Non-Governmental Organizations, Management and Development

David Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135070373
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

Non-Governmental Development Organizations have seen turbulent times over the decades; however, recent years have seen them grow to occupy high-profile positions in the fight against poverty. They are now seen as an important element of 'civil society', a concept that has been given increasing importance by global policy makers. This book has evolved during the course of that period to be a prime resource for those working (or wishing to work) with and for NGOs.

The third edition of Non-Governmental Organizations, Management and Development is fully updated and thoroughly reorganized, covering key issues including, but not limited to, debates on the changing global context of international development and the changing concepts and practices used by NGOs. The interdisciplinary approach employed by David Lewis results in an impressive text that draws upon current research in non-profit management, development management, public management and management theory, exploring the activities, relationships and internal structure of the NGO.

This book remains the first and only comprehensive and academically grounded guide to the issues facing international development NGOs as they operate in increasingly complex and challenging conditions around the world. It is the perfect resource for students undertaking studies of NGOs and the non-profit sector, in addition to being an excellent resource for development studies students more generally.

PART I The conceptualization of NGO management

1 INTRODUCTION

DOI: 10.4324/9780203591185-1

In the old days, rich countries had NGOs which focused on helping poor countries. The world's not so simple anymore.

Cooper (2012)

This book is about non-governmental organizations, better known as ‘NGOs’ or sometimes more specifically as ‘non-governmental development organizations’. NGOs go back a long way. Britain's Save the Children Fund (SCF) was founded by Eglantyne Jebb in 1919 after the trauma and destruction of the First World War. Oxfam, originally known as the Oxford Committee Against the Famine, dates back to 1942, when it was established in order to provide famine relief to victims of the Greek Civil War. The US agency CARE (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere) had its origins in sending US food packages to Europe in 1946.

NGOs are usually understood to be ‘third sector’, not-for-profit organizations concerned with addressing problems of global poverty and social justice and working primarily in the developing world. An NGO has an identity that is ‘legitimised by the existence of poverty’ (Fowler 1997). Some people link NGOs to concepts of charity, while others understand them in more political terms as ‘civil society organizations’, meaning that they are groups of organized citizens, independent from the government or business sectors. NGOs tend to go about their work either directly through the provision of services to people in need, or indirectly through partnerships, campaigning work and policy advocacy to bring about wider structural change that will improve the position of people living in poverty. While there is general agreement that development NGOs have been growing in numbers and increasing their profile in recent years, no one knows how many NGOs there are in the world. In 1946, there were 41 international NGOs registered at the United Nations (UN), while today there are more than 2,800. There are believed to be over one million NGOs in India, and 200,000 in the Philippines (OECD 2009).

International NGOs are estimated to raise around US$20-25 billion each year, as compared to official development assistance flows of US$104 billion (OECD 2009). In 2009, around 13 per cent of the total development aid provided by OECD countries was channelled to or through NGOs, a total of around US $15.5 billion (OECD 2011).

There has been an explosion of academic and practical literature on NGOs over the past few decades, but more attention has generally been given to ‘what NGOs do’ rather than ‘how NGOs work’ as organizations. The large scale of resources commanded by NGOs means that there is growing interest in how these resources are utilized. In a rapidly changing and complex world, people working in NGOs also require more and more in the way of relevant knowledge and skills. NGO management is therefore an important — though still relatively underappreciated — topic. Many people argue that this third sector contains a distinctive type of organization that is different in important ways from the more familiar forms of private sector business or public sector agency. NGO management can be seen as a specialized field that warrants its own study because it requires new creative thinking that goes beyond both existing conventional business management approaches and public sector management science. NGOs face complex, multifaceted challenges in their work and, at the same time, they have distinctive organizational characteristics. In general, NGOs have arguably failed to communicate a clear ‘story’ about just how complex and difficult NGO management is. Under pressure from donors and publics, they often seek instead to present simplicity and effectiveness rather than the true complexity and messiness of their work.

