International Development NGOs Research Articles

The Fight for Global Health Justice: The Advocacy of International Humanitarian and Development NGOs During the COVID-19 Pandemic

AbstractThe increasing health inequity and injustice of the COVID-19 pandemic rendered visible the inadequacy of global health governance, and exposed the self-interested decision-making of states and pharmaceutical companies. This research explores the advocacy activities of humanitarian and development international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in responding to this inequality and investigates how they framed alternatives for global health justice. It reviews 47 organizational documents and 43 media articles of five INGOs (ActionAid, Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Save the Children, and World Vision) and points to the importance of understanding advocacy frames in analyzing how these organizations prioritize agendas and advocacy strategies. The dominance of the ‘human rights’ frame, sometimes in combination with ‘scientific evidence’ and ‘security’ frames, reflects the identities, mandates, and histories of campaigning and collaboration of these INGOs. This paper contends that the advocacy of humanitarian and development INGOs highlights both deontological and teleological ethics, promoting the voices of people in lower-income countries, clarifying duty bearers and their accountabilities, and addressing structural barriers from a human rights perspective in a global health agenda setting.

A Study on the Structural Conceptualization of Performance of International Development NGOs: Focused on Managers’ Perception

A Study on the Structural Conceptualization of Performance of International Development NGOs: Focused on Managers’ Perception

From disaster to development?: The role of the Second World War in shaping Canadian humanitarian aid

War is antithetical to development. Development, for most mainstream observers, means economic growth, or at least stability, and an increasing quality of life for all, and it cannot exist in a state of war. Yet official development assistance (ODA), one of the primary mechanisms by which many governments and civil society organizations attempt to achieve development in impoverished economies, has a history rooted in war. This paper will explore how the Second World War and its aftermath influenced the creation of Canadian ODA and international development NGOs. While Canada's aid history is most commonly associated with the Canadian International Development Agency, examining this earlier period helps contextualize current debates about the securitization of aid and its harmonization with other aspects of Canadian foreign policy. Using the Unitarian Service Committee (USC) Canada as a case study, this paper will also track its transition from a postwar humanitarian relief agency to a mainstream international development NGO. For Canadian ODA and civil society organizations, the Second World War shaped the legacy of the postwar aid regime and created lasting consequences for its operation.

Restricted Funding: Restricting Development?

This paper examines, from a management accounting perspective, the efficacy of the dominant ‘restricted’ funding structure in the international development NGO sector in terms of overall sector effectiveness, and whether it is the most appropriate means of funding NGOs. The objective is to encourage theoretical debate around the tensions highlighted between external accountability for funding and overall value-for-money delivered by individual development NGOs and the wider international development sector. From unique access to three internationally recognised major NGOs, our case studies reveal management accounting as broadly homogenous, with some nuanced distinctions both within and between the cases; but the scope of management accounting emerges as relatively limited. This is despite the NGOs utilising complex accounting software, employing qualified accounting staff, and having a large annual income. Using the broad principles of systems theory to frame our approach, this paper suggests that due to the ‘restricted’ nature of funding awarded to NGOs by institutional donors, accounting is dominated by external accountability reporting to the detriment of management accounting. These relatively novel data on management accounting practices at international development NGOs help illustrate how, potentially, NGOs are missing opportunities to utilise, or even improve, value-for-money in terms of how various program themes, geographic areas or time periods are delivering better or worse discernible impact for the money spent.

Identity constructions in the annual reports of international development NGOs: Preserving institutional interests?

This paper examines the enactment of identities in the annual reports of large, prestigious Northern development NGOs who have become a key player in the social, economic and political developments throughout the world. Drawing on postcolonial theory, it analyses the visual images that these organisations use to understand critically how they represent and construct identities about themselves and their divergent constituents, namely the Southern constituents they work with, and the funders and volunteers who support their activities. The analysis suggests that on the one hand, in accordance with the accountability remit of annual reports, organisations deploy visual imagery to complement their stories of successes and achievements. On the other, however, these representations also formulate identities about the organisations themselves and their divergent constituents. Organisations frequently (but possibly unintentionally) present their Southern constituents as reliant, dependent, passive, backward, voiceless, unintelligent and needing care in accordance with the traditional charity model of development. There are also signs that they segregate Africa from the rest of the world. In accordance with postcolonial theory, these representations enable organisations to construct themselves as reliable, able and knowledgeable experts who better the lives of Southern constituents. Northern NGOs also represent and appreciate their donors and supporters as active, energetic, willing and generous ‘do-gooders’ in the development project. The varied and diverse representations not only question the seemingly neutral and objective role of the annual report, but also compromise the principles of dignity, respect, equity, solidarity and egalitarianism that are immanent to development NGOs.

