Scaling Up Development Impact - Guerrero, Isabel; Gokhale, Siddhant; Fahsbender, Jossie (Bowker, 2023)
Today, nearly one billion people lack electricity, over three billion lack clean water, and 750 million lack basic literacy skills. Many of these challenges could be solved with existing solutions, and technology enables us to reach the last mile like never before. Yet, few solutions attain the necessary scale to match the size of these challenges. Scaling Up Development Impact offers an analytical framework, a set of practical tools, and adaptive evaluation techniques to accompany the scaling process. It presents rich organizational experiences that showcase real-world journeys toward increased impact. From the people from IMAGOgg.org

Beyond the log frame: a new tool for examining health and peacebuilding initiatives - Grove, Natalie J.; Zwi, Anthony B. (Development in Practice, 2008)
How do we move from identifying ethical principles to enhancing development practice? How can donors and NGOs move beyond the reporting of technical outputs to explore less tangible aspects of their health projects: contributions to rebuilding trust, promoting social cohesion, and enhancing good governance at community level? This article considers these questions in relation to health and peace-building activities in conflicted settings. It describes difficulties facing practitioners and donors seeking to undertake health and peace work, in particular focusing on the lack of appropriate tools for screening, monitoring, and evaluating projects. It critiques the logical framework, a tool commonly used in project planning, monitoring, and evaluation, and considers it alongside a new tool, the Health and Peace Building Filter, which has been designed to reflect on health programming in fragile or conflicted settings. The authors argue that such tools can help to move us beyond focusing on inputs and outputs to examining processes, relationships, and the indirect consequences of aid programmes.
Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/09614520701778850

Can SMS-Mobilization Increase Citizen Reporting of Public Service Deficiencies to Politicians? - Grossman, Guy; Michelitch, Kristin; Santamaria, Marta (2015)

Information Technology and Political Engagement: Mixed Evidence from Uganda - Grossman, Guy (2016)

Citizens’ Use of New Media in Authoritarian Regimes: A Case Study of Uganda - Grönlund, Åke; Wakabi, Wairagala (The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 2015)
By subsidizing the costs of civic participation, the use of the Internet use is believed to stimulate participation but there are fears that intensive Internet use causes withdrawal from public life. This paper investigates the connection between the way individuals participate online and offline in authoritarian, low-income regimes, and the nature of eParticipation among citizens in authoritarian regimes such as Uganda. Based on personal interviews with 116 Internet users, the study found that common drivers of eParticipation, such as low cost, security and anonymity are hard to transplant into the offline world for citizens of authoritarian states such as Uganda. Perceived risks of retribution and intimidation for expressing a particular opinion or supporting a political cause mean that citizen-to-citizen participation is the predominant form but still at low levels, while citizen-to-government participation is negligible.

Good Enough Governance Revisited - Grindle, Merilee S. (Development Policy Review, 2007)
The concept of good enough governance provides a platform for questioning the long menu of institutional changes and capacity-building initiatives currently deemed important (or essential) for development. Nevertheless, it falls short of being a tool to explore what, specifically, needs to be done in any real world context. Thus, as argued by the author in 2004, given the limited resources of money, time, knowledge, and human and organisational capacities, practitioners are correct in searching for the best ways to move towards better governance in a particular country context. This article suggests that the feasibility of particular interventions can be assessed by analysing the context for change and the implications of the content of the intervention being considered.

Deconstructing Adaptive Management: Criteria for Applications to Environmental Management - Gregory, R.; Ohlson, D.; Arvai, J. (Ecological Applications, 2006)
[The concept of adaptive management has, for many ecologists, become a foundation of effective environmental management for initiatives characterized by high levels of ecological uncertainty. Yet problems associated with its application are legendary, and many of the initiatives promoted as examples of adaptive management appear to lack essential characteristics of the approach. In this paper we propose explicit criteria for helping managers and decision makers to determine the appropriateness of either passive or active adaptive-management strategies as a response to ecological uncertainty in environmental management. Four categories of criteria–dealing with spatial and temporal scale, dimensions of uncertainty, the evaluation of costs and benefits, and institutional and stakeholder support–are defined and applied using hypothetical yet realistic case-study scenarios that illustrate a range of environmental management problems. We conclude that many of the issues facing adaptive management may have less to do with the approach itself than with the indiscriminate choice of contexts within which it is now applied.]

The Radical How - Greenway, Andrew; Loosemore, Tom (Nesta and Public Digital, 2024)
Any mission-focused government should be well equipped to define, from day one, what outcomes it wants to bring about. But radically changing what the government does is only part of the challenge. We also need to change how government does things. The usual methods, we argue in this paper, are too prone to failure and delay. There’s a different approach to public service organisation, one based on multidisciplinary teams, starting with citizen needs, and scaling iteratively by testing assumptions. We’ve been arguing in favour of it for years now, and the more it gets used, the more we see success and timely delivery. We think taking a new approach makes it possible to shift government from an organisation of programmes and projects, to one of missions and services. It offers even constrained administrations an opportunity to improve their chances of delivering outcomes, reducing risk, saving money, and rebuilding public trust. The Radical How in a nutshell The struggles and shortcomings of delivering in government are well rehearsed. Many of the root causes that make it tough have been restated several times over several decades. But what to do? We believe the government can and should change how it delivers, by: organising around multidisciplinary teams embracing incremental, feedback-driven iteration focusing more on outcomes. The Radical How is a change of mindset as much as a change in organisation. It promotes methods and processes that have been shown to work, multiple times, at scale. They are the default ways of working for many of the world’s most successful companies. However, the occasions where they have been deployed are rare in government. These occasions have come about thanks to exceptional leaders, exceptional circumstances, or both. We think they’d make a big difference if they became the norm, rather than the exception. We also think that without them, mission oriented government will not become a reality. New policy ideas will remain just that, rather than translating into profound improvements to society. Central to this approach is the widespread adoption of internet-era ways of working. This paper explains both those and our thinking in more detail, with reference to real examples.

From Thinking Politically To Working Politically: Are We Really Doing Development Any Differently? (2019)
In June it will be seven years since the Center for Global Development published the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) paper. Few academic papers have had such an impact on development thinking. The question is whether the paper – and subsequent debate and experimentation - have had a demonstrable and beneficial impact on development practice. Experience to date suggests thinking politically is easier than working politically. Practitioners in development agencies, governments and contractors find that convincing theoretical literature can be tricky to operationalize in a fractious environment. Still, a growing number of programs have set out to be politically informed in design and politically savvy in implementation. Engaging the reality of politics creates the potential to promote change. To consider these issues, Abt Associates is hosting a workshop for international development practitioners in Washington, DC, on June 18th, 2019, to discuss the successes and failures in operationalizing this agenda. The session will allow practitioners to discuss experiences in TWP and propose solutions or approaches. Please join us in this Innovations in Governance series finale where four internationally renowned thinkers and doers will join us to offer their perspectives.

Adaptive Programming in Fragile, Conflict and Violence-Affected Settings, What Works and Under What Conditions?: The Case of Institutions for Inclusive Development, Tanzania - Green, Duncan; Guijt, Irene (Itad, Oxfam and IDS, 2019)
Adaptive Management involves a dynamic interaction between three elements: delivery, programming and governance. This case study focuses on a large DfID governance project, the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID), a five-year initiative in Tanzania. The study forms part of a research project to examine whether and how adaptive approaches can strengthen aid projects promoting empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings (FCVAS). The research examines some of the assertions around the adaptive management approach and explores if and how adaptive approaches, including rapid learning and planning responses (fast feedback loops and agile programming) are particularly relevant and useful for citizen empowerment and government accountability (E&A) in FCVAS.
Keywords: A4EA; Adaptive Development; Economy; Fishery

Summer School Course - Adaptive Management - Working Effectively in the Complexity of International Development (weekplan) - Green, Duncan; Guijt, Irene (Oxfam, 2018)

A top Toolkit on Adaptive Management. But is that a good idea? – FP2P - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2021)

Adaptive Management looks like it’s here to stay. Here’s why that matters. - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2016)
First installment of reflections on my US trip. This is on the rise of adaptive management approaches in USAID, and some of the questions it raises
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Book Review: ‘Thinking and Working Politically in Development’ - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2020)
Review of a new book that explores the 'secret sauce' of Coalitions for Change - an unusually successful governance programme in the Philippines

From poverty to power: how active citizens and effective states can change the world - Green, Duncan (2012)
From Poverty to Power From Poverty to Power argues that a radical redistribution of power, opportunities, and assets rather than traditional models of charitable or government aid is required to break the cycle of poverty and inequality. The forces driving this transformation are active citizens and effective states. Published in association with Oxfam GB. Full description

How Change Happens - Green, Duncan (OUP Oxford, 2016)
Human society is full of would-be 'change agents', a restless mix of campaigners, lobbyists, and officials, both individuals and organizations, set on transforming the world. They want to improve public services, reform laws and regulations, guarantee human rights, get a fairer deal for those on the sharp end, achieve greater recognition for any number of issues, or simply be treated with respect. Striking then, that not many universities have a Department of Change Studies, to which social activists can turn for advice and inspiration. Instead, scholarly discussions of change are fragmented with few conversations crossing disciplinary boundaries, rarely making it onto the radars of those actively seeking change. This book bridges the gap between academia and practice, bringing together the best research from a range of academic disciplines and the evolving practical understanding of activists to explore the topic of social and political change. Drawing on many first-hand examples from the global experience of Oxfam, one of the world's largest social justice NGOs, as well as the author's insights from studying and working on international development, it tests ideas on How Change Happens and offers the latest thinking on what works to achieve progressive change. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is available as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

How to do Adaptive Management in 15 easy steps – from a top new toolkit – FP2P - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2021)

NGOs Doing Development Differently - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2017)
Report back from a meeting of international NGOs to set up a research and practice network on 'Doing Development Differently' that can complement other actors

Old Wine in New Bottles? 6 ways to tell if a programme is really ‘doing development differently’ - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2018)
Some top adaptive management exponents give their top tips on how to distinguish spin from reality, when looking at an avowedly AM programme

Rules of Thumb – good idea or double-edged sword? - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2020)
A recent conversation with a good governance programme in Myanmar tried to identify its underlying rules of thumb. Was that a good idea?

Second (and Third) Thoughts on Adaptive Management and Thinking and Working Politically - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2022)
Self-Critical reflections on AM and TWP. Linking it with The Hype Cycle - "it feels like we are heading downward to the ‘trough of disillusionment’ form the initial peak of ‘inflated expectations’, but we will bounce back to something more sustained, that becomes a permanent feature of the aid landscape".

The context v intervention 2x2 | From Poverty to Power - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2016)
Lots of discussion on my US trip around the strengths/weaknesses of the context v intervention 2x2 that suggests particular theories of change acc to situation
Keywords: IMPORTANT

The Hidden Life of Theories of Change - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2020)
A smart new report explores how a good idea - theories of change - is distorted by the way it is implemented in the aid sector

The NGO-Academia Interface: Realising the shared potential - Green, Duncan (The Social Realities of Knowledge for Development, 2017)
This edited collection of peer-reviewed papers explores critical challenges faced by organisations and individuals involved in evidence-informed development through a diverse set of case studies and t...

Theories of Change for Promoting Empowerment and Accountability in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings - Green, Duncan (IDS, 2017)
This paper explores the current state of thinking among a range of aid actors (multilaterals, bilateral, applied scholars and international non-governmental organisations) on how to promote empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings. It seeks to identify trends, gaps and weaknesses in that thinking, and propose research questions and hypotheses to test. Three underlying sources of confusion are identified that are hindering progress on both understanding empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings, and taking helpful action to promote it. They are: Theory of endogenous change (e.g. on how empowerment and accountability arise in situ) versus the theory of action of an external intervention; Fragility versus conflict: there is no clear justification for combining these different aspects into a single category; and Empowerment versus accountability: donor analysis and practice has been overwhelmingly weighted towards accountability, exhibiting limited understanding or interest in the nature of power.
Keywords: A4EA; External actors; Participation

Thinking and working politically: What have we learned since 2013? – FP2P - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2022)
It’s always a red letter day when a new paper from Graham Teskey drops. His most recent is Thinking and working politically: What have we learned since 2013? For those that don’t know him, Graham is a consummate insider-outsider within the aid sector – long stints at DFID (UK), DFAT (Australia) and now Abt (Management Consultants). From this vantage point he has been one of the leading proponents of ‘thinking and working politically’, always ready to call out the hand-wavey academics and demand some practical lessons, please. This paper is part biography of an idea, setting out the timeline, moments and key documents and policy wins in the evolution of TWP (which seems to have involved a lot of seminars that I missed due to Oxfam’s meagre travel budget). The other part is, to be honest, a bit of a lament – a study in ‘Why Change Hasn’t Happened’, because TWP has ‘got lost in the maelstrom’ of the wider, largely negative, changes in the aid sector. Overall, it’s a brilliant summary, and one I’ll be recommending to my increasingly long-suffering activism students….

What are the Simple Rules that guide our Strategies? - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2019)
A management treatise on 'simplre rules' for companies facing unpredictable situations could provide useful guidance to aid organizations

What is different about how INGOs do Adaptive Management/Doing Development Differently? - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2019)

Where have we got to on Thinking and Working Politically? Update and a Mildly Heretical Thought. – FP2P - Green, Duncan (From Poverty to Power, 2022)
Headed off recently to discuss the state of Thinking and Working Politically within the aid sector. This is a loose network of aid wonks that came together to try and move aid from a pure focus on technical issues, towards taking account of power and politics and why they can facilitate/frustrate attempts to make change happen in any given context. It was great to be in a room with others (50/50 in person and online) – the neurons fire in a way that just doesn’t happen online (but I also need to brush up on my meeting skills, as when I accidentally clicked on a random video in my timeline and it started playing at full volume. Super awkward). On to the content (Chatham House rule, so no names or institutions). Some observations about the evolution of a movement I’ve been connected with for over a decade. I got a lot of pushback from participants on an earlier draft and have made quite a few changes, but they should definitely feel free to set me straight in comments!