While we may identify NGOs as a specific category of third sector organization, we must also recognize that there are many different types. Some NGOs are small self-help groups or informal associations working at the community level with a membership that barely reaches double digit figures and no paid staff, drawing instead on volunteers and supporters who may be motivated by politics, religion or some form of altruism. Others are large, highly bureaucratized service-providing organizations with corporate identities and thousands of staff, many of whom may increasingly see their work in terms of a professional career. Some organizations see themselves as part of the world of development agencies and institutions working to eliminate poverty and injustice, while others are recreational societies or religious organizations with specialized purposes. Some take a mainstream growth-centred ‘modernization’ approach to development, while others are more interested in alternatives to the mainstream and view development in terms of popular mobilization and empowerment. Some NGOs depend on outside funding, while others mobilize resources locally through their own fund-raising initiatives or through membership fees and subscriptions. Some are private member-benefit in orientation, while others are public benefit.

This book is primarily concerned with NGO management from the perspective of organizations working in the field of development — as opposed to those that work primarily in humanitarian or emergency relief — in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as those in the ‘post-socialist’ areas of the former Soviet bloc. Readers who wish to pursue further and in more depth issues of development in relation to NGOs — as distinct from the broad management perspectives presented in this volume — are referred to Non-Governmental Organizations and Development by David Lewis and Nazneen Kanji (2009), which forms a companion piece to this book. Effort has been made in the text wherever possible to present material and examples from across the globe. However, readers will notice that there is more material drawn from the context of South Asia than from elsewhere, reflecting the author's own experience.

The structure of the book

The chapter map provided (Figure 1.1) offers a guide to the overall structure of the book. Part I is concerned with the conceptualization of NGO management, and its wider backdrop. Chapter 1 introduces the book's main structure, themes and basic argument. NGO categories and terms are introduced (Figure 1.2), and shifting public attitudes to NGOs and their work are briefly discussed. Different attitudes to NGO management are broadly characterized as the generic, distinctive and adaptive views, the final of which is the approach taken in the book. The key concepts introduced in the chapter include NGO diversity and the NGO management debate.

Chapter 2 sets the scene by framing the field of NGO management in general terms. First, NGOs are distinguished from other types of third sector organizations, and development NGOs are then distinguished from other types of NGO. The strengths and weakness of existing academic and other literature on NGOs is briefly reviewed. Different views, both positive and negative, of the work of NGOs are then explored. NGO management is then introduced as a complex but under-researched subject, requiring a focus on both organizations and their environment. The challenges of NGO management are set out as lying broadly in three distinct but related domains: (i) internal structures and processes, (ii) the activities NGOs seek to undertake, and (iii) relationships with other institutional actors. All are set against a fourth domain of the organizational environment (Figure 2.1). In each domain, we also find three main roles: (i) the delivery of services, (ii) efforts to catalyze political change and innovation, and (iii) the attempt to build synergies through development partnerships. As a result, a synthesis of ideas from a range of sources will be needed in order to build a composite model of NGO management (Table 12.1). This will be the main task of the book. The key concepts introduced in this chapter include civil society, third sector and hybridity.

FIGURE 1.1 Chapter map.

Chapter 3 begins with an exploration of the broad idea of management, and the ways this can be related to development NGOs. Reasons for the longstanding ambiguous attitude to the idea of management among many NGOs are discussed. There has been a recurring ‘NGO management debate’ that has been taking place since the 1980s, a theme that will be returned to throughout the book. It then considers some distinctive challenges faced when relating different kinds of management ideas to the field of development NGOs. Taking forward the idea of developing a composite model of NGO management, four main sources of ideas are discussed: mainstream business management, public sector management, development management and non-profit management are each shown to have useful relevance. This makes it possible to establish a conceptual framework for thinking about NGO management based on a ‘composite’ model that draws on different management traditions (Lewis 2003). The key concepts discussed in the chapter include management, managerialism, new public management and the composite model of NGO management.

Leaving behind questions of organization and management, Chapter 4 discusses context and broad categories, definitions, and labels (Table 4.1). Development NGOs are found all over the world, and work within very different environments. First, it briefly reviews the history and contexts around the world that have given distinctive shapes to the emergence and evolution of development NGOs. While all NGOs share some common characteristics, their different histories across various geographical locations mean that there are also distinctive variations within and between contexts. The chapter concludes with an overview of the relatively recent rise of NGOs within the international development field. The key concepts discussed in the chapter include neoliberalism, third sector and civil society.

