Publications

Be it water out of a new tap or the practice of good governance, development is the product of relationships between stakeholders. Capacity exists not only within but also between them. Capacity and its development are therefore ‘relational’. This text by Jim Woodhill introduces multi-actor dimensions of capacity. He discusses features of the actors that are commonly found in aided development and then explores dimensions of working with relations between them. The chapter introduces an interesting model of three types of ‘relating’, then provides the reader with principles and approaches that can be applied to make engagement between multiple stakeholders more effective.

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For capacity to develop effectively one often has to work across different levels of human organizing. One may, for example, have to deal with capabilities of the individual, the organization, a network of actors and sector or national institutions. Another way of distinguishing levels is geographic or administrative units: communities (micro), districts and/or provinces (meso) and nation state (macro). This chapter by Hendrik Visser discusses the real-life example of a capacity development initiative in road construction that consciously worked across both types of level. The story illustrates how additional capabilities were needed and developed at each level to achieve effective and sustainable results. The practitioner will find lessons on deliberately working with the ‘multi-level’ nature of capacity and implications for the place and role of change teams or advisers.

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Both external advisers and internal change agents can choose very different roles in capacity-development processes. Over the duration of an assignment or project, a competent adviser takes on a variety of positions in relation to different people or parts of the client system. This demands a critical awareness of types of roles and judgements about what is needed when. In their article originally published in Training and Development journal February 1990, Champion, Kiel and McLendon identify nine possible roles and suggest key factors to consider in making judgements about which consulting role to take on. Their model helps advisers, change agents or consultants to improve the clarity of expectations between themselves and their clients. The article also explores factors that consultants may consider when adjusting their role towards a particular situation or phase of a project. Though it was written 20 years ago and not specifically targeted at the development community, this text is still highly relevant and addresses questions that will be very familiar to practitioners.

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To be effective in capacity development one often has to combine specific knowledge of the client business with change expertise. This combination of capabilities seldom arises naturally from formal education. Gaining and holding the required balance therefore calls for conscious and continuous effort on the part of practitioners as well as the organizations they work for. This chapter by Naa-Aku Acquaye-Baddoo analyses how these two different capabilities interact in practice, based on the experience of one development organization. In an engaging style, she explores how practitioners could improve their ability to combine the two in a balanced way and what organizational conditions help enable them to do so.

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Capacity-development practitioners commonly find themselves in work settings where different forces, interests and power asymmetries need to be dealt with. These factors can create potential sources of conflict over ownership, authority and the allocation of roles and responsibilities. This problem is poorly acknowledged and seldom explored in ways that are useful for practitioners. This chapter by Joe McMahon draws upon work from the fields of consulting, facilitation and conflict resolution to expose the power dimensions that are inherent to capacity development. He delineates a number of practical, common-sense ‘behavioural guides’ for the practitioner that will help to adequately define one’s own role, position oneself towards multiple actors and constructively deal with (potential) conflict.

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The diverse actors engaged in a capacity-development process often have very different values and views. The fact that it is the dominant values and voices that determine the direction and outcomes of the process is a particularly pertinent issue in addressing exclusion and inequity. Drawing on two local settings in India, this text by Rajesh Tandon demonstrates how some of these issues are played out in capacity-development processes. He highlights the need for a practitioner to be fully aware of how imbalances in interests and voice may reinforce or even worsen existing situations of disempowerment. He also discusses how a lack of awareness of a gap between the practitioner’s own values and those of the client, or key stakeholders, can impact on the practitioner’s relationship with his or her client.

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The professional field of organizational development (OD) is a major source for thinking about and practising capacity development. Capacity-development (CD) practitioners will therefore benefit from a good understanding of this rather eclectic discipline. In her insightful contribution, Ingrid Richter traces the evolution of OD and describes the multiple influences that have shaped it. She draws on her own experience and that of other OD practitioners to show how much convergence there is between OD and CD practice, especially with regard to approaches and methods for supporting long-term change. This convergence is a growing resource for the work of CD advisers. Practitioners will find this chapter illuminating in locating the roots of some capacity-development practices and approaches with which they may be familiar.

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Advisers or change agents always enter and intervene in living dynamic processes. Accordingly, a critical competence is the ability to see and make sense of what is going on in and around a client organization. Organizational assessments are one way of doing this, but they often focus on predefined and rather standard elements of an organization. A different but complementary approach is what is called ‘reading situations’, that is, to try to discover the story and dynamics of an organization in a more open and creative way. This chapter by Catherine Collingwood describes how to ‘read an organization’, with a special focus on understanding the less-visible dynamics that occur within civil society organizations and their contexts. This exploration reveals the limitations of conventional organizational assessment approaches, leading to the conclusion that these may be complemented by ‘readings’ to unravel the unique context and history of an organization. Finally, Collingwood considers what this approach may mean for practitioners wanting to apply it across different types of organizational settings.

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Dialogue is an essential ingredient of any intervention directed at changing a situation and is a vital competence for any adviser. While it is not easy to facilitate true dialogue, it is a capability that can be developed in its own right. Real dialogue can create collectively shared and owned understanding and an agreed direction of effort as well as clarity about divisions of tasks and responsibilities. This chapter by Marianne Mille Bojer reviews factors critical to the success of capacity-development processes that use dialogue as a key philosophy. Her excellent menu of dialogue tools and approaches shows the reader what is on offer and how to choose between them. She also provides concrete examples of how some of these methods have been used.

