Management standards and development practice in the South African aid chain

The article addresses how South African non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) approach the management of their development activities and the influences upon their approaches. Based on interviews, field visits and programme documents from 40 organisations working in South Africa, the article explores the extent to which NGO programme priorities and adopted management practices arise out of donor conditions, succeed in their stated aims and generate other unintended consequences. Four aspects of contemporary NGO management dynamics are explored: logical frameworks, participatory processes, impact enhancement and financial probity. While donor requirements in these four areas generally impose heavy costs on South African NGOs and poorly achieve their stated aims, the research documents cases, in which local managers were able to work effectively and learn within these constraints, found ways around the more intrusive requirements, or challenged donors to change their policies to permit more equitable donor‐recipient relationships and better development practice. However, an unintended impact of tighter funding requirements is an observable differentiation within the South African NGO sector, with smaller community‐based organisations excluded as larger professional organisations establish more enduring links with international development organisations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

NGO-state collaboration and the new policy agenda—the case of subsidized credit

This article is intended to contribute to debate over how development agencies should respond to what they perceive to be a new Washington-based policy agenda, and particularly with the question of whether collaboration with official agencies implementing that agenda may weaken more radical or alternative visions of development. The approach adopted is to locate these general arguments within a more narrowly defined policy arena—subsidization of credit. The second and third sections distinguish between a range of different points of view over credit subsidies within the World Bank and international NGOs, respectively. The fourth section then discusses opportunities and threats arising from NGO-donor collaboration, particularly co-finance agreements. The article also illustrates the need (a) to distinguish carefully between different elements of the new policy agenda, and (b) to analyse the diversity of views within development agencies as well as between them. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards an understanding of corporate citizenship and how to influence it

Companies are in effect citizens of the countries where they operate and increasingly, with globalising markets, of the world. The potential positive environmental and social contribution of companies is every bit as great as their potential for harm. Good corporate citizenship is about understanding and managing an organisation's influences on and relationships with the rest of society in a way that minimises the negative and maximises the positive. The importance of the effective management of a company's citizenship performance is growing both for itself and society as a whole. There are a number of forces based on self‐interest and mutual advantage, in addition to ethical values which underpin any civilised activity, which if better understood and harnessed, can be used by company managers and stakeholders to enhance the positive contribution and lessen the negative. The key to this is the development of an effective ‘reputation market place’ which relies on the creation of countervailing power to balance that, particularly, of multinational companies. The main source of this power is coming from the emergence of campaigning non‐government organisations (NGOs). The article argues that companies will increasingly need to manage their citizenship performance in order to maintain and grow competitive advantage, that NGOs need to learn how to combine pressure with collaboration when engaging companies in addressing solutions to major environmental and social problems and, finally, that business schools should take more account of this new phenomenon in their research and teaching programmes.     

NGO Interventions in the Post-conflict Memoryscape. The Effect of Competing ‘Mnemonic Role Attributions’ on Reconciliation in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are a constituent part of post-conflict Transitional Justice interventions and as such their projects shape but are also constrained by various narratives about the past. This article introduces the concept of mnemonic role attributions defined as the sum of how actors, their roles, their responsibility and their suffering are categorised as they are remembered regarding a certain period of time. The article analyses how different mnemonic role attributions that are propagated during interventions by Transitional Justice experts in civil society influence the potential for reconciliation in post-conflict Cambodia.     

From anti‐slavery to third sector in development: The transition of non‐governmental organisations and limitations

In the 1800s, the work of non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) focused on opposing slavery up until the 1900s where their work changed from anti‐slavery to focus on development‐related issues like education, poverty, hunger, and so forth. The transition of the NGOs was motivated by the failure of the public and private sector to provide the needs of the communities. Just like the other sectors (public and private sector), the work of NGOs is somewhere somehow failing to meet the needs of the needy because of the challenges in their operation. Against this background, the present study traces the transition of these NGOs and its present limitations in development. In order to explore the transition of NGOs and its limitations, the study used secondary data to collect relevant literature. Furthermore, the strict textual analysis of the existing literature is used. The results of the study show that NGOs face challenges of accountability and transparency, capacity, and corruption. In recommendation, the study suggests that NGOs have to be accountable and transparent; moreover, they should be capacitated with necessary skills. Lastly, NGOs should stay away with the acts of corruption.     

