International Development Work Research Articles

For the Country, the Corporation and the Métier: Alternative Drivers Among Practitioners in Private Sector Aid

The financialization of development and the outsourcing of aid work to contracted businesses are strengthening the role of alternative drivers among practitioners engaged in international development work. These relate to but also transcend the dichotomy between altruism and personal self-interest, which often frames scholarly research on aid worker motivations. Focusing on consultants and development finance experts, this article highlights three institutional impetuses that guide practitioners’ work. They are concerned with the international competitiveness of donor operations, the stakes of one’s employer in cross-sectoral partnerships and the reputation and position of one’s professional sub-field. Consultants and development finance experts also highlight considerable staff movements across non- and for-profit institutions. In the increasingly complex architecture of aid interventions, such boundary-crossers operate in a new space of development brokerage, as mediators between public and private sector actors.

Creating culturally-informed protocols for a stunting intervention using a situated values-based approach (WeValue InSitu): a double case study in Indonesia and Senegal

International development work involves external partners bringing expertise, resources, and management for local interventions in LMICs, but there is often a gap in understandings of relevant local shared values. There is a widespread need to better design interventions which accommodate relevant elements of local culture, as emphasised by recent discussions in global health research regarding neo-colonialism. One recent innovation is the concept of producing ‘cultural protocols’ to precede and guide community engagement or intervention design, but without suggestions for generating them. This study explores and demonstrates the potential of an approach taken from another field, named WeValue InSitu, to generate local culturally-informed protocols. WeValue InSitu engages stakeholder groups in meaning-making processes which ‘crystallize’ their envelope of local shared values, making them communicable to outsiders.Our research context is understanding and reducing child stunting, including developing interventions, carried out at the Senegal and Indonesia sites of the UKRI GCRF Action Against Stunting Hub. Each national research team involves eight health disciplines from micro-nutrition to epigenetics, and extensive collection of samples and questionnaires. Local culturally-informed protocols would be generally valuable to pre-inform engagement and intervention designs. Here we explore generating them by immediately following the group WeValue InSitu crystallization process with specialised focus group discussions exploring: what local life practices potentially have significant influence on the environments affecting child stunting, and which cultural elements do they highlight as relevant. The discussions will be framed by the shared values, and reveal linkages to them. In this study, stakeholder groups like fathers, mothers, teachers, market traders, administrators, farmers and health workers were recruited, totalling 83 participants across 20 groups. Themes found relevant for a culturally-informed protocol for locally-acceptable food interventions included: specific gender roles; social hierarchies; health service access challenges; traditional beliefs around malnutrition; and attitudes to accepting outside help. The concept of a grounded culturally-informed protocol, and the use of WeValue InSitu to generate it, has thus been demonstrated here. Future work to scope out the advantages and limitations compared to deductive culture studies, and to using other formative research methods would now be useful.

Linking science with policy: the importance of incorporating clear roles for knowledge brokers into research-for-development organizations

Agriculture and food systems research and international development work will not proceed at the necessary speed without clear attention to the role of knowledge brokers within science-policy-practice interfaces. For research to be taken up and incorporated in policy frameworks, knowledge brokering is essential. Scaling of research for development findings will happen through other impact pathways as well, such as development of business models with the private sector, but development and implementation of robust and coherent policies informed by credible evidence is necessary for institutionalizing the work of agriculture and food systems research. Such policies are needed at multiple levels, and knowledge brokers are needed at these different levels as well. Examples of the importance of knowledge brokers in agricultural research for development from the livestock sector and its interaction with the climate change arena are used to illustrate this call for more attention to knowledge brokering.

Learning to Shift Power and Center Community Voices in International Development Work

International development has long been dominated by primarily white-led, Global North organizations. These organizations are raising money in the Global North and doing work in the Global South, with the intended benefit to less economically developed communities. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in activism and calls by organizations in both the Global North and South for localization of development, humanitarian aid, and peacebuilding efforts in an attempt to address unequal North-South power dynamics. Since 2006, OneVillage Partners has worked to address multidimensional poverty in Sierra Leone by investing in individuals and communities to help them address their own challenges, providing targeted project facilitation and monetary support for communities to lead their own development, and connecting individuals and leaders with one another across communities to amplify their collective voices and actions for broader impact. Beginning in 2020, OneVillage Partners increased its commitment to “decolonize” their work and more fully shift power to local people in Sierra Leone. This article will provide context on the changing nature of the international development industry and outline steps OneVillage Partners has taken to operationalize the localization narrative, challenges they have encountered, and ideas for the future.