Calibrating adaptive programming across multi-country, multi-partner programs - Gray, Stephen; Carl, Andy (Adapt Peacebuilding, 2019)
This past week Andy Carl and I joined the international NGO Christian Aid Ireland team in Dublin to reflect on progress in a key feature of their work - adaptive programming. This post presents what Andy Carl and I learned in reflecting this week with the international NGO Christian Aid Ireland r

The Difference Learning Makes - Factors that enable and inhibit adaptive programming - Gray, Stephen; Carl, Andy (Christian Aid, 2022)
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 gender inequality. Since 2019, Adapt Peacebuilding has accompanied CA Ireland, CA country teams and partner organisations as they experimented with using a deliberate adaptive approach. The authors were also asked to follow up on an initial study by CA Ireland and Overseas Development Institute in 2018, which described the rationale for adopting this new approach and included early lessons from its first year of implementation. The aim of this study is to help deepen CA Ireland, CA country teams’ and partners’ understanding of (a) whether their application of adaptive programming has resulted in better development outcomes, and (b) how they can better understand the factors that enabled or inhibited the effectiveness of using this approach. Over the past three years, this study has found evidence and multiple examples that show adaptive programming contributed to better development outcomes. The main reasons cited were that these were made possible both from improvements to programming strategies based on proactive reflection and learning, as well as those that stem from the reactive capacity of adaptive programmes to change course in response to unanticipated changes in operating conditions. This study found that adaptive programming has enabled better development practice where organisations are enhancing their skills to better respond and be flexible to contextual challenges. 72% of partners surveyed described adaptive programming as the most useful approach to programme management that they have used. The programme approach has meant that CA and partner staff were better able to explore the significance of change in the context and their contributions to them. It also enabled spaces for meaningful engagement with communities in learning and programme planning processes and encouraged opportunities for experimentation in programming. The study also found that adaptive programming has supported flexible delivery. This led to better outcomes that would not have been possible were the programme not able to make flexible adjustments. The main focus has been the analysis of nine factors that can determine the effectiveness and impact (or otherwise) of using an adaptive approach, flagging important issues for understanding. These factors are identified as: 1) Leadership; 2) Organisational culture; 3) Conceptual understanding; 4) Staff capacities; 5) Partnership approaches; 6) Participation; 7) Methods and tools; 8) Administrative procedures; and 9) The operating context. Together these can provide an analytical framework for assessing an organisation’s ‘adaptive scope’, which can be used as a tool for better understanding an organisation’s potential to generate improved development outcomes via adaptive programming and how to strengthen them. The study concludes with several recommendations for CA Ireland, all of which have relevance for a broader community of donors and implementing organisations interested in the potential of adaptive programming.

Innovation lifecycle and the missing middle - Gray, Ian; McClure, Dan (Managing Humanitarian Innovation - The cutting edge of aid, 2018)

Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things - Grant, Adam (WH Allen, 2023)
#1 New York Times bestseller "This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self. It would've helped me find a more joyful path to progress."-Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam singles tennis championThe #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights.We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distances we ourselves can travel. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid storytelling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess – it’s about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the character skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.

Opening the black box: the contextual drivers of social accountability - Grandvoinnet, Helene; Aslam, Ghazia; Raha, Shomikho (World Bank Group, 2015)
Keywords: Social accounting

Evaluating with the Success Case Method - Gram, Tom (Performance X Design, 2011)
The method was developed by Robert Brinkerhoff as an alternative (or supplement) to the Kirkpatrick approach and its derivatives. It is very simple and fast (which is part of it’s appeal) and goes something like this: Step 1. Identify targeted business goals and impact expectations Step 2. Survey a large representative sample of all participants in a program to identify high impact and low impact cases Step 3. Analyze the survey data to identify: a small group of successful participants a small group unsuccessful participants Step 4. Conduct in-depth interviews with the two selected groups to: document the nature and business value of their application of learning identify the performance factors that supported learning application and obstacles that prevented it. Step 5. Document and disseminate the story report impact applaud successes use data to educate managers and organization The process produces two key outputs In-depth stories of documented business effect that can be disseminated to a variety of audiences Knowledge of factors that enhance or impede the effect of training on business results. Factors that are associated with successful application of new skills are compared and contrasted with those that impede training. It answers practical and common questions we have about training and other initiatives: What is really happening? Who’s using what, and how well? Who’s not using things as planned? What’s getting used, and what isn’t? Which people and how many are having success? Which people and how many are not? What results are being achieved? What value, if any, is being realized? What goals are being met? What goals are not? Is the intervention delivering the promised and hoped for results? What unintended results are happening? What is the value of the results? What sort of dollar or other value can be placed on the results? Does the program appear to be worthwhile? Is it producing results worth more than its costs? What is its return on investment? How much more value could it produce if it were working better? How can it be improved? What’s helping? What’s getting in the way? What could be done to get more people to use it? How can everyone be more like those few who are most successful?

Building a team culture for Adaptive Management in MSD: 5 Strategies MEL Managers Say Work - Gover, Dun; Nasution, Zulka; Okutu, David; Bolder, Meghan; Henao, Lina (USAID, 2023)
Keywords: Bolder Meghan; Gover Dun; Henao Lina; Nasution Zulka; Okutu David

Enhancing partner and system-level learning: 8 Tips from MEL Managers - Gover, Dun; Nasution, Zulka; Okutu, David; Bolder, Meghan; Henao, Lina (USAID, 2023)
Effective learning is a key driver of market systems change, with the potential to enhance system competitiveness, resilience, and inclusiveness. Shifting the Locus of Learning: Catalyzing Private Sector Learning to Drive Systemic Change recently outlined a rationale for enhancing the scale and quality of learning in a system and identifying 10 strategies programs can contextualize to catalyze learning. These strategies are also backed with robust examples from 13 programs doing this work across 11 countries. To deepen insights on what MSD Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Managers have experienced in putting several of those strategies into practice, the Feed the Future Market Systems and Partnerships (MSP) Activity convened a series of peer discussions as part of a larger initiative (see Figure 1). This brief shares the collective learning and experience on this topic of three senior MEL Managers who were interested in and had experience with this topic. The group represented full-time, program-based MEL Leads working on MSD programs funded by USAID and DFAT, based in Fiji, Albania, and Kosovo working for Adam Smith International, SwissContact, and DT Global, respectively. From those discussions, this paper synthesizes eight tips from MEL Managers for practically enhancing partner and system-level learning: 1. Identify the right decision-maker(s) at potential partners. 2. Use a co-creation process to identify learning opportunities. 3. Use diagnostics and assessments to strengthen partner and system capacity for actionable learning. 4. Use a phased capacity strengthening process tied to behavior change. 5. Measure partners’ continued investment in and use of learning—not the continuation of specific learning activities. 6. Work with sector-level institutions for scale but be aware of risks. 7. Leverage informal communities of practice to share learning. 8. Use the right terminology to talk about partner and system-focused learning.

Practioners Guide to Assessing Systems Change - Gover, Dun; Nasution, Zulka; Okutu, David; Bolder, Meghan; Henao, Lina (USAID, 2023)

Practitioners Guidance to Assessing Systems Change: Co-Authors Preview - Gover, Dun; Nasution, Zulka; Okutu, David; Bolder, Meghan; Henao, Lina (USAID, 2023)
Check out this video to see what’s inside our new resource: Practitioners' Guidance to Assessing Systems Change, developed by MEL Managers for MEL Managers. (Check out the Guidance here https://bit.ly/MSPMELClinics.) Hear from the authors about which parts they love the most and how this guide challenges MEL managers to assess systems change as an ongoing aspect of implementation, generating feedback that teams need to better understand and catalyze change, for more impact.

Open Policy Making toolkit - gov.uk (2016)
This manual includes information about Open Policy Making as well as the tools and techniques policy makers can use to create more open and user led policy.

Open Policy Making toolkit - Low cost tools - GOV.UK (2016)

Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously - Gothelf, Jeff; Seiden, Josh (Harvard Business Review Press, 2017)
The End of Assembly Line ManagementWe’re in the midst of a revolution. Quantum leaps in technology are enabling organizations to observe and measure people’s behavior in real time, communicate internally at extraordinary speed, and innovate continuously. These new, software-driven technologies are transforming the way companies interact with their customers, employees, and other stakeholders.This is no mere tech issue. The transformation requires a complete rethinking of the way we organize and manage work. And, as software becomes ever more integrated into every product and service, making this big shift is quickly becoming the key operational challenge for businesses of all kinds. We need a management model that doesn’t merely account for, but actually embraces, continuous change. Yet the truth is, most organizations continue to rely on outmoded, industrial-era operational models. They structure their teams, manage their people, and evolve their organizational cultures the way they always have.Now, organizations are emerging, and thriving, based on their capacity to sense and respond instantly to customer and employee behaviors. In Sense and Respond, Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden, leading tech experts and founders of the global Lean UX movement, vividly show how these companies operate, highlighting the new mindset and skills needed to lead and manage them—and to continuously innovate within them.In illuminating and instructive business examples, you’ll see organizations with distinctively new operating principles: shifting from managing outputs to what the authors call “outcome-focused management”; forming self-guided teams that can read and react to a fast-changing environment; creating a learning-all-the-time culture that can understand and respond to new customer behaviors and the data they generate; and finally, developing in everyone at the company the new universal skills of customer listening, assessment, and response.This engaging and practical book provides the crucial new operational and management model to help you and your organization win in a world of continuous change.

Agile vs Lean vs Design Thinking - Gothelf, Jeff (Medium, 2016)
There’s an unforgettable scene in my favorite movie, Goodfellas, where Joe Pesci, Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta pay a late night visit to…

Lean vs Agile vs Design Thinking: What you really need to know to build high-performing digital product teams - Gothelf, Jeff (CreateSpace, 2017)
As companies evolve to adopt, integrate and leverage software as the defining element of their success in the 21st century, a rash of processes and methodologies are vying for their product teams' attention. In the worst of cases, each discipline on these teams – product management, design and software engineering – learn a different model. This short, tactical book reconciles the perceived differences in Lean Startup, Design Thinking and Agile software development by focusing not on rituals and practices but on the values that underpin all 3 methods.

Reflection methods: Tools to make learning more meaningful - Gordijn, Femke; Eernstman, Natalia; Helder, Jan; Brouwer, Herman (Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation, 2018)
This handbook summarises methods that can be used to facilitate the process of reflection on the knowledge and experiences people acquire during a capacity development trajectory or training event. We believe that by explicitly integrating reflection in the learning process the learning will become clearer and better articulated and will contribute more strongly to meaningful change. Therefore we advise facilitators to deliberately include reflective learning sessions in their process design and implementation. This handbook can inspire you to do so and provides many methods which help to facilitate this.

Fostering Systems Change - Gopal, Srik; Kania, John (2015)
Five simple rules for foundations seeking to create lasting social change.

State of the Art on Use of Theory of Change in the Development Sector - Goodier, Sarah; Apgar, Marina; Clark, Louise (IDS, 2018)
The purpose of this briefing note is to add to SDC’s understanding of Theory of Change (ToC), drawing on the literature and practice to sketch out the current state of the art approach. This involves expanding on ToC beyond SDC’s current practice of using Impact Hypotheses (IH) to bridge it to operational practice and use ToC more explicitly in the project/programme cycle management (PCM) processes. Sharing the state of the art on use of ToC in the development sector, this briefing note outlines what a ToC is, what it is used for and why it is needed in the development sector. It discusses ToC as both a process and a product, providing step by step guidance on how to facilitate a ToC process. The differences between a ToC and a logframe are highlighted. Some key criteria for recognising when you have a ‘good’ ToC are also included. This brief is aimed at SDC staff, in particular Programme Officers, and staff of partner organisations involved in the management of SDC interventions.

Opportunities for Using Complexity-Aware Approaches to Theory of Change - Goodier, Sarah; Apgar, Marina (IDS, 2018)
The purpose of this briefing note is to review opportunities for using complexity aware approaches to Theory of Change (ToC) to inform the SDC approach. It provides an overview of complexity-aware approaches and then focuses on demonstrating how complexity thinking can support programming by building on the frameworks currently being used in the project/programme cycle management (PCM) processes. It is aimed at SDC staff, in particular Programme Officers and staff of partner organisations involved in the management of SDC interventions.

Operationalizing the Science of Delivery Agenda to Enhance Development Results - Gonzalez Asis, Maria; Woolcock, Michael (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015)
The clear development gains achieved in recent decades should not deflect attention from the scale and type of challenges that remain. The strategies largely responsible for these initial gains have been technical reforms promoting economic growth and logistical systems supplying basic inputs. Today, strategies are needed that focus on enhancing the quality of implementation— for example, ensuring learning and not just building schools and enrolling students. This concern now spans numerous domains of professional practice (especially health) and has entered World Bank discussions framed as the “science of delivery.” At the World Bank, the Global Delivery Initiative (GDI) is an operational manifestation and extension of these ideas. To date, the GDI has prepared a number of different case studies across numerous sectors on ways in which innovative teams solve particular problems during project implementation. On the basis of the initial case studies, the authors outline five key principles of how high-quality implementation occurs and invite others to add to this growing storehouse of knowledge. Specifically, task teams are encouraged to develop “live” case studies by and for their staff, documenting how, in real time, implementation challenges are being met. Projects must “learn” more rapidly and systematically how to solve the myriad range of complex implementation challenges they inevitably encounter, since most of these (by definition) cannot be anticipated ex ante. Delivery challenges of this kind will only intensify in the coming years as citizens demand effective responses to ever-more complex—and contentious—policy domains, such as justice, regulation, and taxation.

Integrating Livelihood and Conservation Goals: A retrospective Analysis of World Bank Projects - Gómez, Andrés; Price, Claire (USAID, 2017)
Using a database of World Bank project evaluations, E3/FAB’s new study called “Integrating Livelihood and Conservation Goals: A Retrospective Analysis of World Bank Projects” aims to contribute to building the evidence base around the integration of biodiversity conservation and livelihood goals.

Monitoring and Evaluating Conflict Sensitivity: Methodological Challenges and Practical Solutions - Goldwyn, Rachel; Chigas, Diana (DFID, 2013)

The Innovative Power of Positive Deviance - Goldstein, Jeffrey; Hazy, James; Lichtenstein, Benyamin B. (Complexity and the Nexus of Leadership, 2010)

Adaptive Evaluation: A Complexity-based approach to Systematic Learning for Innovation and Scaling in Development - Gokhale, Siddhant; Walton, Michael (Center for International Development, Harvard University, 2023)
Nearly all challenges in international development tend to be complex because they depend on constantly evolving human behaviour, systems, and contexts, involving multiple actors, entities, and processes. As a result, both the discovery and scaling of innovations to address challenges in development often involve changes in system behaviour or even system-level transformation. This is rarely a linear process over time and can result in unexpected outcomes. Existing evaluation techniques commonly used in international development, including Randomized Control Trials (RCT) and quasi-experimental methods, are good at assessing specific effects of interventions but are not designed for the change processes inherent to innovation and scaling within a system. There is a need to reconstruct how we use existing measurement tools, techniques, and methodologies so that they capture the complexity of the environment in which an intervention or change occurs. We introduce Adaptive Evaluation, designed to learn at various levels of complexity while supporting the transformation needed to foster sustainable change. An Adaptive Evaluation uses three main approaches to work with complex questions—systems diagnosis, theorybased assessment of change processes, and iterative designs. An Adaptive Evaluation typically builds hypotheses from field-based interactions, emphasizes learning over testing, advocates open-mindedness with techniques, and appreciates the value of dialogue and participation in navigating complex processes. It can use RCT or similar techniques to analyse specific processes within a system or a development cycle, but these are embedded in a broader approach to assessment and interpretation. It is designed to be flexible and adjust to shifting contexts. Finally, an Adaptive Evaluation can be applied at any stage in a complex intervention's lifecycle, from the interpretation of the system and change processes to rapid experimentation, prototyping, and testing of select interventions, and then adaptation to different settings for impact at scale. This paper provides the theoretical basis for an Adaptive Evaluation—the main approaches, core ideology, process, and applications.

