Development management addresses the management of the processes of development in its diverse forms, at different international, national, organisational and community levels. As an integral but distinct constituent of international development, issues raised in the development management literature on inter-organisational relationships between the global North and South, also have implications for IVS. IVCOs are subject to external pressures arising from global trends
in international development, worldwide political and economic movements, as well as domestic concerns in the countries where IVCO host country offices operate.
Development is an imprecise and contested issue (Chambers, 1983; Crush, 1995; Cowen and Shenton, 1996; Biekart, 1999; Allen and Thomas, 2000b; Cleaver, 2001; Kothari, 2005; Brown and Hanlin, 2013b) and can be used in different ways, for example, i) as a vision of transformation into a more desirable form for the society, ii) as a historical process of social change over time and iii) deliberate efforts (intention) aimed at positive transformation by various agencies, on behalf of others (Thomas, 1996; Hewitt, 2000; Cowen & Shenton, 1996; Brown & Hanlin, 2013a).This thesis is concerned with development as ‘deliberate interventions’ through international
volunteering, and uses Thomas’s (1996, pp. 99–100) designation of development management as
“The management of the development effort…[aimed to] deliberately influence the course of social change in a positive and sustainable way”. Deliberate development intervention is aligned to the concept of ‘trusteeship’ as “the intent….by one source of agency to develop the capacities of another” (Cowen and Shenton, 1996, p. 25). Linking trusteeship with agency, Thomas and Allen (2000a, p. 189) define agency as “the action of individuals or groups, and their capacity to influence events” and argue that while intentional development necessitates the presence of development agencies to assume the responsibility for trusteeships, it questions authority and motives of the agents to implement development on behalf of others. Thomas (2000, p. 41) observes that “Trusteeship may be taken on by an agency on another’s behalf without ‘the other’
asking to ‘be developed’ or even being aware that the intention to ‘develop’ them is there”.
Contrary to conventional management, which is customarily intent on achieving internal organisational objectives, development management relates to the management of interventions aimed at external social goals (Thomas, 1996; Robinson et al., 2000). This requires negotiating the mobilisation, coordination and access to resources with multiple actors and their diverse interests (Fowler, 1997; Bond, 2002; Lavagnon, 2012). Management of international development takes place at different levels: global and strategic, national project design and implementation, and at the
community level, where complexities arise in relation to the multitude of actors and their different values and aspirations (Robinson et al., 2000). The diversity of actors makes the practice of development management difficult because individuals and organisations may not share the same level of commitment to the goals of development, or may be motivated by different incentives and agendas.
Escobar (1995) suggests that narratives of post-war development influenced the recipients of development interventions to internalise how they perceived themselves in the arena of global power relations. He thus captures the significance of forms of trust (as in trusteeship) and power relations (a potential obstacle to trust) in development management, which are also present in IVS (Pink, 1998; Heron, 2005; Trau, 2014). Unequal power relations can influence the aims and processes of interventions, including those using IVS, diminish trust among the actors and undermine the legitimacy of the agents of development (Thomas, 1996). Since the 1990s, a plethora of donor-driven initiatives has emerged aimed at addressing power inequalities between the global North and South (OECD, 2005, 2008, 2011; The World Bank, 2016; United Nations, 2017), inspired by concepts such as empowerment through participation, partnership, capacity-building and sustainability (Thomas, 1992). Funding for aid, which historically used to flow from Northern governments, or international organisations, to the governments of developing countries, has since become increasingly diverted directly through international and national agencies, including NGOs, INGOs and IVCOs for programme implementation (Brinkerhoff, 2002; Lewis, 2002; Choudry and Kapoor, 2013).
