Lessons in failure: applying an organizational learning framework to understanding attitudes towards failure in development

Charlotte Weekly

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper applies an organizational learning framework to explore attitudes towards failure in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) development sector. It draws on 35 key-informant interviews, contextualized by organizational theory and existing scholarship on failure in development, to understand the challenges faced by WASH practitioners in identifying failure, analyzing failure, and deliberate experimentation. Through interrogating past and present initiatives for publicizing failure in development, this paper digs deeper into the successes, obstacles, and lessons learnt from mainstreaming failure into organizational practices. It then synthesizes these findings to advance a 3-tier conceptual map for organizations to build an enabling environment for learning from failure in development.

Keywords: innovation; international development; organizational learning; project failure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 J50 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2021-09-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-ppm
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Published in Environmental Health Insights, 20, September, 2021, 15, pp. 1 - 9. ISSN: 1178-6302

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:114336

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