Country Concepts and the Rational Actor Trap - Limitations to Strategic Management of International NGOs

Dirk Kohnert

EconStor Conference Papers from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: Growing criticism of inefficient development aid demanded new planning instruments of donors, including international NGOs (INGOs). A reorientation from isolated project-planning towards holistic country concepts and the increasing rationality of a result-orientated planning process were seen as answer. However, whether these country concepts – newly introduced by major INGOs too - have increased the efficiency of development cooperation is open to question. Firstly, there have been counteracting external factors, like the globalization of the aid business, that demanded structural changes in the composition of INGO portfolios towards growing short-term humanitarian aid; this was hardly compatible with the requirements of medium-term country planning. Secondly, the underlying vision of rationality as a remedy for the major ills of development aid was in itself a fallacy. A major change in the methodology of planning, closely connected with a shift of emphasis in the approach to development cooperation, away from project planning and service delivery, towards supporting the socio-cultural and political environment of the recipient communities, demands a reorientation of aid management: The most urgent change needed is by donors, away from the blinkers of result-orientated planning towards participative organizational cultures of learning.

Keywords: country concepts; development planning; NGOs; project planning; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F35 L3 L31 O2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
Note: Author's version.
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Related works:
Working Paper: Country concepts and the rational actor trap: Limitations to strategic management of international NGOs (2005)
Working Paper: Country Concepts and the Rational Actor Trap - Limitations to Strategic Management of International NGOs (2004)
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