Emphasis on the policies and practices of development management has shifted from top-down approaches often pursued during the period of structural adjustment in the 80s and 90s, to partnerships between donors, states, national and international aid agencies and community
representatives and beneficiary groups (Lewis, 1998; Edwards and Fowler, 2002; Rondinelli, 2002;
Elbers, 2012). The discourse informing partnerships is that of equality, capacity building and mutual exchange (Lister, 1999; Brinkerhoff, 2002; Pickard, 2007). However, the structural
inequalities between the global North and South, and sustained economic advantages in the North limit the realisation of such goals (Brinkerhoff, 2002; Jentsch and Pilley, 2003; Cornwall and Brock, 2005). This finds congruence in the literature on IVS, where it is shown that the intended aims of IVS are not always realised in equal partnerships. For example, Nelson and Child (2016, p.
543) observe that the outcome of partnerships between IVCOs and local stakeholders in Southern India was contradictory to the intended aims of IVS because they served the interests of the volunteers rather than local needs. Other authors suggest that host country partners have low expectations of positive outcomes from development interventions through working with IVCOs (Appadurai, 1988; Heron, 2011; Lough, 2011; Trau, 2014). The examples from the literature on IVS recognise the presence of unequal power relations in partnerships with power more favourably tilted towards the interests of the volunteers, but they fall short of the analysis of the underlying factors that shape the relationships between the key IVS actors.
Equity in power relations is related to the concepts of trusteeship and agency and implies either the necessity for the presence of trust, or accountability, or both within the relationship between the development agent and the service recipients. Accountability is referred to when suppliers are only rewarded when they provide satisfactory services or products to the intended recipients and can be penalised in cases of failure (Brett, 1993, p. 42). Edwards and Hulme (1996, p. 189) argue that the effectiveness of performance and transparency in reporting are fundamental elements of
responsible practice. This has led to donor mandates for ‘professionalization’ in accounting systems for financial reporting and technical performance monitoring which include greater emphasis on legal frameworks, documentation, strategic planning, and the use of business tools for training, monitoring and evaluation and impact assessments (Hauge, 2002; Rochester et al., 2010;
Liao-Troth, 2008; Lindenberg & Dobel, 1999). Donor organisations’ calls for professionalization is considered by some authors to be contrary to the rhetoric of participation, ownership and
downward accountability, but based on management theories and procedures that help maintain the dominance of Western philosophies and values while creating dependency in developing countries
(Brinkerhoff, 2002; Kapoor, 2002; Alsop, 2004; Mosse, 2005; Avant et al., 2010; Battilana and Casciaro, 2012; Africa, 2013; Gulrajani, 2014).
Engel and Georgeou (2011, p. 298) consider IVS to be a “largely a donor-dominated activity rooted in Western philosophical traditions, history and culture, and it plays a legitimating role in the donor state/NGO international aid system”. Thus, donor imperative for professionalization has
increasingly become applied to IVCOs in recent years with the introduction of procedures to measure, quantify and qualify volunteering activities (Lewis, 2001; Merrill and Safrit, 2003;
Oppenheimer, 2008). However, not only is this type of intervention hard to get right but it is also very difficult to capture (Bolton, 2007; Ackers and Ackers-Johnson, 2017a, p. 55) as providing evidence requires specific skills and capacities associated with managing and coordinating
volunteer programmes (Safrit and Merrill, 2007). Some authors contend that the donor demands for professionalization in IVCOs prioritises measurements that produce expected results rather than accountability in processes or procedures (Engel and Georgeou, 2011).