In Part II, we explore the theory of NGO management in the context of development work. It seeks to explain how NGOs have come to be seen as important actors in development, and the various approaches that can be used to understand the management challenges that they face. Continuing with this exploration of the context in which NGOs operate, Chapter 5 focuses on the various ideas of development that have emerged, and both mainstream and alternative versions are identified. Different approaches to development have viewed NGOs in various ways (Figure 5.1). The chapter then moves on to trace changing relationships between NGOs and this ‘development industry’ that emerged after the Second World War that includes the United Nations, multilateral and bilateral donors, and growing numbers of private funding sources. Many NGOs receive resources from the aid system, but face a set of challenges in their relationship with it, including dealing with unequal power relations within development partnerships, and keeping up with the rapidly changing frameworks of international aid. Furthermore, while NGOs are traditionally understood as organizations that work in ‘developing’ countries, the global balance of power is now changing such that simple distinctions between developing and developed appear increasingly outmoded. The key concepts discussed in the chapter include development, alternative development, ‘big D’/’little d’ development, humanitarian relief, international aid and the aid effectiveness agenda.

Chapter 6 returns to the level of the organization and sets out in more detail the main roles played by development NGOs. These roles were previously identified at three levels as those of implementation, catalysis and partnership. The challenges of each one are introduced and then briefly discussed using some examples. The implementation role is increasingly central to mainstream development approaches and is concerned with the delivery of services to those in need, which raises issues of cost, contracting, quality and targeting as well as broader contextual ones of accountability and citizenship. A crucial question is identified as whether service delivery by NGOs is viewed in the longer term as a means or simply as an end. The catalyst role is often contrasted with that of implementation, and takes in advocacy, community empowerment and innovation and is generally associated with radical or alternative development. Finally, partnership is discussed as an increasingly central policy concept that seeks to build synergies between different kinds of organization in the public, private and third sectors. For NGOs, the key challenge is identified as building active rather than dependent partnerships. The chapter then moves on to consider what makes an NGO an effective organization, and reviews some of the evidence that has been produced in relation to NGO performance. The key concepts discussed in the chapter include implementation, partnership, advocacy, innovation, contracting and effectiveness.

Chapter 7 discusses the ways that NGO management is characterized by a high level of ambiguity, given its composite, multi-stranded nature. The chapter begins with an exploration of the ways different traditions within organization theory (including modernist, symbolic-interpretative and postmodern) are relevant to our understanding of NGO management. Following from this discussion, aspects of resource dependence, neo-institutionalism and evolutionary theory are discussed in relation to development NGOs. This leads us to consider leadership and learning within NGOs as key management issues. In the second part of the chapter, continuities between organization theory and anthropological work on organizations are explored. The argument is made that given the nature of NGOs and their work, an anthropological approach provides a particular useful disciplinary lens through which to analyze power relations, and the local cross-cultural encounters that characterize development work. Finally, both organization theory and anthropology are shown to highlight the concept of ambiguity as helping to explore key aspects of NGO management, such as the increasingly blurred boundaries between associational and bureaucratic worlds, and between the public, private and third sectors in many societies. Key new concepts discussed in this chapter include organization theory, resource dependence, neo-institutionalism, organizational life cycles, organizational worlds theory and ambiguity.

Moving away from issues of structure, Chapter 8 is concerned with the complexity of cultural issues in NGO management. It begins by looking at the organizational culture that NGOs seek to promote in their working styles, leadership and interactions with communities. The chapter explores work that discusses different types of organizational culture that have been identified within organizations, and considers relationships between gender and organization culture. Turning to wider societal culture, the chapter considers work that tries to identify wider cultural factors influencing organizational life, including Hofstede's influential work. Finally, approaches that move away from over-generalized culturalist assumptions are introduced in order to engage more fully with issues of complexity, power and hybridity that increasingly characterize the world of NGO management. Key...