NGO-IDEAs Impact Toolbox - Participatory Monitoring of Outcome and Impact - Gohl, Eberhard; Causemann, Bernward (Impact+, 2011)
NGO-IDEAs (NGO – Impact on Development, Empowerment and Actions) NGO-IDEAs is a cooperation of about 40 non-govermental organisations (NGOs) from South Asia, East Africa and the Philippines and 14 German NGOs working in the field of development cooperation. It identifies and develops jointly with all partners, concepts and tools for NGOs in the areas of Outcome and Impact Assessment and Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E). NGO-IDEAs is further being supported by VENRO, the umbrella organisation of development non-governmental organisations in Germany as well as PARITÄT, the legal holder of the project. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) has cofinanced the project. NGO-IDEAs is not just another study evaluating the impact of NGOs’ work – it combines research & development, knowledge management, learning & training as well as advice & coaching to initiate a collective learning process for all partners involved. Additionally, NGOIDEAs intends to create a valuable resource base for use by NGOs. NGO-IDEAs aims at: • Empowering community based organisations or groups and the poor among the rural communities to use and practice impact monitoring for project management • Empowering NGOs to further improve the effectiveness, impact and sustainability of their efforts • Making social changes more visible for implementing and funding NGOs, thus improving development practice • Improving public recognition of NGOs and CBOs and their contribution to development. The NGO-IDEAs “Impact Toolbox” is to enable NGOs and grassroots organisations to monitor projects together with the so called target groups involved, in a manner that will enhance positive outcomes and impacts, and reduce negative ones. It focuses on joint setting of goals, on monitoring them and finally on taking joint decisions about the further design and direction of interventions. The instruments of the NGO-IDEAs “Impact Toolbox” are simple and participatory. Simple means: setting out from people’s knowledge and know-how, therefore, easy to understand and apply. Application can easily be fitted into the “normal” activities of the NGOs or grassroots organisations. The participatory character emerges through democratic elements promoting a “Culture of Learning” that the people can assimilate

Appreciative Inquiry: Three decades of generative impact - Godwin, Lindsey N. (AI Practitioner, 2016)

Assessing Innovation Potential for Social Impact: Overview for Social Sector Leaders - Global Knowledge Initiative (2016)

Overview for Social Sector Leaders: Assessing Innovation Potential for Social Impact - Global Knowledge Initiative (2016)
We aim to provide decision makers with greater insight and confidence into the process of assessing innovation impact potential. Rather than considering the role innovation plays after an investment is made, or based on historic evaluations of how innovation has or has not delivered solutions to a problem, this approach is forward-looking. This customizable toolset assesses the future impact that innovation can deliver in a system to tackle particularly complex problems

Making All Voices Count: A Slam Dunk? - Global Integrity (Global Integrity, 2012)
Yesterday, I had the chance to attend the public launch of a new government transparency and accountability funding mechanism – Making All Voices Count. Held at USAID headquarters, the discussion featured a veritable who’s who of open government and transparency practitioners in the Washington area; probably 250 people were packed into the room. (Announcing a …

GLAM Monitoring and Learning Strategy (internal document) - GLAM (ODI, 2018)

GIZ’s evaluation system - GIZ Evaluation Unit (GIZ GmbH, 2018)
This provides a general description of GIZ’s new evaluation system, which is designed to implement our new policy and to achieve the objectives of evaluation reform. This general description is accompanied by two other documents that provide supplementary details of GIZ’s key evaluation instruments: project evaluations for BMZ business and corporate strategic evaluations. They are geared in particular to GIZ staff members who commission, implement or support evaluations and to evaluators who conduct evaluations on behalf of GIZ as well as repre-sentatives of commissioning parties, clients and cooperation partners. The current versions are very much a ‘work in progress’ in many regards. We are well aware that we will only be able to meet our own high expectations of our evaluations if we continue to develop their quality in dialogue with project staff, our commissioning parties, clients and partners and with evaluation practitioners and experts from the academic, scientific and research community. We look forward to taking on this task and to sharing our experience with all interested parties.

Capacity WORKS - GIZ (2014)
One of GIZ’s core competencies is understanding how cooperation works in societies, and supporting that process. The kind of process we mean is cooperation between state, civil society and private-sector actors who wish to jointly shape societal changes. GIZ has systematised its knowledge on how to achieve this, and made it available in the Capacity WORKS management model. The model describes how to manage cooperation systems.

Capacity Works - online training - GIZ (GIZ, 2014)

Cooperation Management for Practitioners: Managing Social Change With Capacity Works - GIZ (Springer Gabler, 2015)
OCLC: 893897509

GIZ's Evaluation Policy: Principles, guidelines and requirements of our evaluation practice - GIZ (GIZ, 2018)

Toolkit Digitalisation: Tools to Support Strategic Planning and Implementation - GIZ (2017)

Exploring the potential for interactive radio to improve accountability and responsiveness to small-scale farmers in Tanzania - Gilberds, Heather; Handforth, Calum; Leclair, Mark (IDS, 2016)
What are the possibilities of using new digital technologies alongside radio to help ensure that agricultural development projects are farmer-centred, and meet the needs of the rural citizens they intend to serve? This research assesses Farm Radio International’s Listening Post – a model that combines radio and digital technologies with the aim of collecting and aggregating farmer feedback to aid decision-making and adaptive project implementation. The research shows that linking a mobile-based crowd-sourcing tool with radio is effective at ensuring engagement from a large number of farmers, who felt it was a useful way of raising their questions and concerns to NGOs, policy-makers and experts. The model has clear potential to strengthen the chain of relationships between citizens, extension services suppliers, projects and policymakers. It has also demonstrated its potential to collect real-time feedback from farmers that could be used to aid decision-making and improve accountability in agricultural development initiatives, helping to ensure they are more responsive to farmers. However, it also concludes that ‘closing the feedback loop’ – ensuring that farmer’s comments, questions and concerns are responded to – is a challenge for the Listening Post. Sometimes, the interactive radio programmes close the loop by disseminating answers to questions or concerns raised by farmers, or by connecting farmers to extension services – but only when a solid and systematic process had been developed for this to happen. Therefore is critical to identify and incentivise actors who are capable of responding during the design phase of a Listening Post, and to ensure that they are involved in every stage of the process. It also important that project partners who are interested in beneficiary feedback identify the flexible or actionable points in their project frameworks from the outset, rather than collecting data that they are not able to use to adapt their programmes

One step to a thousand miles: building accountability in Liberia - Gilberds, Heather (Accountability Lab Liberia, 2017)
Lessons for enabling accountability and integrity in Liberia

The Samaritan's Dilemma: The Political Economy of Development Aid - Gibson, Clark C.; Andersson, Krister; Ostrom, Elinor; Shivakumar, Sujai (Oxford University Press, 2005)
What's wrong with foreign aid? Many policymakers, aid practitioners, and scholars have called into question its ability to increase economic growth, alleviate poverty, or promote social development. At the macro level, only tenuous links between development aid and improved living conditions have been found. At the micro level, only a few programs outlast donor support and even fewer appear to achieve lasting improvements. The authors of this book argue that much of aid's failure is related to the institutions that structure its delivery. These institutions govern the complex relationships between the main actors in the aid delivery system and often generate a series of perverse incentives that promote inefficient and unsustainable outcomes. In their analysis, the authors apply the theoretical insights of the new institutional economics to several settings. First, they investigate the institutions of Sida, the Swedish aid agency, to analyze how that aid agency's institutions can produce incentives inimical to desired outcomes, contrary to the desires of its own staff. Second, the authors use cases from India, a country with low aid dependence, and Zambia, a country with high aid dependence, to explore how institutions on the ground in recipient countries also mediate the effectiveness of aid. Throughout the book, the authors offer suggestions about how to improve aid's effectiveness. These suggestions include how to structure evaluations in order to improve outcomes, how to employ agency staff to gain from their on-the-ground experience, and how to engage stakeholders as "owners" in the design, resource mobilization, learning, and evaluation processes of development assistance programs.

Producer-led value chain analysis: The missing link in value chain development - Ghore, Yogesh (Coady, 2015)
Introduction and rationale The concept of a value chain is increasingly being applied in the design and implementation of development programs aimed at poverty reduction. As an analytical tool, it provides a useful framework for understanding key activities, relationships, and mechanisms that allow producers, processors, buyers, sellers, and consumers—separated by time and space—to gradually add value to products and services as they pass from one link of the chain to another, making it a “value chain” (UNIDO, 2009). While it has been popular in the private sector ever since it was conceptualized by Michael Porter in the 1980s, more recently various donors and governments have shown interest in its use and have applied it to a range of development interventions, particularly in the area of sector development, livelihoods promotion, small and medium enterprise (SME) development, and rural and economic development. Academics and development organizations have designed numerous instruments for value chain analysis (VCA) and implementation. Beginning in the early 2000s, international organizations and donor agencies have sponsored the development of these tools, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the International Labour Organization (ILO). These guides and tools have been used in many development programs to address organizational, donor and local and regional priorities for development. While VCA guides and tools are important in understanding markets and relationships among key stakeholders, a recent comparative review of popularly used guides by Donovan et al. (2013) suggests that most of these guides are designed to be implemented independently of the local context and do not sufficiently focus on mutual learning, whether related to tool design or to the outcomes and impacts of the designed project activities. VCA is often conducted by external experts and the knowledge generated in the process is often confined to reports. Without the capacity building and effective participation of women and men producers—smallholder farmers who hold critical knowledge about the local context—an important link is missing in the entire process of VCA. The insufficient attention to the human, social, and other contextual factors undermines the full potential of the value chain systems approach, not only for economic outcomes, but for the long term sustainability of the intended benefits. So what are the ways to effectively engage producers in the community in the VCA? The producer-led process described here tries to address this basic question. It introduces simplified tools and an approach that ensures farmer participation in data collection, analysis, and identification of opportunities and constraints, and design of value chain interventions. This participation requires: a) an environment in which they feel comfortable to share their knowledge and insights, which is often not the case when extractive surveys and questionnaires are administered to collect information; and b) the use of simple and participatory tools that will allow them to provide inputs into the process of VCA and also help them to understand complex value chain systems and use this understanding for making livelihood decisions. The key steps and tools described are aimed at empowering the women and men farmers to make informed decisions about their own enterprises and how they relate to the value chain, thereby directly contributing to, and influencing, the overall process of value chain development. The process of VCA involving these steps and tools was developed at Coady Institute and first tested with Oxfam Canada and its local partners in Ethiopia in August 2012.

Meant to Keep Malaria Out, Mosquito Nets Are Used to Haul Fish In - Gettleman, Jeffrey (The New York Times, 2015)
Nets like his are widely considered a magic bullet against malaria — one of the cheapest and most effective ways to stop a disease that kills at least half a million Africans each year. But Mr. Ndefi and countless others are not using their mosquito nets as global health experts have intended. Nobody in his hut, including his seven children, sleeps under a net at night. Instead, Mr. Ndefi has taken his family’s supply of anti-malaria nets and sewn them together into a gigantic sieve that he uses to drag the bottom of the swamp ponds, sweeping up all sorts of life: baby catfish, banded tilapia, tiny mouthbrooders, orange fish eggs, water bugs and the occasional green frog

Coping with Complexity - Gerard Seijts; Niels Billou; Mary Crossan (Ivey Business Journal, 2010)

The Social Realities of Knowledge for Development - Georgalakis, James; Jessani, Nasreen; Oronje, Rose; Ramalingam, Ben (IDS, 2017)
This edited collection of peer-reviewed papers explores critical challenges faced by organisations and individuals involved in evidence-informed development through a diverse set of case studies and t...

Advancing urban adaptation where it counts: reshaping unequal knowledge and resource diffusion in networked Indonesian cities - Geldin, Samuel (Environment and Urbanization, 2019)
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 interviews with Indonesian city actors and a preliminary catalogue of cities participating in TMNs reveal that risk-averse selection criteria, insufficient impact assessments, and duplicative institutional efforts reinforce disparities between primary and intermediary cities. To effectively build adaptive capacity in the most vulnerable regions, TMNs should remove participation barriers for intermediary cities, improve incentives for institutional collaboration, and adopt more rigorous evaluative metrics. These results directly inform the governance, resource allocation, and operational goals of TMN stakeholders to advance distributive climate justice.

Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways - Geels, Frank W.; Schot, Johan (Research Policy, 2007)
Contributing to debates about transitions and system changes, this article has two aims. First, it uses criticisms on the multi-level perspective as stepping stones for further conceptual reﬁnements. Second, it develops a typology of four transition pathways: transformation, reconﬁguration, technological substitution, and de-alignment and re-alignment. These pathways differ in combinations of timing and nature of multi-level interactions. They are illustrated with historical examples.

Global Delivery at the World Bank Group - GDI (Global Delivery Initiative, 2014)

Everyday patterns for shifting systems - GCSI (GCSI, 2022)

Everyday patterns for shifting systems - Right scaling - GCSI (GCSI, 2022)

Empowerment and Accountability in difficult settings: What are we learning? - Gaventa, John; Oswald, Katy (IDS, 2019)
Empowerment and Accountability in Difficult Settings: What Are We Learning? Key Messages Emerging from the Action for Empowerment and Accountability Programme Empowerment and accountability have long been part of the international development vocabulary and a core part of governance, social development and civil society programmes. Yet, much of what has been learnt about these approaches has been drawn from studies in somewhat stable, open and middle-income places around the world. Less is known about how empowerment and accountability are achieved through social and political action in more difficult settings – those faced by institutional fragility, conflict, violence, and closing civic space. This document highlights key messages emerging from the work of the Action for Empowerment and Accountability Research Programme (A4EA), and the implications for how donors, policy makers and practitioners support strategies for empowerment and accountability in fragile, conflict and violence affected settings (FCVAS). Our eight key messages have strong implications for the theories of change used for effective programming in the field.

Introduction: Making change happen–citizen action and national policy reform - Gaventa, John; McGee, Rosemary (Citizen Action and National Policy Reform. London: Zed Books, 2010)

The Impact of Transparency and Accountability Initiatives - Gaventa, John; McGee, Rosemary (Development Policy Review, 2013)

Challenging the Boundaries of the Possible: Participation, Knowledge and Power - Gaventa, John; Cornwall, Andrea (IDS Bulletin, 2006)

Mapping the Outcomes of Citizen Engagement - Gaventa, John; Barrett, Gregory (World Development, 2012)
Summary Despite the normative beliefs that underpin the concept of participation, its impact on improved democratic, and developmental outcomes has proven difficult to assess. Using a meta-case study analysis of a sample of 100 cases, we inductively create a typology of four democratic and developmental outcomes, including (a) the construction of citizenship, (b) the strengthening of practices of participation, (c) the strengthening of responsive and accountable states, and (d) the development of inclusive and cohesive societies. We find that citizen participation produces positive effects across these outcome types, though in each category there are also important types of negative outcomes as well.
Keywords: Citizen engagement; Citizenship; Development outcomes; Participation; democratic outcomes; meta-analysis

5 Emerging Lessons from new research into Empowerment and Accountability in Messy Places - Gaventa, John (From Poverty to Power, 2019)
Research guru John Gaventa summarizes the emerging lessons from a new research programme on 'action for empowerment and accountability' in messy places

Applying Power Analysis: Using the ‘Powercube’ to explore forms, levels and spaces - Gaventa, John (Power, Empowerment and Social Change, 2019)
In a complex, globalised and rapidly changing world, power dynamics are multidimensional, constantly evolving, and full of complexity. The ‘powercube’ (Gaventa, 2006) is an approach to power analysis which can be used to examine the multiple forms, levels and spaces of power, and their interactions. Building on earlier work on power, and elaborated and popularised in collaboration with other colleagues through the web site powercube.net and numerous other resources, the powercube has been widely used around the world for analysis of power, education and awareness building, context analysis, programme and strategy development, and monitoring and evaluation. This article briefly outlines the evolution of the powercube, and provides examples of the issue areas in which it has been used, and for what purposes. Drawing on these, we then offer eight lessons of how to apply the powercube framework for analysing and transforming power relations.

Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis - Gaventa, John (IDS Bulletin, 2006)

Linking the prepositions: using power analysis to inform strategies for social action - Gaventa, John (Journal of Political Power, 2021)
This article reviews longstanding debates about the relationship between power over and power to – often posed as the tension between domination and emancipation. It then turns to several frameworks which integrate these approaches to inform strategies for social action. In particular, it focuses on recent empirical studies which apply one such framework, the ‘powercube’, to glean insights into how social actors navigate across multiple forms, spaces and levels of power. In so doing, we gain clues into how relatively powerless groups develop the capacities for agency and action which challenge domination and in turn give new possibilities for emancipation.
Keywords: Lukes; Power; agency; collective action; empowerment

Participation Makes A Difference: But Not Always How And Where We Might Expect - Gaventa, John (Development Outreach, 2011)

Evaluating the ‘logical framework approach’ towards learning-oriented development evaluation - Gasper, Des (Public Administration and Development, 2000)
The logical framework approach has spread enormously, including increasingly to stages of review and evaluation. Yet it has had little systematic evaluation itself. Survey of available materials indicates several recurrent failings, some less easily countered than others. In particular: focus on achievement of intended effects by intended routes makes logframes a very limiting tool in evaluation; an assumption of consensual project objectives often becomes problematic in public and inter-organizational projects; and automatic choice of an audit form of accountability as the priority in evaluations can be at the expense of evaluation as learning.
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/1099-162X%28200002%2920%3A1%3C17%3A%3AAID-PAD89%3E3.0.CO%3B2-5

Scaling Science - Gargani, John; McLean, Robert (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)

Adaptive Management in the Face of Climate Change and Endangered Species Protection - Gardner, Emily (Ecology Law Quarterly, 2013)

Plans Are Worthless but Planning Is Everything: A Theoretical Explanation of Eisenhower’s Observation - Garcia Contreras, Angel F.; Ceberio, Martine; Kreinovich, Vladik (Decision Making under Constraints, 2020)
The 1953–1961 US President Dwight D. Eisenhower emphasized that his experience as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe during the Second World War taught him that “plans are worthless, but planning is everything”. This sound contradictory: if plans are worthless, why bother with planning at all? In this paper, we show that Eisenhower’s observation has a meaning: while directly following the original plan in constantly changing circumstances is often not a good idea, the existence of a pre-computed original plan enables us to produce an almost-optimal strategy—a strategy that would have been computationally difficult to produce on a short notice without the pre-existing plan.

Assessing the Demand for a Global Evidence Network. Mapping Existing Initiatives and Understanding Network Lessons and Opportunities - Gandolfo, Ari; Taddese, Abeba (Results for all, 2018)

A developmental Evaluation Primer - Gamble, Jamie A.A. (J.W. McConnell Family Foundation, 2008)

Reframing Complexity: A Four-Dimensional Approach to Organizational Diagnosis, Development and Change - Gallos, Joan V. (Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader, 2006)
This is the third book in the Jossey–Bass Reader series, Organization Development: A Jossey–Bass Reader. This collection will introduce the key thinkers and contributors in organization development including Ed Lawler, Peter Senge, Chris Argyris, Richard Hackman, Jay Galbraith, Cooperrider, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Bolman & Deal, Kouzes & Posner, and Ed Schein, among others. "Without reservations I recommend this volume to those students of organizational behavior who want an encyclopedia of OD to gain a perspective on the past, present, and future...." Jonathan D. Springer of the American Psychological Association.

New communication technologies and citizen-led governance in Africa - Gagliardone, Iginio; Srinivasan, Sharath; Brisset-Foucault, Florence (2012)

Canada's Feminist International Assistance Policy - GAC (Global Affairs Canada, 2017)

Global Affairs Canada: an approach to development innovation - GAC (Global Affairs Canada, 2018)
For Global Affairs Canada, development innovation includes new or improved business models, policy practices, approaches, technologies, behavioral insights or ways of delivering products and services that benefit and empower the poorest and most vulnerable people in developing countries.

Our priorities in international assistance - GAC (GAC, 2018)
For Global Affairs Canada, development innovation includes new or improved business models, policy practices, approaches, technologies, behavioral insights or ways of delivering products and services that benefit and empower the poorest and most vulnerable people in developing countries.

The Whistler principles to accelerate innovation for development impact - G7 (G7, 2018)
The Whistler principles to accelerate innovation for development impact : 2018 G7 Summit – Canada 2018 G7 Presidency – Charlevoix, Quebec

Purposeful Program Theory: Effective Use of Theories of Change and Logic Models - Funnell, Sue C.; Rogers, Patricia J. (Wiley, 2011)
Program Theory in Evaluation Practice is a ground-breaking reference that teaches how to develop an explicit causal model that links an intervention (project, program or policy) with its intended or observed impacts and using this to guide monitoring and evaluation. Peerless in its explanation of why and how to use and develop program theory, the book is rich with examples and alternative approaches. The book is an invaluable resource to faculty and students as well as professionals in professional development programs, education, social work, and counseling.

Purposeful Program Theory: Effective Use of Theories of Change and Logic Models - Funnell, Sue C.; Rogers, Patricia J. (2011)
Between good intentions and great results lies a program theory—not just a list of tasks but a vision of what needs to happen, and how. Now widely used in government and not-for-profit organizations, program theory provides a coherent picture of how change occurs and how to improve performance. Purposeful Program Theory shows how to develop, represent, and use program theory thoughtfully and strategically to suit your particular situation, drawing on the fifty-year history of program theory and the authors' experiences over more than twenty-five years."From needs assessment to intervention design, from implementation to outcomes evaluation, from policy formulation to policy execution and evaluation, program theory is paramount. But until now no book has examined these multiple uses of program theory in a comprehensive, understandable, and integrated way. This promises to be a breakthrough book, valuable to practitioners, program designers, evaluators, policy analysts, funders, and scholars who care about understanding why an intervention works or doesn't work." —Michael Quinn Patton, author, Utilization-Focused Evaluation"Finally, the definitive guide to evaluation using program theory! Far from the narrow 'one true way' approaches to program theory, this book provides numerous practical options for applying program theory to fulfill different purposes and constraints, and guides the reader through the sound critical thinking required to select from among the options. The tour de force of the history and use of program theory is a truly global view, with examples from around the world and across the full range of content domains. A must-have for any serious evaluator." —E. Jane Davidson, PhD, Real Evaluation Ltd.Companion Web site: josseybass.com/go/funnellrogers

Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance - Fung, Archon; Wright, Erik Olin (Verso, 2003)
ENTRADA CREADA PARA PODER CITAR EL CAPÍTULO

Technology for Democracy in Development: Lessons from Seven Case Studies - Fung, Archon; Gilman, Hollie Russon; Shkabatur, Jennifer (Deliberation and Development: Rethinking the Role of Voice and Collective Action in Unequal Societies, 2015)

Citizen Participation in Representative Democracy - Fung, Archon (Post Party Politics. Can participation reconnect people and government?, 2006)
ENTRADA CREADA PARA PODER CITAR EL CAPÍTULO

Minipublics: Designing Institutions for Effective Deliberation and Accountability - Fung, Archon (Accountability through public opinion : from inertia to public action, 2010)
“Accountability” has become a buzzword in international development. Development actors appear to delight in announcing their intention to “promote accountability”—but it is often unclear what accountability is and how it can be promoted. This book addresses some questions that are crucial to understanding accountability and for understanding why accountability is important to improve the effectiveness of development aid. We ask: What does it mean to make governments accountable to their citizens? How do you do that? How do you create genuine demand for accountability among citizens, how do you move citizens from inertia to public action? The main argument of this book is that accountability is a matter of public opinion. Governments will only be accountable if there are incentives for them to do so—and only an active and critical public will change the incentives of government officials to make them responsive to citizens’ demands. Accountability without public opinion is a technocratic, but not an effective solution. In this book, more than 30 accountability practitioners and thinkers discuss the concept and its structural conditions; the relationship between accountability, information, and the media; the role of deliberation to promote accountability; and mechanisms and tools to mobilize public opinion. A number of case studies from around the world illustrate the main argument of the book: Public opinion matters and an active and critical public is the surest means to achieve accountability that will benefit the citizens in developing countries. This book is designed for policy-makers and governance specialists working within the international development community, national governments, grassroots organizations, activists, and scholars engaged in understanding the interaction between accountability and public opinion and their role for increasing the impact of international development interventions.

Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences - Fung, Archon (Journal of Political Philosophy, 2003)

Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance - Fung, Archon (Public Administration Review, 2006)
The multifaceted challenges of contemporary governance demand a complex account of the ways in which those who are subject to laws and policies should participate in making them. This article develops a framework for understanding the range of institutional possibilities for public participation. Mechanisms of participation vary along three important dimensions: who participates, how participants communicate with one another and make decisions together, and how discussions are linked with policy or public action. These three dimensions constitute a space in which any particular mechanism of participation can be located. Different regions of this institutional design space are more and less suited to addressing important problems of democratic governance such as legitimacy, justice, and effective administration.

Beyond the tools: supporting adaptation when organisational resources and capacities are in short supply - Fünfgeld, Hartmut; Lonsdale, Kate; Bosomworth, Karyn (Climatic Change, 2018)
Climate change adaptation is increasingly concerned with how organisations develop capacity to adapt to uncertain futures. A participatory action research project conducted in Victoria, Australia, examined how health and social service organisations developed their organisational adaptive capacity through the use of adaptation decision-support tools. It can be challenging for any organisation to select and apply a decision-support tool, but this is particularly the case where resources and capacities are limited. For most organisations, climate change is only one of a complex set of dynamic stressors they must consider in meeting organisational goals. This paper shows that while decision-support tools can help co-generate knowledge and facilitate customised organisational adaptation processes, for them to be practically helpful for organisations with limited resources and capacities, intensive collaborative and discursive processes are needed to adjust such tools to fit specific organisational contexts and needs. Facilitators and participatory approaches that enable co-inquiry can play a critical role in supplementing scarce resources and initiating adaptation processes that go well beyond the scope and purpose of the decision-support tool used. Organisations working effectively with decision-support tools to adapt to climate change will need to feel ownership of them and have confidence in modifying them to suit their particular adaptation needs and organisational goals.
Keywords: Adaptive capacity; Climate change; Community services; Decision-support tools; Facilitation; Health and social services; Organizational change

Marine Conservation Outcomes are More Likely when Fishers Participate as Citizen Scientists: Case Studies from the Mexican Mesoamerican Reef - Fulton, Stuart; Caamal-Madrigal, Jacobo; Aguilar-Perera, Alfonso; Bourillón, Luis; Heyman, William D. (Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 2018)
Small-scale fishers on Caribbean coral reefs have exploited fish spawning aggregations (FSAs) for generations, but intense fishing has led to the loss of traditional aggregation sites. In many areas, the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of fishers has contributed greatly to the characterization of spawning aggregations and implementation of local conservation initiatives. TEK has identified more than 40 potential FSA sites along the coast of the Mexican Mesoamerican Reef. These sites have been characterised and scientifically validated, in some cases with traditional western science and in others, with a participatory citizen-science approach. The objective of this work is to compare the science and conservation outcomes at these FSA sites. We report that those FSA sites where scientific surveys were conducted without community participation remain unprotected. By contrast, the FSAs where local fishers were engaged in characterization and subsequent monitoring are now protected at the behest of the fishers themselves. Conservation initiatives to protect FSAs can be more effective through a combination of TEK, western science, and participatory citizen science involving local fishers.
Keywords: Citizen science; Fishers; Spawning Aggregation; Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Participatory adaptive management leads to environmental learning outcomes extending beyond the sphere of science - Fujitani, Marie; McFall, Andrew; Randler, Christoph; Arlinghaus, Robert (Science Advances, 2017)
Resolving uncertainties in managed social-ecological systems requires adaptive experimentation at whole-ecosystem levels. However, whether participatory adaptive management fosters ecological understanding among stakeholders beyond the sphere of science is unknown. We experimentally involved members of German angling clubs (n = 181 in workshops, n = 2483 in total) engaged in self-governance of freshwater fisheries resources in a large-scale ecological experiment of active adaptive management of fish stocking, which constitutes a controversial management practice for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning when conducted inappropriately. The collaborative ecological experiments spanned several years and manipulated fish densities in 24 lakes with two species. In parallel, we experimentally compared changes in ecological knowledge and antecedents of proenvironmental behavior in stakeholders and managers who were members of a participatory adaptive management treatment group, with those receiving only a standard lecture, relative to placebo controls. Using a within-subjects pretest-posttest control design, changes in ecological knowledge, environmental beliefs, attitudes, norms, and behavioral intentions were evaluated. Participants in adaptive management retained more knowledge of ecological topics after a period of 8 months compared to those receiving a standard lecture, both relative to controls. Involvement in adaptive management was also the only treatment that altered personal norms and beliefs related to stocking. Critically, only the stakeholders who participated in adaptive management reduced their behavioral intentions to engage in fish stocking in the future. Adaptive management is essential for robust ecological knowledge, and we show that involving stakeholders in adaptive management experiments is a powerful tool to enhance ecological literacy and build environmental capacity to move toward sustainability. Participatory active adaptive management leads to far-reaching environmental learning outcomes in stakeholders. Participatory active adaptive management leads to far-reaching environmental learning outcomes in stakeholders.

The relationship between adaptive management of social-ecological systems and law: a systematic review - Frohlich, Miguel F.; Jacobson, Chris; Fidelman, Pedro; Smith, Timothy F. (Ecology and Society, 2018)
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 on the relationship between adaptive management and law in relation to social-ecological systems. We analyze how the scholarship defines the concept of adaptive management, identifies the legal barriers to adaptive management, and the legal strategies suggested for enabling this approach. Research efforts in this domain are still highly geographically concentrated in the United States of America, unveiling gaps concerning the analysis of other legal jurisdictions. Overall, our results show that more flexible legal frameworks can allow for adaptive management without undermining the role of law in providing stability to social interactions. Achieving this balance will likely require the reform of existing laws, regulations, and other legal instruments. Legal reforms can facilitate the emergence of adaptive governance, with the potential to support not only adaptive management implementation but also to make law itself more adaptive.