International Development NGOs and Bureaucratic Capacity: Facilitator or Destroyer?

Do development international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) facilitate or destroy the bureaucratic capacity of the states in which they operate? The literature is split on this question. Some scholars argue that development INGOs weaken state capacity by delivering social services that the government is supposed to provide. Others argue that by increasing a country’s domestic demand for improved human rights, development INGOs improve a government’s capacity to fulfill them. In this paper, we show that the effect of development INGOs on state capacity depends on whether a state is democratic or nondemocratic. In our cross-sectional time-series analysis, we find that development INGO presence has a significant positive relationship with state capacity in democracies but no relationship with state capacity in nondemocratic states. These findings help explain the inconsistent claims in the existing INGO literature and are also relevant for development INGOs and the policymakers that support them.

Flagships and tumbleweed: A history of the politics of gender justice work in Oxfam GB 1986–2015

This article contributes to scholarship on the political nature of feminists’ work in international development NGOs. The case study of Oxfam GB (OGB) is contemporary history, based on compiling a brief history of gender justice work between 1986 and 2014 and 18 months of part-time participant-observation fieldwork during 2014–15. I describe funding pressures and imperatives, contestations of meaning and power struggles within OGB and argue that gender justice becomes entangled in both internal and the external politics of international development. This is part of a wider research programme about how ideas on gender equality norms travel between and around development organizations, so I finally draw conclusions about how norms are contested and embodied. The shapeshifting political nature of feminist work challenges prevailing theories about how norms and ideas travel and take hold within organizations.

Emphasising the Problem or the Solution in Charitable Fundraising for International Development

abstractWe conduct a laboratory experiment to test the effect on charitable donations to international development NGOs (INGOs) of emphasising current deprivation in a developing country, versus emphasising the potential good a donation can achieve. Using a double-blind dictator experiment with earned endowments, we find that varying the information/emphasis has no significant effect on total donations, nor on the probability of donating. We find suggestive evidence that an emphasis on current deprivation may raise the variance of donations, and thus the size of donations conditional on donating, but the effect is not significant in hurdle models that explicitly recognise this.

“It Would be Great to See an Example…” Collaboration Between International NGOs and National Knowledge Institutes in Six African Countries

Collaboration between international development NGOs and Africa’s national knowledge institutes, particularly universities, is receiving increasing support from global policy-makers and donor agencies. In spite of this, little is reported about the practice of such collaboration. This paper helps fill this lack of knowledge. It shares findings from a research project by a consortium of four international NGOs exploring the potential for collaboration with knowledge institutes in Burundi, DR Congo, Liberia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda. The findings are based on analysis of interviews with NGO managers in these countries and on subsequent interviews by these NGO managers of staff in national knowledge institutes. The views of the NGO managers regarding collaboration lean towards scepticism, in keeping with the limited literature on the matter. However, after interviewing staff in the knowledge institutes, the NGO managers did find potential for collaboration based on personal relations and meeting both parties’ more immediate interests.

The Good Samaritan and the Marketer: public perceptions of humanitarian and international development NGOs

This article reports on a nationwide study investigating public responses to humanitarian communications. Based on focus group data with members of the UK public, the paper discusses two key models through which NGOs identities and activities are understood and judged, both positively and negatively: the Good Samaritan and the Marketer. Thematic analysis of the focus groups extracts exposes the salience of these models in people's thinking, how they speak to each other and how they inform and affect the relationship between NGOs and public. The paper discusses the themes in relation to current debates on organisations' image and trust and confidence in nonprofit organisations and humanitarian NGOs. The data show deep public disillusionment and disappointment deriving from the recognition of the Marketer model being applied to and employed within the realm of humanitarianism. This suggests that NGOs' moving away from traditional notions of charity might be counterproductive and in the long‐term risky. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Reinventing International Development NGOs – The Case of ICCO

The need for international development NGOs to reinvent themselves in light of contextual changes and increasing challenges has been brought forward with increasing vigour. In-depth empirical research on the topic has remained scarce. This study contributes to the small number of in-depth empirical studies on international development NGOs by analysing the change process undertaken by one of the largest Dutch development NGOs (ICCO) in the period 2004–2010. By adding a specific focus on the changes in ICCO’s beliefs, values and accompanying practices, it shows that ICCO’s change process, while appearing to be a major overhaul, in many respects turned out to be a continuation of the existing organisational philosophy. The study not only shows the importance of culture in processes of organisational change, but particularly of cultural continuity.