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Any capacity-development activity takes place within the wider setting of institutions, governance and politics. This reality poses for practitioners critical and difficult questions that are too seldom confronted in the open. For example: how can one best tackle the complex webs of power and informal relations that surround organizations? How does capacity development relate to governance dynamics? How can one explore, and maybe even widen the space for capacity development by working with ‘political’ forces and factors? Traditionally, most attention is directed at capacity development from the ‘inside out’. In this compelling contribution, Nils Boesen shows that a focus on governance and stakeholders opens additional perspectives on how change can be and often is stimulated from the ‘outside in’, or demand-side. He also discusses the political dimensions that shape capacity and the importance of change management – particularly the political tasks that it entails – is stressed.

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Being held to account is a driver for performance and capacity development. However, accountability to local constituencies is often weak in many ‘aided-development’ programmes, with negative consequences for results and the ownership of such programmes by their intended beneficiaries. Increasing mutual and public accountability can therefore be an important force for enhancing the overall performance of actors around an issue of collective concern. In this chapter, Rakesh Rajani sketches various ways in which a Tanzanian NGO deploys information and public media to boost citizens’ demand for accountability in the provision of education and other public services. These experiences have interesting implications for expanding a practitioner’s repertoire of capacity development beyond discrete organizations. They also stimulate thinking about how capacity development is connected to activism.

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It is not uncommon to find that public policies formulated and promulgated at national, or macro, level are not effective locally. Conversely, local development needs and interests seldom enjoy a supportive policy environment. These types of disconnects are referred to as the micro–macro gap. In programmes of some scale, therefore, capacity-development processes often need to establish and nurture linkages between actors and systems operating at different levels. In this contribution Ubels, van Klinken and Visser describe three cases of sector development in which conscious efforts were made to create this type of connectivity. They extract five specific capacity-development focuses that will help practitioners engaged in any capacity-development initiative of some scale, to avoid perpetuating or reinforcing micro–macro disconnects.

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Understanding and developing value chains is receiving more attention as a systems-based approach for accelerating and scaling-up development processes. By their nature, value chains involve and connect multiple actors. A value chain approach is, additionally, applicable across economic as well as social domains. In this interesting case, Duncan Mwesige describes a capacity-development intervention in an agricultural value chain in Uganda. He shows how particular multi-stakeholder processes (MSPs) were pivotal in helping chain-connected actors to develop new forms of cooperation that strongly improved efficiency, trust and pro-poor results at many levels. The practitioner will also find a number of practical lessons on the application of MSP methodologies.

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This chapter, by Schirin Yachkaschi, draws on practical experience and a study with urban community-based organizations (CBOs). It shows that if certain basic principles are not employed with integrity, a common outcome is the undermining of the distinct value of CBOs in aided-development processes. Her evidence challenges the practitioner to step out of pre-conceptions associated with formal organizing. Only then can one properly appreciate the true contribution of community-based organizations in coping positively with the unstable, impoverished environments in which they operate.

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Leadership is an important factor in fostering connections and guiding change. In development processes it can play a key role in governance, accountability and effectiveness of specific programmes. Given its pivotal role, practitioners need to pay attention to leadership as a critical aspect in capacity-development strategies and work. In this chapter, Dia and Eggink use a West African case to illustrate how individual and collective leadership development complements and provides leverage for capacity-development efforts. Of particular interest is the combination of individual and collective approaches. The authors also show how engaging in leadership development processes can enhance the capabilities of practitioners themselves.

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Knowledge networking has started to be recognized as a valuable method for capacity development. If applied well it can have advantages of cost, scale and speed over more conventional methods such as training and expert advice. In this chapter Geoff Parcell helps us understand three key elements of knowledge networking: the community of people participating, the knowledge topic or focus and the organizing processes used. These are illustrated with concrete applications in AIDS response networks, SARS research and organic farming. He shows that application of knowledge networking techniques can be beneficial for capacity-development results. This requires practitioners to shift an understanding of their own role away from the conventional expert model.

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Assessing progress and achievements in capacity development is a challenge. The drive for accountability is pushing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of capacity development, and development in general, in two different directions that a practitioner needs to be aware of. One reflects a traditional results-based, log-frame approach to intentional change. The other relies on an open systems way of thinking, and the related interactive M&E methods. In this chapter, David Watson acknowledges the merits of conventional results-based approaches but outlines their limitations when applied to more complex situations and to the multi-faceted nature of capacity itself. With extensive references to literature and cases available, he goes on to review examples of successful and innovative M&E methods and shows how these combine ‘the best of two worlds’. The range of insights, clues and references provided can help the reader to think through their present or improved M&E logics and practices.

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In capacity development, time is an ever present force. But how time influences and complicates a practitioner’s work is not fully appreciated. This chapter highlights different ways in which time appears in capacity-development initiatives. It discusses the often competing demands of different actors’ time frames, cycles and core processes that must somehow be brought together. A case example introduces a model which shapes the primary process of a capacity-development support organization. It helps the practitioner to work consciously across short-, medium- and long-term objectives and time frames depending on the scale of ambition involved. The approach described shows how practitioners can apply adaptive planning and ‘learning in action’.

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