Doing Development Differently: Understanding the Landscape and Implications of New Approaches to Governance and Public-sector Reforms - Fritz, Verena (Transformation, Politics and Implementation, 2017)
Seeking to accelerate development, the agencies and individuals involved have regularly advanced new ideas of how external support can function better, deliver more, and achieve greater impact. There has been a particular flourishing of new ideas within the broad field of governance and public-sector reforms in the 2000s. This chapter starts off with a review of the “landscape of new ideas,” focusing on five proposed approaches in particular: political economy analysis (PEA), Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), Doing Development Differently (DDD), Thinking and Working Politically (TWP), and the “science of delivery.” It sets out the “problem-diagnostic” that underpins each of these

Re-imagining Inclusive Urban Futures for Transformation - Friend, Richard M; Anwar, Nausheen H; Dixit, Ajaya; Hutanuwatr, Khanin; Jayaraman, Thiagarajan; McGregor, J Allister; Menon, Meena R; Moench, Marcus; Pelling, Mark; Roberts, Debra (Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2016)

Foreign policy and complex adaptive systems: Exploring new paradigms for analysis and action - Frej, William; Ramalingam, Ben (Santa Fe Institute, 2011)

Can’t See the Wood For the Logframe: Integrating Logframes and Theories of Change in Development Evaluation - Freer, Gordon; Lemire, Sebastian (Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 2019)
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 evaluation, this article argues that fully integrating the program theory of change within the program logframe provides for a stronger and more holistic understanding of program progress.

Integrated Governance: Achieving Governance Results and Contributing to Sector Outcomes - Frazer, Sarah; Granius, Mark; Brinkerhoff, Derick W.; McGregor, Lisa (RTI Press, 2022)
Achieving broad-based socio-economic development requires interventions that bridge disciplines, strategies, and stakeholders. Effective sustained progress requires more than simply an accumulation of sector projects, and poverty reduction, individual wellbeing, community development, and societal advancement do not fall neatly into sectoral categories. However, researchers and practitioners recognize key operational challenges to achieving effective integration that stem from the structures and processes associated with the current practice of international development. Integration calls for the intentional linking of intervention designs, implementation, and evaluation across sectors and disciplines to achieve mutually reinforcing outcomes. In this report, we summarize the results of a study we conducted to explore the challenges facing governance programs that integrate with sector interventions to achieve governance outcomes and contribute to sector outcomes. Through a review of policy documents and project reports from recent integrated governance programs and interviews with donor and practitioner staff, we found three integrated governance programming variants, an emphasis on citizen and government collaboration to improve service delivery, interventions that serve as the glue between sectors, and a balancing act for indicators to measure contribution to sectoral outcomes. Our analysis identified four key success factors: contextual readiness, the application of learning and adapting approaches, donor support, and recognition of the limitations of integrated governance. We then discuss recommendations and implications and for answering the challenge of integrating governance and sector programming to achieve development outcomes.

The Art of Scaling Deep - Research in Summary - Fraser, Tatiana (The Systems Sanctuary, 2023)
Over the last 15 years the concept of scale has become a foundational part of the apparatus of the social and environmental change sector. A business mindset of growth has been seamlessly transferred to the social and environmental problems we are collectively trying to shift in the world. Scaling up, (influencing policy) has been considered the strategic pathway to systems change. Scaling out (spreading new models) is seen as a pathway to success. The allure of these scaling theories lies, in part, in their tangibility, and the easy way in which they can be measured. However this focus on growth has shifted our attention away from a series of messy truths. Sometimes bigger isn't better. Endless growth is not sustainable and our urgency to try to fix the problem and seek solutions may be part of the crisis we are in. One unintended consequence of this has been that another type of scale has been devalued and as a result, under-resourced. It’s a scale that values the slow steady work of deepening relationships. It recognizes the significance of context, building connections that bridge diverse communities and it prioritizes inner work and healing as integral components of the scaling process. We call this type of scale ‘Scaling Deep’ and we believe that adequately supporting it, and funding it, holds the greatest potential for long lasting systemic change. The purpose of this research has been to delve deeper into the art and craft of Scaling Deep. Ultimately, our goal is for it to become firmly ingrained within the recognized realm of social change, alongside the well-established concepts of scaling up and scaling out. We want practitioners who are Scaling Deep to be able to harness the wisdom and power of this work and to talk about it openly, with confidence and credibility. We want understanding of this approach to flourish and evolve and for it to be appropriately celebrated and supported. We want decision-makers to be informed and inspired by the principles and practices of scaling deep. For it to be embedded in theories of change as an essential component of decision-making processes within the wider change discourse. Importantly we want leaders who are Scaling Deep to have access to sufficient resources and to receive the care from the field that they need to thrive. We would like to see organisations that have the power to invest, to align their efforts with the profound impact that scaling deep aspires to cultivate in the world. Before we begin, let us be crystal clear. We are not opposed to scaling up and out as strategies for change. Innovation and scaling what is working is part of how we evolve as humanity. As social entrepreneurs ourselves, we have both done this twice over. We value it and we know it’s important. We recognize these are strategies for creating widespread impact and effecting positive change. Our intention here is not to dismiss or undermine the value of scaling up and out, but rather to encourage a broader and more holistic perspective that includes other dimensions of scale. There is a need to understand how the different scaling approaches can work together, rather than seeing them as hierarchical and disconnected. Our ultimate goal is to equip the change sector with a more inclusive, expansive, and powerful approach to tackling the myriad challenges we face, by exploring the potential of Scaling Deep as a transformational strategy for systems change.

Transforming M&E for Uncertain and Complex Contexts: The UNDP’s Innovation Sandbox Approach - Fraser, Dugan; Haldrup, Søren (Powered by Evidence Podcast, 2022)
How can we transform monitoring and evaluation (M&E) into a more adaptive, emergent process to address uncertainty and complexity in todays’ world? How do we move from compliance and accountability to learning – to support better, more timely, decisions? Join GEI Program Manager, Dugan Fraser, as he discusses these questions and others with Special Guest, Søren Haldrup, from UNDP's Strategic Innovation Unit where he manages UNDP's innovation facility and leads a new initiative called the M&E Sandbox.

Using Adaptive Management to Meet Conservation Goals - Franklin, Thomas M; Helinski, Ronald; Manale, Andrew (Fish and Wildlife Response to Farm Bill Conservation Practices, 2007)
Natural resource professionals should know whether or not they are doing an effective job of managing natural resources. Their decision-making process should produce the kind of results desired by the public, elected officials, and their agencies’ leadership. With billions of dollars spent each year on managing natural resources, accountability is more important than ever. Producing results is the key to success. Managers must have the necessary data to make enlightened decisions during program implementation—not just at the conclusion of a program. Adaptive management is described as an adapt-and-learn methodology as it pertains to implementing Farm Bill conservation practices. Four regional case studies describe how adaptive management is being applied by practicing fish and wildlife managers. Indicators were identified to monitor and evaluate contributions to fish and wildlife habitat for each of the case studies. Data collected at each stage of the studies were used to make mid-course adjustments that enabled leadership to improve or enhance ongoing management actions.

Guidelines for designing and monitoring social accountability interventions - Franco, Erika Lopez; Shankland, Alex (IDS, 2018)

Disentangling Government Responses: How Do We Know When Accountability Work is Gaining Traction? - Fox, Jonathan; Halloran, Brendan; Fölscher, Alta; McGee, Rosie (Accountability Research Center, 2024)
Advocacy for public accountability aims to produce certain reactions from government officials or service providers. However, the reactions can be many and diverse, and it is not always clear to advocates how to interpret them and decide on next steps—whether to intensify efforts or back off; continue the same strategy or make adjustments. This paper presents a framework to help accountability advocates and practitioners interpret government reactions to their efforts and move forward appropriately. The framework arises from learning and reflection in the context of the International Budget Partnership (IBP)’s Strengthening Public Accountability with Results and Knowledge (SPARK) program. SPARK seeks to bolster the collective agency of marginalized communities and coalitions to advance democratic and equitable fiscal governance systems that channel public resources to services that address the priority needs of these historically excluded groups. The paper: · unpacks the broad umbrella category of government responses to citizen-led accountability initiatives, discerning within it three overlapping categories of responses, responsiveness, and accountable responsiveness (RRA), and pinpointing what distinguishes them; · maps out the public financial management (PFM) system as the critical conduit for any public service to progress from non-response through these three categories, reflecting the terrain and priorities of the SPARK program and IBP more broadly. Looking at RRA in the context of this PFM map offers key insights for the twin tasks of tracing and unblocking bottlenecks in resource management systems that hinder responsiveness and accountability, as well as demanding specific reforms that make the fiscal governance system more open to citizen engagement; and · discusses how the RRA framework can be used to take stock of partial or incremental responses and assess whether change is moving towards accountable governance, by reference to the SPARK program and other IBP efforts. The RRA framework supports accountability-claiming practice by facilitating close attention to the actions of and influences on key government stakeholders, careful interpretation of these, and consequential adjustments to advocacy strategies. Its implications for monitoring, evaluating, and learning (MEL) from practice are also significant. MEL has been evolving in the accountability field in line with the thinking and practical challenges behind the development of the RRA framework. The framework adds to a range of emerging approaches that support the application theories of change, evidence-based adaptive programming, and politically aware systems thinking in the complex task of building accountable responsiveness towards constituencies historically excluded from public goods and services, and ultimately equitable development outcomes from an intersectional perspective.
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Keywords: Development studies; Public policy; Social policy

Connecting the Dots for Accountability: Civil Society Policy Monitoring and Advocacy Strategies - Fox, Jonathan; Halloran, Brendan (Transparency & Accountability Initiative, 2016)
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say? - Fox, Jonathan A. (World Development, 2015)
Summary Empirical evidence of tangible impacts of social accountability initiatives is mixed. This meta-analysis reinterprets evaluations through a new lens: the distinction between tactical and strategic approaches to the promotion of citizen voice to contribute to improved public sector performance. Field experiments study bounded, tactical interventions based on optimistic assumptions about the power of information alone, both to motivate collective action and to influence the state. Enabling environments for collective action combined with bolstered state capacity to respond to citizen voice are more promising. Sandwich strategies can help ‘voice’ and ‘teeth’ to become mutually empowering, through state–society synergy.
Keywords: public information access; social accountability; state–society synergy; transparency; voice

Scaling accountability through vertically integrated civil society policy monitoring and advocacy - Fox, Jonathan (IDS, 2016)
This working paper argues that the growing field of transparency, participation and accountability (TPA) needs a conceptual reboot, to address the limited traction gained so far on the path to accountability. To inform more strategic approaches and to identify the drivers of more sustainable institutional change, fresh analytical work is needed. This paper makes the case for one among several possible strategic approaches by distinguishing between “scaling up” and “taking scale into account”. This proposition grounds an explanation of the vertical integration strategy, which involves multi-level coordination by civil society organisations of policy monitoring and advocacy, grounded in broad pro-accountability constituencies. To spell out how this strategy can empower pro-accountability actors, the paper contrasts varied terms of engagement between state and society, proposing a focus on collaborative coalitions as an alternative to the conventional dichotomy between confrontation and constructive engagement. The paper grounds this discussion by reviewing the rich empirical terrain of existing multi-level approaches, summarizing nine cases – three each in three countries – to demonstrate what can be revealed when TPA initiatives are seen through the lens of scale. It concludes with a set of broad analytical questions for discussion, followed by testable hypotheses proposed to inform future research agendas

Taking scale into account in transparency and accountability initiatives - Fox, Jonathan (IDS, 2016)
We know that gaining access to information and raising citizen voices are not the same as achieving accountability. It is important to look beyond the symptoms of accountability failure, and consider how to tackle the causes. This short research summary discusses different understandings of scale, one important aspect of making transparency and accountability initiatives more strategic. Scale shapes both the causes of accountability failure and the tactics and strategies needed to address it.

Lasting Roots: Naatal Mbay and the Integrated Finance Model in Senegal - Fowler, Ben; Courbois, Laura (USAID, 2023)
This report addresses the well-recognized evidence gap1 on the longer-term impacts created by marketdriven programming; specifically, programming influenced by market systems development (MSD) principles. It does so by presenting the findings of an ex-post study conducted three and a half years after the close of USAID’s Feed the Future Senegal Naatal Mbay Activity (hereafter Naatal Mbay) in 2019. It examines the scale and sustainability of changes resulting from Naatal Mbay’s introduction of an integrated finance model (IFM) – described in Error! Reference source not found. below – in the domestic rice sector. This study is one in a series of ex-post evaluations that are being conducted between 2023-2026 on USAID-funded MSD interventions around the world. This study focused on four questions, noted below in Figure 1. These were addressed using a mix of desk research, 122 key informant interviews with market actors and other stakeholders remotely and in Senegal, focus group discussions with 26 rice producers networks in Senegal, and a validation workshop with USAID/Senegal, implementing partner staff and market actors. Findings were analyzed leveraging the Disrupting System Dynamics (DSD) framework (see Figure 4 in the body of the report) as an analytical tool for understanding systems change.

Designing Monitoring and Evaluation Approaches for Learning An FOS How-To Guide - FOS (FOS, 2019)

Agency in the face of path dependence: how organizations can regain scope for maneuver - Fortwengel, Johann; Keller, Arne (Business Research, 2020)
This paper tackles a key problem in path dependence research: how can locked-in organizations regain their scope for maneuver? Leveraging insights from two surprising and thus revelatory cases of organizations that have successfully escaped from path dependence, we develop the theoretical argument that regaining scope for maneuver can be achieved by interrupting the logic of a path’s underlying self-reinforcing mechanisms. More specifically, we argue that, through a targeted interruption of the working of these mechanisms, hyper-stable patterns inscribed in an organization can be gradually rewound—and alternative futures become possible. We position our paper within larger debates around the role of agency in path dependence theorizing, and we outline research frontiers to better understand the necessary antecedents of and exact relationship between mechanisms interruption and pattern unwinding.

Conceptualizing community resilience to natural hazards – the emBRACE framework - Forrester, John Martin; Kruse, Sylvia; Abeling, Thomas; Deeming, Hugh; Fordham, Maureen; Forrester, John; Jülich, Sebastian; Karanci, A. Nuray; Kuhlicke, Christian; Pelling, Mark; Pedoth, Lydia; Schneiderbauer, Stefan (Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2017)
Abstract. The level of community is considered to be vital for building disaster resilience. Yet, community resilience as a scientific concept often remains vaguely defined and lacks the guiding characteristics necessary for analysing and enhancing resilience on the ground. The emBRACE framework of community resilience presented in this paper provides a heuristic analytical tool for understanding, explaining and measuring community resilience to natural hazards. It was developed in an iterative process building on existing scholarly debates, on empirical case study work in five countries and on participatory consultation with community stakeholders where the framework was applied and ground-tested in different contexts and for different hazard types. The framework conceptualizes resilience across three core domains: (i) resources and capacities, (ii) actions and (iii) learning. These three domains are conceptualized as intrinsically conjoined within a whole. Community resilience is influenced by these integral elements as well as by extra-community forces comprising disaster risk governance and thus laws, policies and responsibilities on the one hand and on the other, the general societal context, natural and human-made disturbances and system change over time. The framework is a graphically rendered heuristic, which through application can assist in guiding the assessment of community resilience in a systematic way and identifying key drivers and barriers of resilience that affect any particular hazard-exposed community.