Advocacy channels and political resource dependence in authoritarianism: Nongovernmental organizations and environmental policies in China

Nongovernmental organizations are important in policy processes, but most studies supporting this argument are conducted in democracies. This article, therefore, focuses on China's environmental policy to discuss how environmental NGOs (eNGOs) conduct policy advocacy in authoritarian contexts. Based on interviews with eNGOs and scholars in China, I provide a typology to describe policy advocacy channels based on their formality and consistency and explain how channels are selected based on the political resources of eNGOs. This article reveals how policy advocacy is affected by one of the prominent features of authoritarian states—a monopoly of political power—and indicates that many tactics identified in current literature can be explained by the political resource endowments of NGOs. Additionally, this article also provides insights on the potential changes of the advocacy channels when the political control is tightened in the Xi era and how eNGOs cope with the new political situation.     

NGOs invite attention: From the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council

This article first reviews and compares Human Rights Council and University Period Review (HRC/UPR) research published during and shortly after the institution-building period (2006–2009) to more recent work (2010–2014) to identify patterns of scholarly interest in NGO roles and behavior at the HRC/UPR. It divides research into that which either “ignores” NGOs or offers “indirect” attention, “direct” attention, or “foregrounds” NGO activity, concluding that NGOs are surprisingly underexamined, given remarkable new participatory opportunities in the HRC/UPR and the centrality of NGO information provision to the success of the new body. Empirical analysis of NGO statements from the CHR to the HRC indicates sharply increasing NGO participation, particularly among domestic, regional, and Southern NGOs. The increased volume and changing characteristics of participating NGOs may have important effects on the HRC/UPR and should also encourage further analysis.     

“针灸法”：环保NGO参与环境政策的制度安排

环保非政府组织在怒江建坝案中通过"针灸法"--游说关键部门使怒江建坝计划暂缓.目前,环保非政府组织在一些工程项目上可以对政府的环境政策产生重大影响,但它们同时也面临着巨大的压力.事实上,在怒江建坝案后环保非政府组织影响力的增强为政府调整和创新其环境政策决策与监督机制创造了一个良好契机.环保非政府组织参与政府环境政策的决策过程可以仿照联合国赋予非政府组织咨商地位的做法,对那些具有相当资质的环保非政府组织准许它们制度化地参加到国家环保部门、政府决策机构的决策过程中,享有从旁听、提问到发言不等的资格.     

Livelihood strategies and performance of Ghana's health and education sectors: exploring the connections

The public sector in Africa is riddled with widespread ineffectiveness. Although some countries have implemented various reform programmes with the support of international development agencies, the results so far have been disappointing. One reason for the failure is that the policies have focussed more on achieving macroeconomic stability than making the organisations effective. This article explores a fundamental problem of the policies—the need to focus on the human component of organisational performance. Using education and health organisations in Ghana as examples, the article advances a hypothesis that the livelihood strategies of public sector employees and the performance of their organisations are interconnected. Specifically, it is argued that as public sector employees have become more dependent on multiple sources of income, they have developed multiple social identities, which influence the culture of their organisations. The organisational culture may have encouraged employee effectiveness in some cases, but for most organisations, it has resulted in practices that perpetuate inefficiency and poor performance. To be successful, public sector reform policies must therefore involve deliberate efforts to change organisational cultures. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bridging the Gap: The Relationship between INGO Activism and Human Rights Indicators

This article explores the tension between the production of “naming and shaming” reports as tools of activism by international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) and the usage of these reports as cross-national indicators of human rights violations. Because INGOs are strategic actors, their reports are not a reflection of the “true” levels of abuse. Although existing scholarship has raised this issue in relation to bias in cross-national indicators, it has yet to explain the process by which NGOs produce reports. This article exploits subnational variation across domestic and international NGOs within India, showing how the divergence in their reports can be explained by these groups’ organizational structures, probability of success in their chosen issue areas, and target audiences. By explaining how human rights NGOs produce reports, this article concludes with suggestions to ensure that the biases prevalent in a single source of data do not drive the results of future scholarship.     