Is development work still so straight? Heteronormativity in the development sector over a decade on

ABSTRACT Eleven years ago, I published an article in this journal detailing the ways that international development work was heteronormative, assuming heterosexual gender stereotyped household models and framing sexuality as a problem of ill-health or violence, rather than a potentially pleasurable contributor to well-being. Over a decade later, while the sector is largely still heteronormative, LGBTI and sexual pleasure have now made an entry into development discourses. However, they have both been co-opted at least to some degree to reinforce other intersecting axes of inequality. A more productive frame for addressing sexuality would be an integrated sexual rights and sexuality politics approach.

A STUDY ON CHANGE AND ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT AT CIPLA PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY, HYDERABAD

Organizational development is a main factor to change the organizational growth. It involves several ideas and thoughts from several kinds of peoples. It may used to identify the organizational problems and employee capacities. The development in a organization brings a new ideas to organizational growth and its uses to bring the organization to good position. This article brings a lot of concept and development techniques to explain the organizational development and its improvement. People often do not know what is meant by ‘organizational development’ and yet, if they work in international development, it is very likely that they will have been involved in it. Essentially, it is a planned, organization - wide effort to achieve strategic goals more effectively and efficiently. This report draws on current literature, good practice examples, interviews and case studies on organizational development, to distil useful frameworks and recommendations for future work. It is structured to address the different stages and components of the organizational change process.

‘Doing good and feeling good’: how narratives in development stymie gender equality in organisations

This paper examines the challenges of working on gender equality in international development research projects and institutes, and how a code of appropriate emotions and behaviours is used to silence and stifle institutional change. Using my own experience at a science research institute, I argue that while senior leaders have acknowledged the importance of equity and diversity, internal institutional dynamics, workplace culture and hierarchies make change difficult. Furthermore, due to the nature of international development work, there is an affective norm (‘doing good and feeling good’) that surrounds the notion of working in ‘developing’ countries. This affect is gendered because a masculine camaraderie is generated. However, the affect shuts out self-reflexivity, because it would disrupt the narrative of selflessness and heroism of aid. The inside activists within the institute navigate between challenging the norms and having an unspoken code of civility imposed upon them, which is used to police and discipline how inside activists should behave. When inside activists criticise discriminatory practices and values, they are dismissed as being ‘angry’ and ‘uncivil’. The result is the depoliticisation of gender and feminist theories and practice, where people go through the motions of equity and mainstreaming without achieving meaningful change.

Taking the Research Experience Seriously: A Framework for Reflexive Applied Research in Development

Abstract Interdisciplinary scholarly literature considers how research processes may adversely affect their participants. Building on this work, this article addresses the processes and practices of applied research in contexts in which imbalances of power exist between researchers and those being researched. We argue that research activities in international development and humanitarian work that are typically operational, such as needs assessments, baseline studies, and monitoring and evaluation, represent interventions in the lives of participants, with the potential to create value or harm, delight or distress. The ethical and methodological dilemmas of this intervention have received less attention than purely academic discussions of human subject research. How can applied researchers meaningfully reckon with the effects of the research process on both those conducting it and those participating in it throughout the research cycle? In response, we introduce an approach co-developed over seven years through engagement with applied researchers across sectors. We discuss four interrelated principles—relevance, respect, right-sizing, and rigor—intended to invite a commitment to ongoing process improvement in the conduct of applied research. We also propose a framework to guide the implementation of these principles and illustrate the tensions that may arise in the process of its application. These contributions extend conversations about research ethics and methods to the operational research realm, as well as provide concrete tools for reflecting on the processes of operational research as sites of power that ought to be considered as seriously as the findings of data collection activities.

A Rights-Based Framework in Global Social Work Education and International Development Work: Insights from a Global Independent Study in Tunisia

In this reflective analysis, we use a rights-based framework from international development studies to examine a global independent study (GIS) course as social work field education. Our GIS course entailed fieldwork with a Tunisia-based migrant-led organization that advocates for missing migrants who have gone missing en route from Tunisia to Italy via the Mediterranean Sea. We use our case study to illustrate the five elements to a human rights framework. Rights and obligations, as two elements, set the terms of the engagement for fieldwork. Capacity building moves beyond service delivery and teaches empowerment. Inequality and poverty focus on structural aspects: policies, institutions, and sociopolitical contexts related to fieldwork. Activism and advocacy facilitate the student’s participation in affecting change. The prioritizing of action in development work is thus applicable for teaching human rights in social work education “in the field,” which requires going from theory to practice.

