The rise of managerialism in international NGOs

Matthew Eagleton-Pierce

Review of International Political Economy, 2020, vol. 27, issue 4, 970-994

Abstract: Managerialism has become increasingly incorporated into the practices of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) in recent decades. To date, IPE has largely failed to examine how and why the managerial ethic has weaved itself into the fabric of prominent INGOs that have a stake in the global economy. The limited IPE literature that has addressed such activity has either cast such changes as part of a culture of professionalisation or as an outgrowth of neoliberalism. This article seeks to question these readings by directly dissecting how managerialism operates within a milieu which has been historically critical of capitalism. The argument is underpinned by conceptual insights from critical management studies, particularly how managerialism is associated with instrumental rationality and control. In relation to international development policy, the article examines the major macro institutional and ideological factors that have encouraged the spread of managerialism. To deepen our understanding of these trends, the article offers new empirics on the struggle over managerialism within Oxfam GB, from a limited imprint in the 1980s to increasing normalisation from the early 2000s. The article calls for IPE to better unmask the internal politics of INGOs and, in turn, connect such evidence to wider structural tendencies.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2019.1657478 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:27:y:2020:i:4:p:970-994

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2019.1657478

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().