Some scholars argue that pressure to raise funds steers aid agencies to simplify and overstate the effectiveness of aid (Bolton, 2007; Ackers and Ackers-Johnson, 2017a), while an emerging body of literature points to the challenges of professionalization resulting in tensions at the interface
between INGO head offices and their HCOs (Porter, 2003; Elbers, 2012; Walsh, 2014). The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (OECD, 2005) laid out an action-oriented roadmap that included increased ownership of strategic development work by the developing countries and making donors more accountable for the development results, among a number of measures aimed at addressing the imbalances in the aid delivery systems. The combined effect of increased emphasis on aid effectiveness and the economic crisis of the mid-2000s on all global actors of international development has led to changes in donor strategy to fund disbursement, away from unrestricted to restricted funding8. Aligned with a neo-liberal approach to economic policy, this has led to
8 Also known as ‘undesignated funding’ or ‘core funding’, ‘unrestricted’ is the term commonly applied to funding that is not earmarked for specific projects. The term ‘restricted funding’ applies to funding for specified programmes with
increasing competition among NGOs and INGOs (including IVCOs) as they are required to identify their market niche, demonstrate efficiency and effectiveness, and use performance indicators to attract funding and resources (Robinson et al., 2000; Lewis, 2001; Engel and Georgeou, 2011).
The implications of changes in donor strategies to fund disbursement are particularly significant for IVCOs, as unrestricted funding was historically allocated to many of the IVCOs through strategic alliances or donors in support of IVCO programmes using international volunteers (Engel and Georgeou, 2011; Lough and Allum, 2013), some of which continue to remain so to this day (Allum, 2007; Engel and Georgeou, 2011)9. With the exception of UNV which was set up as an agency within the UN, the other four IVCOs studied in this research were set up and operated with unrestricted government funding for several decades (Appendix 1A-E). A good example of the changes in donor strategy on fund disbursement is illustrated by looking at the recent history of VSO (Appendix 1C), which shows how the amount of unrestricted funding to VSO from DFID was reduced from around 90% in the late 1990s to 35% in 2013/14 (OECD 2010, p.151; Ledward and Trivedy, 2010). However, a study of the impact of the challenges of restricted funding on IVCOs is almost non-existent in the literature on IVS, with the exception of research on the subject by Lough and Allum (2013, p. 914) which was acknowledged to be “based largely on the perceptions from IVCO administrators, which may not necessarily reflect reality.”
Despite the changes in the balance of restricted and unrestricted funding support, a significant number of IVCOs continue to receive substantial amounts of their funding from their own or other governments. For example, in 2015/16, 78% of VSO income and 74% of Progressio’s income were from restricted government funding, which raises questions about their independence (Bird, 1998;
Graff, 2006; Grubbs, 2009; Rochester et al., 2010). Furthermore, shortfalls in unrestricted-funding
restrictions placed in order to hold NGOs accountable for delivering pre-defined outcomes in accordance with the principles of aid effectiveness stated in the 2005 Paris Declaration (Nijs and Renard, 2009, p. 10)
9A survey commissioned by the Association Learning and Helping Overseas (AKLHUE) showed that: 35% of IVCOs were funded entirely by governments, and national governments provided in excess of 50% of the funding for 75% of all programmes (Euler et al., 2016, p. 32)
are being filled by alternative sources of restricted financing through donor-supported projects and programmes (Liao-Troth, 2008; Rochester et al., 2010; Choudry and Kapoor, 2013). The flow of international aid from donor governments can be direct to IVCOs (in the form of both restricted and unrestricted funding) or to international organisations such as the World Bank, or other INGOs, who then enter into a contractual arrangement with an IVCO to fund a specific project (restricted funding). Increasingly, entire or sections of projects are sub-contracted to consultants and other technical specialist groups or individuals (Edwards and Fowler, 2002), resulting in the
fragmentation of the supply chain of IVS service delivery (Wearing, 2016). This adds complexity at the point of project implementation where HCOs work and raises questions with regards to the legitimacy and accountability of the multiple stakeholders.
This section has shown the IVCOs are exposed to external pressures from global trends in the policies and practices of development management that have implications on power relations and bring into question the forms of trust within relationships between stakeholders. Fleuret (1988) suggests that the adoption of a frame of reference for development management should include not only a focus on the final impact of a development activity, but also factors that influence its conception, design, and implementation. The next section looks at the key readings in NGO management literature to examine the extent to which organisational dynamics influence INGOs’
day to day operations and their implications for IVCOs and IVS.