Challenges and opportunities in accessing mobile phone data for COVID-19 response in developing countries

AbstractAnonymous and aggregated statistics derived from mobile phone data have proven efficacy as a proxy for human mobility in international development work and as inputs to epidemiological modeling of the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Despite the widely accepted promise of such data for better development outcomes, challenges persist in their systematic use across countries. This is not only the case for steady-state development use cases such as in the transport or urban development sectors, but also for sudden-onset emergencies such as epidemics in the health sector or natural disasters in the environment sector. This article documents an effort to gain systematized access to and use of anonymized, aggregated mobile phone data across 41 countries, leading to fruitful collaborations in nine developing countries over the course of one year. The research identifies recurring roadblocks and replicable successes, offers lessons learned, and calls for a bold vision for future successes. An emerging model for a future that enables steady-state access to insights derived from mobile big data - such that they are available over time for development use cases - will require investments in coalition building across multiple stakeholders, including local researchers and organizations, awareness raising of various key players, demand generation and capacity building, creation and adoption of standards to facilitate access to data and their ethical use, an enabling regulatory environment and long-term financing schemes to fund these activities.

Issues of Power and Representation: Adapting Positionality and Reflexivity in Community‐Based Design

AbstractIncreasingly designers from an array of different disciplinary backgrounds work in international and community development, yet design education rarely prepares them for the challenges and roles in this context. The article reflects on issues of power and representation during design research in The Gambia by adapting reflexivity and positionality which are key concepts established in development studies. Reflections are based on research carried out in The Gambia since 2010 which is comprised of phases of immersion, mapping and co‐design. They provide in‐depth insights currently lacking in design literature that demonstrate the value of reflexivity and positionality to iterate roles and methods in community‐based design. Whilst not suggesting particular teaching methods, the article proposes the integration of these concepts into existing structures to better prepare students for increasingly common futures in the workplace. Broader themes that emerge and can be adapted to different design contexts include building trust, entanglement in power dynamics between different actors, personal vulnerability, as well as the need to challenge problems as starting points for design interventions.

Decolonial and Transnational Feminist Solidarity: Promoting Ethically Sustainable Social Change with Women in Rural Nepalese Communities

This article addresses the complexities and dynamics of promoting social change with marginalised communities in the Global South. It builds empirically on a social work ethnographic study about the change process(es) and development of women’s social position in rural Nepalese communities. The research results suggest that the tools to promote ethically sustainable social change are based on decolonial and transnational feminist solidarity and its different, overlapping forms: solidarity through dialogue, alliance and exchange. The study argues that international social work and community development need to strengthen the approaches that recognise and deconstruct white and economic power dominance within their research, theory and practice. The research produces knowledge on a context-sensitive transnational solidarity praxis, which contributes to the discussion on social justice and ethicality in international development and social work paradigms.

Using critical reflection to question self and power in international development

ABSTRACTUnequal power relations exist between the global North and the global South, between those in need of ‘development’ and the development policymakers and practitioners who work with them in projects and programmes intending to meet their needs – and, less often, support those in need to challenge the underlying inequalities that create these inequities. These relations are a legacy of colonialism. Critical reflection offers a way of raising awareness and ‘outing’ inequality between development workers and the women and men seen as ‘beneficiaries’ of their initiatives. This article explores the use of critical reflection by a small group of women development practitioners with a background in social work. The members of the group were interviewed about their engagement with varying reflective practices while working in various global communities. In particular, participants commonly spoke of how critical reflection unsettled their sense of ‘expertise’ and encouraged increased questioning of both their perceived and real positions of power within development. The use of critical reflection also enabled an examination of language and biases within international development work. Through their critically reflective analyses of power, these women were able to negotiate and re-conceptualise their relationships with the local members of the communities in which they worked. The article concludes with a discussion on why development organisations should support practitioners with opportunities to engage in formalised organisational and individual reflection in their everyday work. The increased awareness created opens up the possibility to reform and revitalise development so it becomes a partnership involving mutual exchanges, solidarity, and respect.

Having it all overseas: Aid workers and the international division of reproductive labour

AbstractThis article examines the dynamics of power and privilege at work in international development through the prism of domestic service for expat aid workers in developing countries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork amid aid workers and their domestic staff in Dakar, Senegal, I argue that access to affordable care work greatly enhances the lives of women who work overseas in development. The postcolonial underdevelopment and poverty that aid work addresses is paradoxically critical to the aid workers' own access to affordable care, family balance and the means to do their jobs. I put this insight into the larger scholarly conversation about domestic work and global inequality, including on the Global Care Chain.

