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What have we learned about learning? Unpacking the relationship between knowledge and organisational change in development agencies
Development cooperation has spent decades wrangling over the merits, evidence, and implications of what we may term "the learning hypothesis": the idea that increased knowledge by development organisations must logically lead to increased effectiveness in the performance of their development activities. Organisations of all stripes have built research and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) departments, adopted a multitude of knowledge management systems and tools, and tinkered with different ways to structure their organograms to stimulate knowledge sharing and learning. The topic of organisational learning is particularly significant as the global development community grapples with increasingly complex problems and the aspiration of evidence-based policymaking. This paper presents an analytical framework for interrogating "the learning hypothesis", breaking it down into causal steps: knowledge causes learning, learning causes organisational change, change causes effectiveness. The framework focuses on the first two sub-hypotheses, mapping out the conceptual space around them by outlining potential relationships between different types of knowledge – tacit and explicit, internal and external – and between different types of learning – operational and strategic. This map provides a foundation for three key research questions: What impact has the rising knowledge agenda had on development organisations? Which factors appear to enable or inhibit organisational learning? What is the relationship between operational and strategic learning and organisational change? A review of available evaluations and studies, including two cases from former UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the World Bank, reveals that there is insufficient evidence to support the causal claim that knowledge leads to learning and thereby to organisational change in development agencies. Sources point to tacit learning prevailing while explicit knowledge management systems flounder, and external advocacy agendas appear more compelling than internal research and evaluation products. It is not entirely clear how, or indeed, whether operational and strategic learning intersect, with delivery-level lessons hardly aggregating into structural or policy shifts. Organisational change – even that aimed at enhancing learning – is rarely based on lessons learned from practice. More research is necessary to fully unpack the learning hypothesis, but what limited evidence is available disproves rather than confirms its central claim. This has significant implications for the future of learning in development agencies as advocated by thought leaders, researchers, and reformers. In particular, the latter should consider an evidence-based reassessment of the function and value-for-money of research and M&E in development practice, and a more critical examination of the politics of external advocacy efforts around innovative aid approaches like thinking and working politically, adaptive management, or results-based management.
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Note: The Role and Responsibility of Foreign Aid in Recipient Political Settlements
In: Journal of international development: the journal of the Development Studies Association, Band 29, Heft 5
ISSN: 1099-1328
Due to an error the article from this special issue was previously published in Journal of International Development, Volume 29, Issue 2, 2017. For completeness we are including the title page of the article. The full text of the article can be read in Issue 29:2 on Wiley Online Library: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jid.3269/abstract
Land′s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier
In: The journal of development studies, Band 54, Heft 6, S. 1095-1096
ISSN: 1743-9140
The Role and Responsibility of Foreign Aid in Recipient Political Settlements
In: Journal of international development: the journal of the Development Studies Association, Band 29, Heft 2, S. 211-228
ISSN: 1099-1328
Varieties of State-Building in Africa: Elites, Ideas and the Politics of Public Sector Reform
In: ESID Working Paper No 89. Manchester: Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre, The University of Manchester
SSRN
Working paper
The Role and Responsibility of Foreign Aid in Recipient Political Settlements
In: Effective States and Inclusive Development Working Paper No 56
SSRN
Working paper
"New" approaches confront "old" challenges in African public sector reform
In: Third world quarterly, Band 37, Heft 1, S. 136-152
ISSN: 0143-6597
World Affairs Online
'New' approaches confront 'old' challenges in African public sector reform
In: Third world quarterly, Band 37, Heft 1, S. 136-152
ISSN: 1360-2241
Barriers to Political Analysis in Aid Bureaucracies: From Principle to Practice in DFID and the World Bank
In: World development: the multi-disciplinary international journal devoted to the study and promotion of world development, Band 74, S. 209-219
Can Aid Bureaucracies Think Politically? The Administrative Challenges of Political Economy Analysis (PEA) in DFID and the World Bank
In: ESID Working Paper No 33
SSRN
Working paper
Building State Capacity for Inclusive Development: The Politics of Public Sector Reform
In: ESID Working Paper No 25
SSRN
Working paper
The politics of "what works": evidence incentives and entrepreneurship in development organisations
In: IDOS discussion paper, 2023, 3
World Affairs Online
What have we learned about learning?: unpacking the relationship between knowledge and organisational change in development agencies
In: Discussion paper 2021, 9
Development cooperation has spent decades wrangling over the merits, evidence, and implications of what we may term "the learning hypothesis": the idea that increased knowledge by development organisations must logically lead to increased effectiveness in the performance of their development activities. Organisations of all stripes have built research and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) departments, adopted a multitude of knowledge management systems and tools, and tinkered with different ways to structure their organograms to stimulate knowledge sharing and learning. The topic of organisational learning is particularly significant as the global development community grapples with increasingly complex problems and the aspiration of evidence-based policymaking.This paper presents an analytical framework for interrogating "the learning hypothesis", breaking it down into causal steps: knowledge causes learning, learning causes organisational change, change causes effectiveness. The framework focuses on the first two sub-hypotheses, mapping out the conceptual space around them by outlining potential relationships between different types of knowledge - tacit and explicit, internal and external - and between different types of learning - operational and strategic. This map provides a foundation for three key research questions: What impact has the rising knowledge agenda had on development organisations? Which factors appear to enable or inhibit organisational learning? What is the relationship between operational and strategic learning and organisational change? [...]