In reaction to Bill, Alan and Nick some thoughts from an NGO perspective
seeing what our own processes and our engagement with bilateral and
multilateral agencies seem to be telling me.
The issue of 'what works' is also getting increasingly tied up with 'who
made it happen' ? the attribution question. The great irony is that
although the rhetoric of being outcome-focused is becoming more prevalent,
at the same time the need to prove what difference and organisations (and
increasingly within organisations individual staff and teams) have
actually made is becoming more common.
Because outcomes are more likely to be achieved with others (individuals or
organisations), or in combination with a morass of other factors, this
actually makes attribution to single actors more difficult, as Alan notes.
This leads to the managerial tendency to focus more on intermediate and
quantitative objectives and targets as measures of performance as they are
more easily attributable to specific actions. This is part of the "what
gets measured gets done" philosophy and usually leads to a plethora of
meaningless targets and milestones being set, precisely because they can be
counted and are more liable to be attributable to a specific set of
actions. This is compounded by what some have called 'Mad Audit Disease'
that can start to undermine the role of professional judgement in arriving
at assessments of progress and change, and which in turn can deeply effect
staff morale and commitment (not just an issue for NGOs but the public
sector more broadly, particularly in the Mad Audit epicentre which seems to
be the UK)).
This process provides incentives to a) downplay or ignore the contribution
of others and b) to stick to intermediate objectives and targets even when
they may not be the most effective means of achieving broader or more
long-term objectives.
So Alan's proposal of sticking to what is inherently valuable is useful,
but yet seems to me insufficient ? e.g. empowering some people is liable to
have negative consequences for others. If your value base is founded on
consequentialist, as opposed to duty bound, ethics surely one should be
concerned about the consequences of that 'inherently valuable' action.
So for me the challenge is twofold
1. Not to solely fall back on a dichotomy based on 'processes' as opposed
to 'results' because very little 'that passes for development activity
actually 'works' in terms of measurable development outcomes attributable
to a particular intervention', but to explore more imaginative means of
understanding how the efforts of several different actors combine with the
'real world' to produce positive or negative change, rather than
desperately trying to prove attribution to particular actors i.e more
'context-in' aproaches i.e. asking what has changed and then why.
2. To promote and align organisational incentives which multiply the
possibility of a) people learning from past experience based on imaginative
ways of doing 1 and b) responding to more 'real-time' feedback from local
context(s) about what seems to 'work' (from both a process and outcome
perspective) from the triangulated perspective of local actors.
Any thoughts on either of these two challenges or any thoughts on why I am
barking up the wrong tree(s) welcome.
Chris Roche
Head of Programme Policy
Oxfam GB
Bill Cooke
<[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask]
Sent by: cc:
Development-Management Subject: What works
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12/11/01 10:49
Please respond to
Development-Management
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Dear all,
message from Nick Hall forwarded below on the above discussion.
Bill
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What works in development?
I recall a challenging reflection on this topic which alludes to Alan
Thomas's questions about the most important development tasks, and who
controls the incentive/reward system. Combining Hirschmann's queries
with recent work on sme savings and loans schemes, and set alongside the
arguably cynical views of an economist at the Bank, one is left
wondering what the answer to the main question could be. I too am
interested to hear what others think.
Hirschmann (1973) queried how much inequality different societies may
tolerate during the process of economic 'development' (change). He used
a motorway traffic jam metaphor: All three lanes are stationary, then
the fast one starts moving. You are in the middle lane. If you believe
your lane will move soon you won't much mind some going much faster than
you. But you get angry if you stay still for long. How do you encourage
patience and temper anger in society?
(Hirschmann, A.O. (1973). The changing tolerance for inequality
in the course of economic development. Qu. Jnl of Economics, 87(4),
544-63.)
Meanwhile, according to a senior WB economist (in discussion at a
seminar on social capital last year), "capitalism needs
poverty as it represents the essential slack or elastic in the
system".
And elaborating on the road rage metaphor, with reference to
studies about sme savings & loans programme : Microcredit programmes
tend to have a beneficial short term (1-2 years) impacts on poverty
levels, but seemingly at the longer term cost of increasing inequality.
In other words, microcredit programmes represent more stretchy elastic,
and encourage patience whilst you wait in the middle lane. They sustain
acquiescence to growth with inequality.
sincerely
Nick Hall
>>
>>Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 14:20:01 +0000
>>Reply-to: Development-Management Mailing List
><[log in to unmask]>
>>From: Alan Thomas <[log in to unmask]>
>>Subject: Re: what works
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>>I have two reactions to Bill's question, at quite different levels.
>>
>>First, Bill's adoption of the Blairite 'What works' slogan is
>>suspiciously close to the formula 'Getting the work done by the best
>>means available' (see my 1996 'What is Development Management?' paper,
>>JiD 8, 1, pp.95-110). This is all very well as far as it goes, i.e. if
>>development management is about the achievement of tasks. But it leaves
>>two important questions out. First, what are the most important tasks,
>>what are the values on which they are based, and how is it decided what
>>are the most useful development interventions? And second, is not the
>>manner in which the tasks are carried out as important as the tasks
>>themselves? Particularly as 'what works' is so uncertain, I would argue
>>for carrying out development tasks in such a way that the doing is
>>intrinsically valuable (e.g. empowering for those involved), even if in
>>the end it doesn't 'work'. After all, on one level very little that
>>passes for development activity actually 'works' in terms of measurable
>>development outcomes attributable to a particular intervention.
>>
>>Second, I must admit to not knowing Kerr's " On the Folly of Rewarding
>>A, While Hoping for B". Can you give us a full reference, Bill? But if
>>the title does encapsulate the paper, it does not sound entirely foolish
>>to me. Quite a lot of things we hope for in development are so
>>intangible that we could hardly run an organization on the basis of a
>>reward system linked directly to the achievement of these intangible
>>aims. If A is a good proxy for B, or if there is a sound reason to
>>believe that achieving A will make it more likely to achieve B, then why
>>not reward A while hoping for B? Of course, this may not be what Kerr
>>is talking about, and there are many other, more contrary, circumstances
>>where people are actually rewarded for things which are counter to their
>>organization's development aims. Another comment on this title is that
>>it sounds as though whoever is doing the rewarding is in complete
>>control of the reward system. Of course, what counts as a reward to a
>>development worker is not entirely in the control of whoever is their
>>boss or runs the organization.
>> So it's more a question of understanding motivation and trying to
>> affect
>>it in a way which does not contradict one's general development goals.
>>
>>I realise I haven't answered Bill's question at all - he was calling for
>>suggestions on 'What works' in terms of theories or models people have
>>found useful. Well, I'd love to hear responses on that, as well as
>>comments on my own views expressed above.
>>
>>Alan
>>
>
Bill Cooke
Director MSc Organizational Change and Development
Lecturer in Change Management/HRD
IDPM, University of Manchester
Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9GH UK
tel: (44) 161 275 2820 fax: (44) 161 273 8829
________________________________________________
for details of IDPM and its programmes see
http://www.man.ac.uk/idpm/
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