Improving our legacy: Incorporation of adaptive management into state wildlife action plans - Fontaine, Joseph J. (Journal of Environmental Management, 2011)
The loss of biodiversity is a mounting concern, but despite numerous attempts there are few large scale conservation efforts that have proven successful in reversing current declines. Given the challenge of biodiversity conservation, there is a need to develop strategic conservation plans that address species declines even with the inherent uncertainty in managing multiple species in complex environments. In 2002, the State Wildlife Grant program was initiated to fulﬁll this need, and while not explicitly outlined by Congress follows the fundamental premise of adaptive management, ‘Learning by doing’. When action is necessary, but basic biological information and an understanding of appropriate management strategies are lacking, adaptive management enables managers to be proactive in spite of uncertainty. However, regardless of the strengths of adaptive management, the development of an effective adaptive management framework is challenging. In a review of 53 State Wildlife Action Plans, I found a keen awareness by planners that adaptive management was an effective method for addressing biodiversity conservation, but the development and incorporation of explicit adaptive management approaches within each plan remained elusive. Only w25% of the plans included a framework for how adaptive management would be implemented at the project level within their state. There was, however, considerable support across plans for further development and implementation of adaptive management. By furthering the incorporation of adaptive management principles in conservation plans and explicitly outlining the decision making process, states will be poised to meet the pending challenges to biodiversity conservation.

Designing & Facilitating Collaborative Learning Networks. A toolkit - Folsom, Amanda (Results for Development, 2023)
Collaborative Learning — an approach which brings together people who face common challenges to share knowledge and jointly problem-solve — is a powerful way to support locally-led development and achieve impact. It provides a structured process in which change agents determine priorities, set the learning agenda, work together to identify strategies to address complex challenges, and provide ongoing implementation support to one another. Collaborative Learning — unlike traditional approaches to technical assistance — centers the expertise of local change agents and captures the valuable tacit knowledge of practitioners to advance systems change. This toolkit synthesizes lessons, tips, and tools accumulated from more than a decade of experience designing and facilitating over 20 Collaborative Learning Networks. The lead author was Amanda Folsom, Senior Program Director and Collaborative Learning Practice Lead, Results for Development (R4D). The toolkit benefited from the contributions of many R4D colleagues, including Katie Bowman, Cheryl Cashin, Tanya Jones, Gina Lagomarsino, Agnes Munyua, Maria Jose Pastor, and Abeba Taddese. R4D has not done this alone. The lessons and examples are drawn from our work with many network partners from the Joint Learning Network for Universal Health Coverage (JLN), Linked Immunisation Action Network (Linked), Health Systems Strengthening Accelerator, Strategic Purchasing Africa Resource Center (SPARC), the Primary Health Care Performance Initiative (PHCPI), the Partnership for Evidence and Equity in Responsive Social Systems (PEERSS), and the School Action Learning Exchange (SALEX), to name a few. We are grateful for the thought partnership and support of our partners and funders, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gavi, Hewlett Foundation, Jacobs Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and World Bank.

The Principle of the Malevolent Hiding Hand; or, the Planning Fallacy Writ Large - Flyvbjerg, Bent; Sunstein, Cass R. (Soocial Research, 2016)
We identify and document a new principle of economic behavior: the principle of the Malevolent Hiding Hand. In a famous discussion, Albert Hirschman celebrated the Hiding Hand, which he saw as a benevolent mechanism by which unrealistically optimistic planners embark on unexpectedly challenging plans, only to be rescued by human ingenuity, which they could not anticipate, but which ultimately led to success, principally in the form of unexpectedly high net benefits. Studying eleven projects, Hirschman suggested that the Hiding Hand is a general phenomenon. But the Benevolent Hiding Hand has an evil twin, the Malevolent Hiding Hand, which blinds excessively optimistic planners not only to unexpectedly high costs but also to unexpectedly low net benefits. Studying a much larger sample than Hirschman did, we find that the Malevolent Hiding Hand is common and that the phenomenon that Hirschman identified is rare. This sobering finding suggests that Hirschman’s phenomenon is a special case; it attests to the pervasiveness of the planning fallacy, writ very large. One implication involves the continuing need to de-bias decisions and decision support tools like cost-benefit analysis; another is that accountability for decision makers, planners, and forecasters is required for such de-biasing to be effective and lasting.
Keywords: Behavioral economics; Cost-benefit analysis; Hiding hand; Planning fallacy

How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration - Flyvbjerg, Bent; Gardner, Dan (Macmillan, 2023)
World expert Bent Flyvbjerg and bestselling author Dan Gardner reveal the secrets to successfully planning and delivering ambitious projects on any scale.Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant new reality. Think of how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to an enormously successful product launch in eleven months. But such successes are the exception. Consider how London’s Crossrail project delivered five years late and billions over budget. More modest endeavours, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why?Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg. In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors that lead projects to fail, and the research-based principles that will make yours succeed:- Understand your odds. If you don’t know them, you won’t win.- Plan slow, act fast. Getting to the action quick feels right. But it’s wrong.- Think right to left. Start with your goal, then identify the steps to get there.- Find your Lego. Big is best built from small.- Master the unknown unknowns. Most think they can’t, so they fail. Flyvbjerg shows how you can.Full of vivid examples ranging from the building of the Sydney Opera House to the making of the latest Pixar blockbusters, How Big Things Get Done reveals how to get any ambitious project done – on time and on budget.

Why your IT project may be riskier than you think - Flyvbjerg, Bent; Budzier, Alexander (Harvard Business Review, 2011)
New research shows surprisingly high numbers of out-of-control tech projects—ones that can sink entire companies and careers.

Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research - Flyvbjerg, Bent (Qualitative Inquiry, 2006)
This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Survival of the unfittest: why the worst infrastructure gets built—and what we can do about it - Flyvbjerg, Bent (Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 2009)

The Fallacy of Beneficial Ignorance: A Test of Hirschman's Hiding Hand - Flyvbjerg, Bent (World Development, 2016)
Albert O. Hirschman's principle of the Hiding Hand stands stronger and more celebrated today than ever. The principle states that ignorance is good in planning,
Keywords: Behavioral economics; Development; Hiding hand; Ignorance; Management

Addressing gender in impact evaluation: What should be considered? - Fletcher, Gillian (Methods Lab, 2015)
Gender and sexuality are intimately entwined; we must not lose sight of the ways in which gender affects non-heterosexual people, transgender people and people who do not identify as either male or female. • Gender and gender-related injustice is a feature of all interventions, whatever the focus, be it agriculture, capacity building, disaster management, education, health, peace building, water, sanitation and hygiene, or other. • Showing an increase in the number of women participants in an intervention is not the same as demonstrating gender impact. An ‘add women and stir’ approach is not good enough. • A good intervention design will identify critical inequalities and conduct a needs assessment that clearly identifies gender-related issues. If this needs assessment feeds directly into the programme theory, it will facilitate assessment of the intervention’s gender-related impact and will be more likely it is to have positive gender-related impact.

A Better Approach to After-Action Reviews - Fletcher, Angus; Cline, Preston B.; Hoffman, Matthew (Harvard Business Review, 2023)
In the decades since the Army created the After Action Review (AAR), businesses have embraced the practice as a way of learning from both failure and success. But all too often the practice gets reduced to nothing more than a pro forma exercise. The authors of this article describe the history and philosophy of the original AAR, debunk three myths about the practice that impede its proper use, and finally suggest three improvements that can help business leaders make the most of it.
Section: Collaboration and teams
Keywords: Collaboration and teams; Crisis management; Project management

Gendered voices for climate action - Fisher, Susannah; Shakya, Clare (iied Working Paper, 2018)
Including local women and men who have experienced the impacts of climate change in decision-making forums is key to developing a just process hearing local voices and experiences. The Paris Agreement signs up the international community to delivering countrydriven, gender-responsive climate action. Including local women and men will be critical to this transition and to achieving the scale and pace of change needed through both procedural and distributional justice. However, there is scarce evidence on how these voices and experiences can impact on and strengthen climate responses, or how best to enable and facilitate this participation.

The usability of climate information in sub-national planning in India, Kenya and Uganda: the role of social learning and intermediary organisations - Fisher, Susannah; Dodman, David; Epp, Marissa Van; Garside, Ben (Climatic Change, 2018)
Abstract Research on using climate information has often focused on the interaction between users and producers and the technical fit of information for real decision-making. However, due to resource and capacity constraints within both user and producer communities, this approach will not always be feasible or indeed necessary depending on the decisions at hand. These contexts have been relatively under-explored by scholars, and this paper provides an original empirical contribution using three case studies of sub-national governments in India, Kenya and Uganda. In the paper, we analyse how social learning supports changing the usability of climate information and the role of intermediary organisations in these processes. Firstly, the paper shows that intermediaries often choose to build the commitment to project aims rather than using climate information as an entry point to working on climate change, and this allows them to instigate challenging learning processes. Secondly, there are barriers to iterative processes and critical reflection with government stakeholders but these processes can gain traction when built into institutional practices such as formal M&E processes. Lastly, social learning can broaden the framing of climate change from a single sector issue to a multi-sectoral one. We conclude by arguing that bringing together scholarship on social learning with that on the usability of climate information can deepen understanding of the dynamic context in which the information becomes usable. The evidence from the case studies shows that learning processes can alter this context across scales.

Urban climate change adaptation as social learning: Exploring the process and politics - Fisher, Susannah; Dodman, David (Environmental Policy and Governance, 2019)
Responses to climate change that build on adaptive natural resource management conceptualise social learning processes as having the potential to form a key component of climate adaptation. Social learning processes represent a way of managing the inherent uncertainties and interconnectedness of adaptation issues through ongoing learning, iterative reflection, and change of responses over time. Although the theoretical case is emerging for social learning as adaptation, there is limited empirical evidence of how these processes play out as local governments engage in urban adaptation planning. This paper starts to address this gap by examining social learning processes in two cities in India. We show how the social learning processes interact with complex governance contexts in the two cities and how evidence of outcomes is emerging across individuals, networks, and systems. We go on to argue that there are several areas of social learning that need further theorisation to support its application in the urban context. First, theories of social learning need to allow for unequal power relationships to continue to shape learning processes and take into account structural and historical dynamics as well as relational forms of power. Second, the way that scale is understood needs to be reopened as a point of analysis to understand how scalar concepts are used by actors to frame and locate problems and solutions rather than being understood as fixed and immutable.
Keywords: Climate change; India; Social learning; governance; urban planning

Importing Democracy: The Role of NGO's in South Africa, Tajikistan, & Argentina - Fisher, Julie (Kettering Foundation Press, 2013)
While street protesters demanding democratic reforms make headlines in the international news, Importing Democracy: The Role of NGOs in South Africa, Tajikistan, and Argentina, written by Julie Fisher and published by the Kettering Foundation Press, focuses on a quieter movement led by democratization NGOs. In South Africa, the Good Governance Learning Network shares participatory tools to make local governments more responsive. In Tajikistan, Jahan teaches local police about human rights. In Argentina, seven democratization NGOs sponsor public deliberations in local communities and have organized a nationwide citizens network to combat municipal government corruption. The book is organized around three chapters for each country, South Africa, Tajikistan, and Argentina. The first chapter of each country s section begins with the historical, political, and economic context and continues with a discussion of the general contours of civil society. The second chapter in each section deals with the role of democratization NGOs in promoting both loyal opposition and law-based civil liberties. The third chapter focuses on their role in promoting political culture and political participation. Loyal opposition and law-based civil liberties help define democratization at the national level, whereas changes in political culture and increased political participation often occur throughout society. Following the nine country chapters, the book concludes with a comparative overview and implications for international policy. Fisher, a former Kettering Foundation program officer, writes that the idea that democracy can be exported has lost credibility in recent years. In many countries, however, democratization NGOs are importing democratic ideas and recovering local democratic traditions.

Adaptive Management in the Courts - Fischman, Robert L.; Ruhl, J.B. (Minnesota Law Review, 2010)
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 resources policy, which has always been about balancing competing claims to nature’s bounty, something more and better? Many legal and policy scholars have asked that question, with mixed reviews. Their evaluations, however, have rested on theory, program-specific surveys, and isolated case studies. This article provides the first comprehensive review of adaptive management from the perspective that likely matters most to the natural resource agencies practicing adaptive management - how is it faring in the courts? Part I of the Article examines the theory, policy, and practice of adaptive management, focusing on the experience of the federal resource management agencies. The end product in practice is something we call “a m-lite,” a watered down version of the theory that resembles ad hoc contingency planning more than it does planned “learning while doing.” This gap between theory and practice leads to profound disparities between how agencies justify decisions and how adaptive management in practice arrives at the courthouse doorsteps. In Part II we review how these disparities have played out in courts considering claims that agency practice of adaptive management has not lived up to its theoretical promise or to the legal demands of substantive and procedural environmental law. We extract three key themes from the body of case law in this respect. Part III extends from the existing case law to draw lessons for agencies and Congress about the future practice of adaptive management. Our ultimate message to agencies is that a m-lite can be an effective decision method - and one that survives judicial scrutiny - but agencies must be more disciplined about its design and implementation. This includes resisting the temptation to employ adaptive management to dodge burdensome procedural requirements, substantive management criteria, and contentious stakeholder participation. If faithfully followed and enforced, this model, despite its flaws, could serve as an important component of natural resources policy to confront problems of the future as daunting as climate change.

Beyond Participation and Accountability: Theorizing Representation in Local Democracy - Fischer, Harry W. (World Development, 2016)
Recent decades have seen growing emphasis on enhancing public participation and accountability in governance processes. Yet the valence of these discussions has focused almost entirely on the character of citizen engagement itself, with little attention to the ways in which citizens’ agency is constituted in relation to changing forms of public authority. In this paper, I advance a theoretical account of political representation, a concept that is central to analysis of democracy, but which has seen only limited attention in the scholarship on democratic decentralization. I draw on two contrasting models—selection and sanction—to elaborate an understanding of representation that recognizes both mechanisms that enable citizens to hold their leaders to account as well as the character of leaders’ own intrinsic motivations. Through a qualitative account of three decades’ political change from a locality in the Indian Himalayas, I document a gradual process of institutional and social change that has enabled a new generation of more diverse elected leaders to ascend to positions of elected authority, including many from historically marginalized sections of society. By examining the experiences of three such individuals in detail, I demonstrate the importance of understanding who leaders are and what they do—their skills and aspirations, their identity and aﬃliations, and the kinds of representative relationships that they embody. Placing the selection and sanction models in dialog reveals new and productive avenues to explore the interplay between external incentive structures and leaders’ intrinsic motivations in shaping broader process of political change.

Evaluating Countering Violent Extremism: Practice and Progress - Fink, Naureen Chowdhury; Romaniuk, Peter; Barakat, Rafia (Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, 2013)

Learning to Adapt: Exploring Knowledge, Information and Data for Adaptive Programmes and Policies - Workshop Summary Report - fhi360 (IDS, 2015)
Adaptive management is increasingly seen as critical capability for development programmes and policies that are more effective, efficient, relevant and sustainable. There is increasing recognition that such work requires significant changes to the organizational structures, management processes, accountability and performance cultures and indivi

FeverBee’s Online Community Strategy Template - FeverBee (FeverBee, 2018)

Survey Template - Help decide the future of the [name] Community Survey - FeverBee (FeverBee, 2018)

Empowerment evaluation - Fettermen, David (2014)

Empowerment Evaluation Blog - Fetterman, David (2006)
This blog, by Dr David Fetterman, provides a range of resources on empowerment evaluation theory and practice. The blog includes links to videos, guides and relevant academic literature that provide a detailed analysis and discussion of using empowerment evaluation.