Visualizers of solidarity: organizational politics in humanitarian and international development NGOs

Discussion of the visual politics of solidarity, in relation specifically to the representation of suffering and development, has been grounded in analysis of images. This article seeks to expand this debate by exploring the organizational politics that shape and are shaped by these images. The article is inspired by production studies in the cultural industries and draws on interviews with 17 professionals from 10 UK-based international development and humanitarian organizations that are engaged in planning and producing imagery of international development and humanitarian issues. The author discusses how power relations, tensions and position-taking shape the arguments and choices made by NGOs producing images of suffering and development. She focuses on two arenas of struggle about how to visualize solidarity: (a) intra-organizational politics – specifically tensions within NGOs between fundraising and/or marketing departments, and communications, campaign and/or advocacy departments; and (2) inter-organizational politics: the competing tendencies towards convergence, cohesiveness and collective identity of the humanitarian sector, and competition, distinction and divergence between organizations on the other. She shows that NGOs’ visual production is an area of conflict, negotiation and compromise, and argues for the crucial need for attention to organizational politics in the production of visual representations of distant suffering in order to uncover diverse and competing motivations, and the forces driving current humanitarian and development communications.

Sustainable Local Economic Development in Croatia and the Role of Social Capital

Over the course of the last decade or so, the concept of social capital - social and solidarity relationships, norms of reciprocity, trust-based interactions, and the set of civil society institutions and associations that underpin efficient collective action - has spectacularly burst on to the local economic and social development scene. Much of the credit for the current popularity of the social capital concept can be attributed to the work of Robert Putnam in relation to northern Italy, undertaken over the 1970s and 1980s with a number of local collaborators. As a result of Putnam's insights, social capital is now seen as a pivotal factor in successful local and regional economic development: for example, through more efficient government structures, higher levels of local volunteerism and civil society activity, a reduced need for formal contracts in business activities, greater local effort invested into community development projects, and the bottom-up empowerment, mobilisation and self-improvement of marginalised groups and regions, especially through their enhanced ability to constructively link up with centres of power and wealth outside of their immediate community. Organisations such as the World Bank now consider social capital to be the missing link in development. An understanding of the importance and impact of social capital is now routinely incorporated into virtually all economic and social development projects promoted and financed in Croatia by all the IFIs, the major bilaterals and many international development NGOs. Importantly, the EU has identified the need to promote social capital in Croatia as one of the most important tasks in the coming years, particularly in those regions marked out by conflict and inter-ethnic discord. Most EU programmes are, accordingly, heavily contingent upon promoting social capital as a way to promote economic and social integration and increased co-operation at the local level.This paper challenges the growing consensus around the work of the social capital industry and its centrality to successful economic and social recovery in Croatia and elsewhere. For sure, the main concepts associated with social capital could constitute a genuinely socially progressive force for change: solidarity, reciprocity, mutual support, trust, empowerment can underpin sustainable local economic development in a number of creative ways. However, the paper sees social capital concept as actually only very loosely connected, perhaps just inadvertently, to genuinely sustainable local economic development. Its real function is, instead, not so much to support and facilitate emerging bottom up community activity and popular pressure for meaningful local change, but actually to contain and block any such local developments wherever they might present a challenge the core imperatives of the wider neo-liberal policy programme associated with EU integration and World Bank/IMF requirements.