Institutional Actors in the Brazilian Amazon: Possibilities for NGO and Public Sector Collaboration in Rural Agriculture

Public sector institutions in Amazonian Brazil are experiencing structural reforms, budget cuts, and overburdened missions. Services needed to support appropriate resource use practices by rural farmers are gradually being provided by NGOs where the public sector has failed to provide them. But local NGOs are institutionally weak, and their activities are poorly coordinated with other regional service providers. This article analyzes three models for NGO organization and partnership that were designed outside of the Amazon region, and tests their applicability to the small-farming sector in Pará State in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. With some adaptation, these models can effectively help coordinate three overarching needs in the region: institutional strengthening, regional planning, and improving program effectiveness and efficiency.     

Empowering Members of Ethnic Organisations: Tracing the Political Integration Potential of Immigrant Associations in Stockholm

The voluminous participation literature notwithstanding, knowledge is still scarce on how voluntary associations more precisely provide their members with politically significant human and social capital. This article focuses on the capacities of immigrant organisations to promote the political integration of ethnic minority members. Analysing a unique dataset, based on face-to-face interviews with representatives of 106 organisations of four different immigrant groups in Greater Stockholm, the study empirically investigates what the authors refer to as an association's ' political integration potential ' (PIP) – the possibility of a given ethnic association to promote the inclusion of its members in the political community of the host society. As elements of PIP, the article examines associational-level political activity as well as support and mobilisation of individual members, and analyses how the former may be induced by the latter. Furthermore, the article tries to explain why some types of organisations do better than others in these respects. It finds that size and diversification of associations have an important impact on PIP, thus explaining observed differences between associations of the ethnic categories included in this study.     

Nonprofit Policy Advocacy under Authoritarianism

Despite the increasing volume and significance of research on nonprofit advocacy, most studies have focused on the phenomenon only in Western countries. This article expands the scope of the literature by examining the advocacy activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in authoritarian China. This article focuses on three aspects of advocacy behavior: advocacy investment and use of insider and outsider tactics. Data analyses of an original nationwide survey of 267 environmental NGOs and semistructured interviews with 30 highlight how resource and institutional factors—government funding, government affiliation, foundation funding, and peer collaborations—shape NGO advocacy in China. The findings also suggest ways in which institutional actors may enhance NGOs’ capacity for policy advocacy.     

非政府组织与政府的关系--资源相互依赖理论的视角

从"公共组织间关系"的角度研究非政府组织与政府之间的关系,是对传统"政府间关系"视角的一种部分超越,因此得到了学术界的广泛认同.但是,绝大多数研究者都将非政府组织作为同质性的整体进行研究,忽视了非政府组织之间存在的巨大差异,因此,存在着一些缺陷与不足.从资源相互依赖理论的视角出发,分析了政府与非政府组织在资源上的相互依赖关系以及不同的政府-非政府组织关系类型,认为非政府组织在获得资源的途径方面具有结构性的差异;因此,非政府组织与政府之间的关系具有结构性的差异;非政府组织对于政府资金支持的依赖关系并不必然导致其自主性的丧失.     

The Environment: A Winner for the Liberal Democrats?

While the Liberal Democrats have a long-standing commitment to environmental sustainability and have over the years developed a range of policies acclaimed by the green NGOs, there remain doubts about the depth of that commitment. In particular, the party's local government environmental record is not notably better than its rivals. With the Conservatives and others now heavily promoting their green credentials, the Liberal Democrats face the dilemma of either being outflanked on the green reputation front or having to adopt much tougher policies that some in the party believe will lose votes. The author argues that one course of action would be to seek cross-party support for achieving agreed environmental targets supported by a menu of tough policies to be introduced if those targets are missed.     