Hacking by the prompt: Innovative ways to utilize ChatGPT for evaluators - Ferretti, Silva (New Directions for Evaluation, 2023)
“Hacking by the prompt”—writing simple yet creative conversational instructions in ChatGPT's message window—revealed many valuable additions to the evaluator's toolbox for all stages of the evaluation process. This includes the production of terms of reference and proposals for the dissemination of final reports. ChatGPT does not come with an instruction book, so evaluators must experiment creatively to understand its potential. The surprising performance of ChatGPT leads to the question: will it eventually substitute for evaluators? By describing ChatGPT through four personality characteristics (pedantic, “I know it all,” meek, and “speech virtuoso”), this article provides case examples of the potential and pitfall of ChatGPT in transforming evaluation practice. Anthropomorphizing ChatGPT is debatable, but the result is clear: tongue-in-cheek personality characteristics helped hack ChatGPT more creatively while remaining aware of its challenges. This article combines practical ideas with deeper reflection on evaluation. It concludes that ChatGPT can substitute for evaluators when evaluations mostly focus on paperwork and conventional approaches “by the book” (an unfortunate trend in the sector). ChatGPT cannot substitute engagement with reality and critical thinking. Will ChatGPT then be a stimulus to rediscover the humanity and the reality we lost in processes?
_eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ev.20557

Measuring the Barriers to Big Data for Development: design-reality gap analysis - Fernando Gomez, L.; Heeks, R. (Manchester University Development Informatics Working Paper Series, 2016)

Adaptive Management and Social Learning in Collaborative and Community-Based Monitoring: a Study of Five Community-Based Forestry Organizations in the western USA - Fernandez-Gimenez, Maria; Ballard, Heidi; Sturtevant, Victoria (Ecology and Society, 2008)
Fernandez-Gimenez, M. E., H. L. Ballard, and V. E. Sturtevant. 2008. Adaptive management and social learning in collaborative and community-based monitoring: a study of five community-based forestry organizations in the western USA. Ecology and Society 13(2): 4. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-02400-130204

Development and radical uncertainty - Feinstein, Osvaldo (Development in Practice, 2020)
Development strategies, programmes and projects are designed making assumptions concerning several variables such as future prices of outputs and inputs, exchange rates and productivity growth. However, knowledge about the future is limited. Uncertainty prevails. The usual approach to deal with uncertainty is to reduce it to risk. Uncertainty is perceived as a negative factor that should and can be eliminated. This article presents an alternative approach which recognises that radical uncertainty is irreducible to risk, identifying a positive dimension of uncertainty and showing its implications for development practice.
Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2020.1763258

Adaptive Development Switchboard - Final Report (Internal Document) - Feedback Labs (LearnAdapt Programme, 2018)

Switchboard Survey Analysis (Internal Document) - Feedback Labs (LearnAdapt Programme, 2018)

FCDO Beneficiary Engagement - FCDO (FCDO, 2021)
This guide has been developed to help build confidence and capability, distilling useful tips and considerations that may help teams think through programme delivery issues and interpret elements of the PrOF Rules. This PrOF Guide lays out: - The definition of beneficiary engagement. - The case for beneficiary engagement. - FCDO’s approach to beneficiary engagement. - Practical tips for how to integrate beneficiary engagement throughout the programme cycle, including guiding questions to ask, rules of thumb to apply, tools to use and challenges and special topics to consider during Design, Mobilisation, Delivery and Closure phases. At its core, beneficiary engagement is about processes that recognise the dignity and support the agency of the people whose lives we are trying to improve. It is about beneficiaries and programme constituents having a say over what assistance they receive and how they receive it. It is about engaging beneficiaries and programme constituents as people with valuable insights and capabilities, rather than a compliance exercise. It is about empowering all beneficiaries and programme constituents to improve their lives by engaging them in helping us make better design and delivery decisions for the programmes that affect their lives. It’s about ensuring that a diverse set of voices are heard. Harnessing the power of beneficiary engagement can also improve outcomes and help programmes reach them more efficiently. It helps define and promote Value for Money, improve transparency and ensure that beneficiaries are safe from harm and empowered to speak out wherever harm does occur. Beneficiary engagement is supported by FCDO policy commitments, PrOF Rules, internal guidance and key international commitments. Beneficiary engagement is applicable to, and valuable in, a range of contexts, including humanitarian contexts. Beneficiary engagement requires time and resources, but programmes can help ensure the benefits of engagement outweigh the costs by Doing No Harm, Engaging Early and Closing the Loop. It is ultimately the Programme Responsible Owner’s responsibility to determine what beneficiary engagement is suitable and feasible for a programme. Quality beneficiary engagement is not about applying the one “right” approach but rather thoughtfully considering key questions and applying key principles and proven tools to the programme’s context to achieve a programme that supports the dignity and agency of all beneficiaries as much as possible.

FCDO Programme Operating Framework - FCDO (FCDO, 2021)
The Programme Operating Framework (PrOF) sets the standard for how the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) delivers its programmes and projects.

Development entrepreneurship: how donors and leaders can foster institutional change - Faustino, Jaime; Booth, David (The Asia Foundation, 2014)
Various communities of practice have been established recently to advance the general idea of thinking and working politically in development agencies. This paper makes a contribution by describing the practice of what has been called development entrepreneurship and explaining some of the ideas from outside the field of development that have inspired it.

How to design and plan public engagement processes: a handbook - Faulkner, Wendy; Bynner, Claire (What Works Scotland, 2020)
There is a growing hunger for more, and more meaningful, citizen participation in decisions that affect our lives. Across the world, calls for open government, workplace democracy, community empowerment are gaining support, as are innovative developments in deliberative democracy. The current COVID-19 pandemic makes these calls more pressing than ever, given the deepening inequalities it has caused and the complex challenges of building a progressive road out of the crisis. So, now more than ever we need people capable of designing and planning public engagement processes that are empowering and worthwhile. Experienced practitioners know that, without considerable forethought, care and preparation, public engagement processes risk achieving little or, worse, alienating people so that they never engage (with you or anyone else) again. This Handbook seeks to deepen people’s skills in designing and planning effective public engagement processes, by providing a structured four-stage framework for tackling the task. It draws on the authors’ extensive practical experience of training and working with public engagement facilitators across sectors as well as international expertise. You may be a citizen, a community or public engagement practitioner, an elected or government representative, or some other sponsoring organisation or stakeholder. You may be new to this kind of work or experienced but wanting to review and improve your practice. Or you may be studying public participation in democratic processes. Wherever you are coming from, and whatever type of public engagement you are doing, this Handbook promises to be a useful addition to your toolbox.

Food security indicators - FAO (ESS Website, 2018)

'Development': A visual story of shifting power - Faciolince, Maria; Obando, Hansel (From Poverty to Power, 2021)
The work of shifting power is fundamentally the work of changing our gaze. People act on how they see, and to change how we see, is to radically change how we act. By not exploring other forms of expressing, looking and creating, we’re limiting ourselves. The development space is fixated on the written word. ... This exhibit, called “‘Development’: a visual story of shifting power”, tells the story of ‘development’, from its origin to its current challenge, from its contradictions to its possible horizons. Our guiding principles were the twin notions of decolonization and intersectionality: moving away from the unequal power structures that reinforce legacies of colonialism, and advancing explicitly anti-racist and feminist agendas.

The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development: Playing the Game to Change the Rules? - Eyben, Rosalind; Guijt, Irene; Roche, Chris; Shutt, Cathy (Practical Action Publishing, 2015)
Understanding and demonstrating the effectiveness of efforts to improve the lives of those living in poverty is an essential part of international development practice. But who decides what counts as good or credible evidence? Can the drive to measure results do justice to and promote transformational change change that challenges the power relations that produce and reproduce inequality, injustice and the non-fulfillment of human rights? The Politics of Evidence in International Development provides a critical examination of the results agenda, with practical strategies for rendering it more helpful in supporting transformative development. The book deconstructs the origins and concepts of the results and evidence agendas employed in international development. It describes with concrete examples the current effects and consequences of the agenda, and goes on to outline a range of strategies used by individuals and organizations to resist, adapt or comply with the useful and problematic demands for results-oriented measurement and evidence of value for money."

Donors' Learning Difficulties: Results, Relationships and Responsibilities - Eyben, Rosalind (IDS Bulletin, 2005)

How do we know what works? Interview with Prof. Michael Woolcock, Lead Social Scientist at the World Bank - Evans, Alice (2018)
Dr Alice Evans and leading experts discuss growth, governance, & gender inequalities. Alice is a Lecturer at King's College London, and Faculty Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School.
2018-03-17

Is there a new Washington Consensus? An analysis of five World Development Reports - Evans, Alice (From Poverty to Power, 2017)
Is there a new Washington Consensus? Alice Evans analyses the last five World Development Reports and finds significant changes in orthodoxy, but also big gaps

'Leaving No One Behind': Why Ideas Matter - Evans, Alice (2016)

A systematic review of adaptations of evidence-based public health interventions globally - Escoffery, Cam; Lebow-Skelley, E.; Haardoerfer, R.; Boing, E.; Udelson, H.; Wood, R.; Hartman, M.; Fernandez, M. E.; Mullen, P. D. (Implementation Science, 2018)
Adaptations of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) often occur. However, little is known about the reasons for adaptation, the adaptation process, and outcomes of adapted EBIs. To address this gap, we conducted a systematic review to answer the following questions: (1) What are the reasons for and common types of adaptations being made to EBIs in community settings as reported in the published literature? (2) What steps are described in making adaptations to EBIs? and (3) What outcomes are assessed in evaluations of adapted EBIs?

Participatory Budgeting in Scotland: An overview of strategic design choices and principles for effective delivery - Escobar, Oliver; Harkins, Chris (2015)
Description

Desired and unwanted: Policy work by participation practitioners - Escobar, Óliver (2012)
"This paper presents findings from doctoral research in a Scottish Local Authority Area, where I am developing an interpretive ethnography of ‘the work of participation’ (cf. Colebatch, 2005c, 2006). My focus is on engagement practitioners:
Keywords: Academia; Biology; Computer Science; Earth Sciences; Geography; History; Law; Math; Medicine; Philosophy; Physics; Political science; Psychology; Religion; Research; economics; universities

Peacebuilding design, monitoring, and evaluation: A Training Package for participants and trainers at intermediate to advanced levels - Ernstorfer, Anita; Barnard-Webster, Kiely (Carnegie Corporation, 2019)
This training package includes 7 Training Modules and a set of Annexes (Annexes A-O). The Training Modules build on each other and should ideally be used in a sequenced way in a training setting. However, for groups with specific training needs around particular areas, modules can also be used individually, but need to be tailored by the trainers and facilitators to meet the needs of specific audiences. The annexes provide worksheets and hand-outs that can be used as resources during the training for specific modules and exercises.

Rethinking Participation and Re-enacting Its Dilemmas? Aarhus 2017 and “The Playful Society” - Eriksson, Birgit; Stephensen, Jan Løhmann (Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation, 2016)
In 2012 the Danish city of Aarhus was appointed European Capital of Culture for 2017. The appointment was based on an ambitious programme that – under the headline Rethink – tried to set an agenda of societal transformation, mainly by seeking to increase the impact of art and culture, and to enhance civic participation at all levels of society. In this article we examine one of the first attempts of Aarhus 2017 to realize these grand ambitions: ‘The Playful Society’, a series of micro grants aimed at enabling young people to make their own art/culture projects and participate in the overall Rethink project. Informed by theoretical distinctions between different forms of participation, and the diverse interests invested in participatory processes, we investigate how the young cultural entrepreneurs and the artistic administrators of Aarhus 2017 separately, in conjunction, and sometimes even in opposition to each other, translated these overall ambitions into practice. We argue that they illuminate some of the dilemmas of contemporary cultural participation, including the importance of question- ing who participates in what, how they do it, and in what context.
Keywords: Cultural Entrepreneurship; Participation; youth

Towards an evidence base on the value of social learning-oriented approaches in the context of climate change and food security - Epp, Marissa Van; Garside, Ben (Environmental Policy and Governance, 2019)
Attention to social learning's potential to improve development outcomes in the context of climate change and food security challenges is growing. Yet evidence supporting the wide range of assertions about the outcomes of social learning processes is insufficient. More work is needed to understand when and how a social learning-oriented approach is effective. We respond to the gap in evidence by piloting the Climate Change and Social Learning initiative's monitoring and evaluation framework for social learning. Our objectives are to begin building an evidence base and to test the theory of change behind the framework. Using a peer-assist approach, we apply the framework to eight case studies in partnership with five initiatives. We analyse trends in evidence gathered across the case studies in four dimensions of social learning (engagement, iterative learning, capacity development, and challenging institutions) along three dimensions of change (process, learning outcomes, and changes in values and practice).
Keywords: Climate change adaptation; Monitoring and Evaluation; Social learning; food security

Framework for the Biodiversity Cross-Mission Learning Program - Environmental Incentives; Foundations of Success; ICF International (USAID, 2015)
USAID’s Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and the Environment/Office of Forestry and Biodiversity (E3/FAB) launched the five-year Measuring Impact program (MI) to help strengthen USAID’s biodiversity programs by building the capacity of the Agency to design, monitor, and evaluate effective programs and by enhancing the evidence base that informs programming decisions. A core programmatic strategy of MI is to “Improve Biodiversity Conservation Approaches” with the life-of-project (LOP) objective that E3/FAB and the Missions engaged with MI have a greater understanding of conditions under which commonly deployed conservation strategic approaches are effective. To accomplish this, MI is working with E3/FAB to design and implement a Biodiversity Cross-Mission Learning Program (Learning Program) to systematically capture and share lessons on theories of change1 (TOCs) for common conservation strategic approaches in the USAID biodiversity portfolio.

Summary of Indicators for Combating Wildlife Trafficking - Environmental Incentives; Foundations of Success; ICF International (USAID, 2015)
USAID's Measuring Impact conducted a survey and analysis of existing wildlife crime indicators to inform the development of USAID indicators and build the evidence base for better alignment of the Agency’s monitoring efforts with best practices. This report summarizes the search strategy and main results of the survey.