The Mixed Metaphor of ‘Third World Woman’: gendered representations by international development NGOs

Reviewing a recent annual cycle of public fundraising and advocacy messages of international development NGOs (INGOs), this paper examines how gendered representations are used to portray specific notions of global poverty, development, gendered identities, the majority world and its relation to the developed world. The gendering of global poverty and development is realised though many contradictory discursive strategies, including feminisation which, inter alia, naturalises the majority world, distinctive characterisations of people and issues, and binary oppositions of women from the developed and majority worlds. Through both her instrumental and symbolic value, the ‘Third World woman’ serves INGOs by simultaneously projecting ‘universal’ values of motherhood and womanhood and special values of ‘Third World difference’. These representations have significance across Northern audiences' understandings of gender and global inequalities and INGOs' objectives of poverty alleviation, women's empowerment and rights-based development.

A look at management research in the aid industry: Are humans the forgotten resource in international development NGOs?

A look at management research in the aid industry: Are humans the forgotten resource in international development NGOs?

From ‘rights-based’ to ‘rights-framed’ approaches: a social constructionist view of human rights practice

Since the mid-1990s, the dominant way in which a human rights discourse and practice has been formally embedded within international development NGOs' campaigns has been through what is referred to as ‘rights-based approaches’. Premised on a social constructionist view of human rights practice and reflecting on the findings of a recent research project, this contribution challenges the dominance of such approaches. It does this by offering a new framework for establishing an alternative approach, identified here as ‘rights-framed approaches’. The discussion concludes by highlighting some opportunities sociological research has to offer the re-theorisation of existing human rights campaign practice.

Neo-colonial discourse and disability: the case of Canadian international development NGOs

Neo-colonial discourse and disability: the case of Canadian international development NGOs

Personenorientierte Koordination internationaler Aktivitäten in Entwicklungs-NGOs – Fallstudienanalyse und Entwicklung eines Bezugsrahmens

Das (Personal-) Management und die Organisation von internationalen Entwicklungs- NGOs sind bisher wenig erforscht. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, Aufschluss darüber zu gewinnen, wie diese Organisationen ihre internationalen Aktivitäten koordinieren und welche Einflussfaktoren hier eine Rolle spielen. Im Fokus stehen dabei die personenorientierten Koordinationsinstrumente. Der vorliegende Beitrag liefert Ergebnisse einer qualitativen empirischen Untersuchung in fünf deutschen international tätigen Entwicklungs- NGOs. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich in diesem Sample erstens die hohe Bedeutung von Entsendungenund persönlicher Interaktionen als Koordinationsmechanismen sowie zweitens, dass die Wahl der personenorientierten Koordinationsmechanismen insbesondere mit den Projektspezifika variiert, während die Aufgabenspezifika nur einen indirekten und die Organisationsspezifika kaum einen Einfluss besitzen. Hieraus ergeben sich Implikationen sowohl für die Praxis als auch für die weitere Forschung.

International non-governmental development organizations and their Northern constituencies: development education, dialogue and democracy

The ways in which international non-governmental development organizations (INGDOs) engage with northern constituencies have important implications for their promotion of principles of global justice and equity, their legitimacy as global actors and their capacity to shape a democratic global civil society. This paper focuses on the diverse forms of engagement currently being sought by international development NGOs. Using development education as a case study the paper explores some of the processes of mediation and negotiation that shape NGOs' articulation of global ethics. The paper argues that the diversity of approaches to engagement in the sector presents an opportunity for INGDOs to strengthen and deepen their relationships with Northern constituencies and to support the articulation and embedding of principles of global justice and equity. It argues that development education can play a central role in achieving this.

Increasing strategic accountability: a framework for international NGOs

The accountability of international development NGOs (INGOs) has attracted a great deal of interest from academics and development practitioners. INGO accountability falls into two categories: practical accountability (for the use of inputs, the way activities are performed, and outputs) and strategic accountability for INGOs' performance in relation to their mission. This article presents a conceptual framework for exploring INGO accountability. It is based on information collected through a literature review and semi-structured interviews with representatives from 20 UK-based INGOs. The research found that INGOs tend to use a number of quality-assurance mechanisms to achieve ‘practical’ accountability. However, it is suggested that this kind of accountability will not necessarily enable INGOs to achieve their missions to alleviate poverty and eliminate injustice. Furthermore, the predominant use of practical accountability has led to a number of gaps in INGO accountability. It is suggested that, like the term ‘participation’ before it, accountability has been co-opted for its instrumental benefits to INGO project performance and management. It is argued that if INGOs are to achieve their missions, this will require more ‘strategic’ forms of accountability, geared towards fundamentally changing those social, economic, and political structures that promote poverty.