All spending is not equal: European Union public spending,policy feedback and citizens’ support for the EU

While public support is central to the problem‐solving capacity of the European Union, we know little about when and why the EU can increase its citizens’ support through spending. Extensive research finds that citizens living in countries that are net beneficiaries of the EU budget are more supportive of the EU, assuming that citizens care equally about all forms of spending. It is argued in this article, however, that the amount of spending is only part of the story. Understanding the effects of spending on support requires a consideration of how transfers are spent. Drawing on policy feedback theories in comparative politics, it is shown that support for the EU is a function of the fit between the spending area and economic need in individuals’ immediate living context. Results from a statistical analysis of EU spending on human capital, infrastructure, agriculture, energy and environmental protection in 127 EU regions over the period 2001–2011 corroborate this argument. As the EU and other international organisations become increasingly publicly contested, the organisations themselves may increasingly try to shore up public support through spending, but they will only be successful under specific conditions.     

Reinventing the Governance of Public Finances in Remote Indigenous Australia

The economies of remote Indigenous settlements are dominated by public finances. The current system of governing public finance is highly saturated, fragmented and centralised, and this has a corrosive effect on local governance capability. The political accountability of leaders to their constituents is weakened in favour of an administrative accountability ‘upwards’ to higher authorities. New Public Management reforms have promoted administrative deconcentration, over political devolution, and this has been accompanied by an influx of public servants, Non‐Government Organisations (NGOs) and private contractors, and a decline in Indigenous organisations and local government. The end result in many settlements is a marked disengagement of Indigenous people in their own governance. There is evidence of considerable political capabilities existing within local government electorates. Decentralised financing arrangements can be used to catalyse these capabilities and then address deficits in administrative and technical performance.     

Parties under pressure: Challenges to ‘established’ French parties

This article seeks to analyse recent trends in party politics in France that point to two complementary phenomena, electoral demobilisation and volatility. Four indicators are presented that demonstrate the extent of them in contemporary France; (1) the rise of ‘new politics’ organisations, (2) the emergence of small parties and protest movements, (3) the haemorrhage of party members, and (4) the growth of electoral dissidence. Various institutional and environmental explanations are proposed. The article concludes that established parties in France today are experiencing a major challenge to their hegemony.     

Grass-roots Influence: Pressure Groups within the Liberal Democrats

This article examines the self-perceived influence of the specified associated organisations and associated organisations within the Liberal Democrats. The analysis is set within the wider theoretical context of political party construction and the dichotomy between the elite and grassroots activists. The article tests the thesis that there is a hierarchical structure of ancillary organisations within the party and that this determines which organisations feel that they have any real influence. It takes a fresh look at the role of the Liberal Democrat ancillary organisations and questions whether or not their party-sanctioned status restricts their ability and willingness to influence the party.     

Computer-Based Performance Information for Executives in Local Government

Performance information is crucial to effective management. Computer-based information systems (CBIS) now play a significant role in the effective delivery of information to senior managers. Executive information systems (EIS) are emerging as popular tools to assist organisations in their strategic decision-making processes. This trend has spread from the private to the public sector, and is now evident in Australian government organizations
This article draws on the findings of a survey into the uses and benefits of CBIS and EIS, from a sample of Australian local government organisations. The study shows that lessons from the private sector are being heeded by system developers in public organisations, leading to successful EIS projects, or at least improved CBIS. The study indicates that EIS, which were originally developed for profit-oriented private companies, are now seen as appropriate for many public sector organisations, providing effective delivery of information to senior managers. Survey results indicate that improved information systems give executives a more accurate picture of their organisation's performance and so provide support for improved strategic decision-making. In addition, EIS are seen by respondents as offering significant benefits not only to managers but also to the rest of the organization.