Church Networks and Localisation Practice in the Pacific

The localisation agenda is the largest humanitarian reform in decades. Global research, advocacy and adaptations of localised approaches continue to mature following the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. The Summit produced The Charter for Faith-based Humanitarian Action, recognising the unique position and comparative advantage of local faith actors (LFAs) in humanitarian settings, owing to their presence in communities before, during, and after crises. More than 80% of the world’s population professes a religious faith, and international development and humanitarian work takes place within communities deeply influenced by faith, with local staff often themselves people of faith (cited in Fletcher 2018, p. 4). LFAs have consistently been among the top implementing partners of UN Agencies in undertaking humanitarian response (UNHCR Partnership Note on faith-based organizations, local faith communities and faith leaders 2014, p.8). Despite this recognition, little has promulgated on the role of LFAs in the localisation agenda and the primacy of LFAs' voices in contextualising the agenda for their communities. Accordingly, CAN DO (Church Agencies Network Disaster Operations) a network of Australian churchbased agencies with established relationships in the Pacific, is building an evidence base to inform international actors and affirm the significance of LFAs in localised humanitarian response within the Pacific region, thereby contributing towards the Charter for Faith-Based Humanitarian Action commitments. This paper is a critical reflection of the 2017-2018 localised response to the Monaro Volcano eruption in Vanuatu. Key learnings frame future collaborations with Pacific churches and pave the road ahead in shifting power differentials, including the advancement of LFAs' role within policy and decision-making at all levels of humanitarian response (Charter for Faith-Based Humanitarian Action 2016, p.2).

Respecting communities: languages and cultural understanding in international development work

ABSTRACTThis viewpoint summarises the key research themes from “The Listening Zones of NGOs” research project, that brought together NGO practitioners, language practitioners and academics from a number of disciplines. The research found that paying close attention to languages contributes to successful development programmes, according to the staff of both international and national NGOs. However, the general shift towards an emphasis on technical and thematic expertise among many INGOs has led to the risk that contextual knowledge and the resourcing of language and cultural understanding are not given priority. For INGOs, listening to the competing voices of multiple actors and organisations presents major challenges. The viewpoint presents ways of addressing those challenges.

Refusing the Development NGO? Departure, Dismissal, and Misrecognition in Angolan Development Interventions.

Nongovernmental organizations working in international development increasingly follow a neoliberalized management model, hiring professional employees to conduct the work of social transformation under a bureaucratic regime that sees the recruitment and retention of staff members as rational transactions between employer and employee. Such managerialist thinking holds that staff members represent bundles of skills and knowledge to be sorted and allocated according to the requirements of work, that they seek to exchange their labor for payment, and that they may justifiably be fired for misdeeds like misuse of materials, misrepresenting themselves, or poor work quality, as determined by the institution. I use the example of local staff members resigning and being fired from an international democratization intervention in postwar Angola to argue that some development professionals refuse to occupy such management-defined subject positions, asserting instead their independent moralities about the place of implementation staff in international development work. International development institutions misrecognize many such acts, however, leaving intact unequal relations of power within the very industry meant to combat such unequal relations on a global scale.

Cultural values of self-initiated expatriates: a pilot study

Because of their mobility and capability to adapt, self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) are very attractive for transnational companies, which increasingly view international business skills development and foreign work experience as part of career progression. SIEs are highly skilled professionals who decide to expatriate independently of any employer and mostly without organisational assistance. However, SIEs' lack of organisational embeddedness poses some challenges for companies, which need to understand how they can keep valuable resources inside the organisation. More needs to be known about the factors influencing SIEs, and about the motivations, which could help companies in attracting them in the long-term. This paper aims at exploring the impact of previous international experience of SIEs, and understanding more about the individual cultural values affecting their decisions.

CULTURAL VALUES OF SELF INITIATED EXPATRIATES. A PILOT STUDY

Because of their mobility and capability to adapt, self-initiated expatriates (SIEs) are very attractive for transnational companies, which increasingly view international business skills development and foreign work experience as part of career progression. SIEs are highly skilled professionals who decide to expatriate independently of any employer and mostly without organisational assistance. However, SIEs' lack of organisational embeddedness poses some challenges for companies, which need to understand how they can keep valuable resources inside the organisation. More needs to be known about the factors influencing SIEs, and about the motivations, which could help companies in attracting them in the long-term. This paper aims at exploring the impact of previous international experience of SIEs, and understanding more about the individual cultural values affecting their decisions.

Using Participatory Rural Appraisal for a Community Needs Assessment in Timor-Leste

Conducting timely and effective needs assessments in the field is important for international development work. In many cases, a researcher has only a couple of hours to build rapport with a community, visually examine the state of the field, and conduct the needs assessment and achieve open, honest, and valid data. Working with translators further constrains the process by cutting available time. Thus, research focused on conducting these types of international assessments is valuable. This study aimed to identify the key needs of the Fatubesi community in Timor-Leste using a combination of techniques for Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)—a transect walk and a small group discussion that included guided questions and ranking priorities. PRA is context specific and emphasizes facilitation of co-learning between local knowledge and outside expertise (Toness, 2005). Water, new fencing, and technical training/seeds were identified as the top three priorities for the community and their gardens, and the transect walk revealed issues with infrastructure that provided visual context for the small group discussion. The results of this study reflect the unique challenges faced by many communities in international development settings. The techniques described in this article are beneficial when used together for PRA to shift roles from expert facilitator to local empowerment.