Social learning and climate change adaptation: evidence for international development practice - Ensor, Jonathan; Harvey, Blane (Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2015)
The potential for social learning to address complex, interconnected social and environmental challenges, such as climate change adaptation, is receiving increasing attention in research and practice. Social learning approaches vary, but commonly include cycles of knowledge sharing and joint action to co-create knowledge, relationships, and practices among diverse stakeholders. This results in learning and change that goes beyond the individual into communities, networks, or systems. Many authors have focused on analysis of case studies to better understand the contexts in which such learning occurs. In this paper, we look across this literature to draw out lessons for international development practice. To support those looking to purposively design social learning interventions for adaptation, we focus on four areas: lessons learned and the principles adopted when using a social learning approach, examples of tools and methods used, approaches to evaluating social learning, and examples of its impact. While we identify important lessons for practice within each of these areas, three cross-cutting themes emerge. These are: the importance of developing a shared view among those initiating learning processes of how change might happen and of how social learning fits within it, linking this locus of desired change to the tools employed; the centrality of skilled facilitation and in particular how practitioners may shift toward being participants in the collective learning process; and the need to attend to social difference, recognizing the complexity of social relations and the potential for less powerful actors to be co-opted in shared decision making. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:509–522. doi: 10.1002/wcc.348 This article is categorized under: Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Learning from Cases and Analogies Climate and Development > Knowledge and Action in Development

Responding to change: Learning to adapt in development cooperation - Engel, Paul; Keijzer, Niels; Ørnemark, Charlotte (ECDPM, 2007)

Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance - Elstub, Stephen; Escobar, Oliver (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019)
Democratic innovations are proliferating in politics, governance, policy, and public administration. These new processes of public participation are reimagining the relationship between citizens and institutions. This Handbook advances understanding of democratic innovations, in theory and practice, by critically reviewing their importance throughout the world. The overarching themes are a focus on citizens and their relationship to these innovations, and the resulting effects on political equality. The Handbook therefore offers a definitive overview of existing research on democratic innovations, while also setting the agenda for future research and practice.
Google-Books-ID: P7bEDwAAQBAJ
Keywords: Democracy; Public Affairs & Administration

A reliability and validity study of the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills—Modified - Elliot, Jacquelyn; Lee, Steven W; Tollefson, Nona (School Psychology Review, 2001)
Examined the psychometric properties of a set of preliteracy measures modified from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) with a sample of 75 kindergarten students. The modified battery (called DIBELS—M) includes measures of Letter Naming Fluency, Sound Naming Fluency, Initial Phoneme Ability, and Phonemic Segmentation Ability. These measures were assessed through repeated administrations in 2-wk intervals at the end of the kindergarten year. Results indicate interrater reliability estimates and coefficients of stability and equivalence for 3 of the measures ranged from .80 to the mid .90s with about one-half of the coefficients above .90. Correlations between DIBELS—M scores and criterion measures of phonological awareness, standardized achievement measures, and teacher ratings of achievement yielded concurrent validity coefficients ranging from .60 to .70. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that the 4 DIBELS—M measures accounted for 73% of the variance in scores on the Skills Cluster of the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery—Revised. The contributions of the study, including psychometric analysis of the DIBELS—M with a new sample and formation of composite scores, are discussed in relation to the extant literature.

Should development agencies have official views? - Ellerman, David (Development in Practice, 2002)

Systems change: A guide to what it is and how to do it - Ellen Harries; Rachel Wharton; Rob Abercrombie (NPC, 2015)
Systems change has been attracting the attention of those in the social sector who want to deal with the root causes of problems, but, despite the buzz, much of what is written is abstract in tone. With the support of LankellyChase Foundation we have produced this guide to plug a gap in the systems change literature—providing accessible material and recommendations for action. Systems change has been attracting the attention of a range of progressive charities, funders and practitioners who are interested in dealing with the root causes of social problems. But while there is a buzz about a subject relatively new to the social sector, it is easy to feel frustrated by the literature—much of what is written is abstract in tone and there are few examples of success. We have produced this paper to address this problem and offer accessible material and recommendations for action. This systems change guide: Clarifies what is meant by systems and systems change Describes the main perspectives on systems change Outlines good practice for systems change Identifies what is and is not agreed upon by experts in the field Provides recommendations for charities, funders and the public sector on how to act systemically. We hope this presents a manageable introduction to the systems change field, especially for those new to it, and also guides those interested in acting systemically to improve the lives of people in need. Our conclusion is that although it may not be as novel as some claim, there is a good deal of value in a systems change approach and it offers a welcome reminder of what effective action looks like when it comes to the pursuit of social change.

Humanitarian Innovation Guide - ELHRA (2018)
The Humanitarian Innovation Guide is a growing online resource to help individuals and organisations define humanitarian problems and successfully develop innovative solutions. ABOUT THE GUIDE The humanitarian sector is investing in exciting innovations, but it is not yet producing a steady pipeline of well-designed solutions that effectively address problems, evidence their impact, and have the potential to be scaled. As stated in a recent independent evaluation of the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (Triple Line, 2017), a review of the innovation ecosystem in 2015 found significant gaps in resources for innovation, including a shortage of guidance on the skills needed to manage successful innovation projects. These findings were echoed in the research carried out to inform this resource. As part of a grant agreement with the European Commission to provide financial and technical support to emerging humanitarian innovations, and in line with our strategic aim to develop the sector’s skills and capabilities in humanitarian innovation, this resource aims to translate our own learning, along with learning from across the sector, into a practical, grounded guide for innovators working in humanitarian contexts. Building on our unique position in the sector, the Humanitarian Innovation Guide is designed to provide targeted support to individuals and organisations attempting to develop innovative solutions to the challenges facing humanitarian assistance, resulting in a more effective humanitarian response. The Guide is written with two audiences in mind: humanitarian practitioners who are seeking to develop a new approach to their work and want to apply an innovation lens to solving problems; and social entrepreneurs from outside the sector who have identified an opportunity to engage with the sector and need a humanitarian framework to contextualise their innovation plans. We also hope that it will be a useful resource for innovation managers who are tasked with supporting innovation in their agencies, labs or networks. As the first step-by-step guide to managing innovation in the humanitarian sector, we hope that its continued development will better enable individuals, organisations and the wider sector to: Plan the activities involved in an innovation process and systematise the management of innovation. Manage a successful innovation project and generate evidence for innovation. Ensure that innovations are developed in an ethical way, with full consideration of risks and responsibilities.

Information lives of the poor: fighting poverty with technology - Elder, Laurent; Samarajiva, Rohan; Gillwald, Alison; Galperin, Hernan (2014)

Smart Environmental Monitoring Using Wireless Sensor Networks - El-Bendary, Nashwa; Fouad, Mohamed; Ramadan, Rabie; Banerjee, Soumya; Hassanien, Aboul (Wireless Sensor Networks, 2013)

Strategy as Simple Rules - Eisenhardt, Kathleen M.; Sull, Donald (Harvard Business Review, 2001)
When the business landscape was simple, companies could afford to have complex strategies. But now that business is so complex, they need to simplify. Smart companies have done just that with a new approach: a few straightforward, hard-and-fast rules that define direction without confining it.
Keywords: Entrepreneurial management; Internet; Strategy; Strategy execution

Addressing Maladaptive Coping Strategies of Local Communities to Changes in Ecosystem Service Provisions Using the DPSIR Framework - Ehara, Makoto; Hyakumura, Kimihiko; Sato, Ren'ya; Kurosawa, Kiyoshi; Araya, Kunio; Sokh, Heng; Kohsaka, Ryo (Ecological Economics, 2018)
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 by changes in ecosystem service provisions has not been fully addressed. This limits the framework's validity in categorizing and disseminating information for addressing particular environmental challenges. Herein, we address this problem by analyzing a case study of deforestation and its impact on non-timber forest product collections by rural residents in Cambodia. We incorporate the concept of maladaptive coping strategies into the DPSIR framework and then further elaborate Ness et al.'s (2010) approach of merging the DPSIR framework with Hägerstrand's (2001) system of nested spatial domains. This conceptualizes the incorporation of the aggregated informal responses into the system, as exemplified in the case study.
Keywords: DPSIR framework; Ecosystem services; Maladaptive coping strategy; Nested spatial domains

edX MOOC: Adaptive Leadership in Development - edX (edX, 2016)
Gain the skills to be an adaptive leader in development and learn how to uncover local solutions to complex problems in developing countries.

Supporting innovation and the use of technologies in accountability initiatives: lessons from Making All Voices Count - Edwards, Duncan; Hudson, Hannah; Anderson, Colin; McGee, Rosemary; Brock, Karen (IDS, 2018)
Making All Voices Count was an international initative that harnessed the power of innovation and new technologies to support effective, accountable governance. Focusing on six countries in Africa and Asia, the programme was implemented by a consortium of implementing partners, and used funding from four donors to make grants to support new ideas that amplified the voices of citizens, and enabled governments to listen and respond. From the start, Making All Voices Count was also a learning programme. The objective of this learning was not only to bring about change during the programme’s life cycle, but also to leave a legacy that would help to ensure that future governance programmes and initiatives seeking to capitalise on the transformative potential of innovation and technology are more informed, inclusive and impactful. This programme learning report emerged from a wider process of analysing, discussing and synthesising the data and learning from the programme, which wove together evidence-based learning about technology for accountable governance initiatives with experiential learning on how best to support such work. The report highlights five of the lessons learned from Making All Voices Count about how – and how not – to run large, complex programmes that intend to support innovation in governance.

Transforming governance: what role for technologies? - Edwards, Duncan; Brock, Karen; McGee, Rosie (MAVC, 2016)
The technological innovations of the last two decades – cell phones, tablets, open data and social media – mean that governments and citizens can interact like never before. Around the world, in different contexts, citizens have fast-increasing access to information and communications technologies (ICTs) that enable them to monitor government performance and express their views on it in real time. In February 2016, a learning event in Manila, convened by Making All Voices Count, brought together 55 researchers and practitioners from 15 countries. They all work on using new technologies for accountable governance. They shared their diverse experiences, reflected on how they approach transformative governance, and visited Filipino accountable governance initiatives. This report shares some of what they learned.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

MAKING - Fostering new ideas for social inclusion and accountable, responsive governance - Edwards, Duncan (MAVC and IDS, 2014)

Understanding the Conditions for fostering the right kind of innovation - Edwards, Duncan (Making All Voices Count, 2014)
MAVC's Duncan Edwards reflects on the first in a series of thematic discussions led by the Institute of Development Studies. The second of two posts.

Systems Thinking. Applied. A primer - Edson, Robert (ASysT Institute, 2008)

It’s About Results at Scale, Not Collective Impact - Edmondson, Jeff; Santhosh-Kumar, Parvathi (Stanford Social Innovation Review, 2017)
Improving outcomes at scale requires a paradigm shift in how we work.

Extreme Teaming: Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership - Edmondson, Amy C.; Harvey, Jean-Francois (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2017)
Extreme Teaming Lessons in Complex, Cross-Sector Leadership Today’s global enterprises increasingly involve collaborative work by teams of experts operating across different professions, organizations, and industries. Extreme Teaming provides new insights into the world of complex, cross industry projects and the ways they must be managed. Leading experts Amy Edmondson and Jean-François Harvey analyze contemporary cases that expose the complex demands of cross-boundary collaboration on management, and inform our understanding of teams. Containing powerful insights and practical guidelines that allow managers to bridge professional divides and organizational boundaries in order to work together effectively, this is a new exploration of the challenges involved in today’s global enterprises. The authors demonstrate that the work done in the modern organization is less and less about looking inward and creating strong teams inside the company, and more about teaming across boundaries – that often are in flux. Extreme Teaming is a must-read book for all courses related to leading open innovation; teamwork and collaboration; project management; and cross-boundary work.

Strategies for learning from failure - Edmondson, Amy C. (Harvard Business Review, 2011)

Teaming: how organizations learn, innovate, and compete in the knowledge economy - Edmondson, Amy C. (Jossey-Bass, 2012)
New breakthrough thinking in organizational learning, leadership, and change Continuous improvement, understanding complex systems, and promoting innovation are all part of the landscape of learning challenges today's companies face. Amy Edmondson shows that organizations thrive, or fail to thrive, based on how well the small groups within those organizations work. In most organizations, the work that produces value for customers is carried out by teams, and increasingly, by flexible team-like entities. The pace of change and the fluidity of most work structures means that it's not really about creating effective teams anymore, but instead about leading effective teaming. Teaming shows that organizations learn when the flexible, fluid collaborations they encompass are able to learn. The problem is teams, and other dynamic groups, don't learn naturally. Edmondson outlines the factors that prevent them from doing so, such as interpersonal fear, irrational beliefs about failure, groupthink, problematic power dynamics, and information hoarding. With Teaming, leaders can shape these factors by encouraging reflection, creating psychological safety, and overcoming defensive interpersonal dynamics that inhibit the sharing of ideas. Further, they can use practical management strategies to help organizations realize the benefits inherent in both success and failure. Presents a clear explanation of practical management concepts for increasing learning capability for business results Introduces a framework that clarifies how learning processes must be altered for different kinds of work Explains how Collaborative Learning works, and gives tips for how to do it well Includes case-study research on Intermountain healthcare, Prudential, GM, Toyota, IDEO, the IRS, and both Cincinnati and Minneapolis Children's Hospitals, among others Based on years of research, this book shows how leaders can make organizational learning happen by building teams that learn.

Accountability Myopia: Losing Sight of Organizational Learning - Ebrahim, Alnoor (Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 2005)
This article challenges a normative assumption about accountability in organizations: that more accountability is necessarily better. More specifically, it examines two forms of “myopia” that characterize conceptions of accountability among service-oriented nonprofit organizations: (a) accountability as a set of unconnected binary relationships rather than as a system of relations and (b) accountability as short-term and rule-following behavior rather than as a means to longer-term social change. The article explores the effects of these myopias on a central mechanism of accountability in organizations—evaluation—and proposes a broader view of accountability that includes organizational learning. Future directions for research and practice are elaborated.
Keywords: IMPORTANT

Planners versus Searchers in Foreign Aid - Easterly, William (Asian Development Review, 2006)
Only for the recipients of foreign aid is something akin to central planning seen as a way to achieve prosperity. The end of poverty is achieved with free markets and democracy—where decentralized “searchers” look for ways to meet individual needs—not Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The PRSPs and MDGs create lots of bureaucracy but hold no one specific agency in foreign aid accountable for any one specific task. Planners in foreign aid use the old failed models of the past—the “Financing Gap”, the “poverty trap”, the government-to-government aid model; and the “expenditures = outcomes” mentality. Searchers in foreign aid would imitate the feedback and accountability of markets and democracy to provide goods and services to individuals until homegrown markets and democracy end poverty in the society as a whole. An example of the more promising “searchers” approach in foreign aid is 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate Mohammad Yunus and Grameen Bank.

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good - Easterly, William (Oxford University Press, 2007)
We are all aware of the extreme hunger and poverty that afflict the world's poor. We hear the facts, see the images on television, buy the T-shirt and are moved as individuals and governments to dig deep into our pockets. Yet what happens to all this aid? Why after 50 years and $2.3 trillion are there still children dying for lack of twelve cents medicine? Why are there so many people still living on less than $1 a day without clean water, food, sanitation, shelter, education or medicine? In The White Man's Burden William Easterly, acclaimed author and former economist at the World Bank, addresses these twin tragedies head on. While recognising the energy and compassion behind the campaign to make poverty history he argues urgently and powerfully that grand plans and good intentions are a part of the problem not the solution. Giving aid is not enough, we must ensure that it reaches the people who need it most and the only way to make this happens is through accountability and by learning from past experiences. Without claiming to have all the answers, William Easterly chastises the complacent and patronising attitude of the West that attempts to impose solutions from above. In this book, which is by turns angry, moving, irreverent but always rigorous, he calls on each and everyone of us to take responsibility, whether donors, aid workers or ordinary citizens, so that more aid reaches the people it is supposed to help, the mother who cannot feed her children, the little girl who has to collect firewood rather than go to school, the father who cannot work because he has been crippled by war.