20)