The SCOPE framework

Alongside institutionalism, another body of literature developed in the 1990s (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith 1990, 1992; Brinkerhoff, 1991, 1992; Goldsmith, 1992) out of a growing concern among major aid agencies that a considerable proportion of their institutional development projects in the “Third World” countries were failing to generate lasting impacts (Goldsmith, 1992: 585). In order to improve the situation,

the USAID funded research at the University of Maryland, which resulted in the development of a framework, called the SCOPE or the “institutional sustainability” framework (Goldsmith, 1992).

The SCOPE is an attempt to explain why institutions do, or do not, sustain themselves over time. However, unlike in institutionalism, the term “institution” in this framework is used to mean an “organisation” such as a government body, rural clinic, agricultural university, and so on, that has attained special status or legitimacy (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 1990, 1992; Goldsmith, 1992).

The proponents of the SCOPE define “institutional sustainability” as “the ability of an organisation to produce outputs of sufficient value so that it acquires enough inputs from its stakeholders in order to be able to continue production at a steady or growing rate (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 1990, 1992).” This definition indicates two things. First, it takes a simple or broad approach in defining the institutional sustainability of organisations. Instead of defining sustainability as the continuous survival of organisational structures, activities, availability of funding, and so on, the SCOPE proponents consider sustainability as the ability of an organisation to receive inputs or supports from its stakeholders (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 1992). Second, the definition suggests that in order to maintain such supports (and thereby retain its legitimate status) an organisation must continuously and efficiently produce valued outputs. By adopting such a view, the SCOPE proponents have drawn attention to the “pragmatic” aspects of an organisation’s legitimacy (Brinkerhoff, 2005). In other words, what the organisation actually produces for its stakeholders and how it performs in relation to expectations is the key to the organisation’s legitimacy (Brinkerhoff, 2005). In the context of development projects, it draws attention to the implementation performance of the projects during their lifetime (Brinkerhoff, 2005; Ingle et al., 1990).

In explaining the institutional sustainability of development organisations, the SCOPE proponents have combined insights from systems theory (S), contingency theory (CO), and political economy (PE). Hence, they named their framework “SCOPE”. From Systems theory the SCOPE authors take the idea that an organisation is like a system consisting of a set of interrelated units that interact with one another to convert some types of inputs (tangible and intangible resources) into outputs (products, services, ideas, etc.). In this input-output

production process, the system operates in relation to some broader systems that constitute its environment. The environment acts as the source of inputs for the system and at the same time the system produces outputs that influence the environment.

From contingency theory, the SCOPE authors take the idea that the optimal structure and management style of an organisation is contingent upon uncertain, exogenous conditions (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 1990). Therefore, they reject the traditional Weberian (1947) view that there exists a single, universal way to constitute organisations. Instead, the authors hold the premise that the success of an organisation depends on its having an adequate fit with the environment. In order to achieve this fit, an organisation must possess structures, strategies, and procedures as appropriate in a given context.

Finally, from political economy, the SCOPE proponents adopt the premise that an organisation is dependent on various political and economic relationships with its environment. These relationships affect the incentives for the organisation’s stakeholders to support or not support the organisation, or in other words, affect the resource renewal process between the system and its environment (Gustafson, 1994).

Accordingly, the SCOPE framework is based on two hypotheses (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 1990, 1992). First, it assumes that the long-term survival of an organisation is affected by its external environment and internal system features. Second, in order to remain viable in a changing world, the organisation must develop and stick to a strategy or game plan with a strong fit among its own internal strengths and weaknesses and the external threats and opportunities. If there is a mismatch, institutional decline or demise is likely.

As regards the internal system, two sets of factors are proposed in the SCOPE framework as important for the institutional sustainability of an organisation. They are the technology and the structure. Technology refers to the organisation’s production and decision-making processes and structure refers to the distribution of jobs among the people (or groups) within the organisation. The important point about technology and structure is their degree of complexity. Other things being

equal, the framework postulates that the complexity of an organisation is inversely related to its sustainability.

The SCOPE authors also propose that an organisation’s technology tends to become complex when the processes are variable and irregular; involve issues of power asymmetry or principal agent relationships and deal with multiple units and complex tasks requiring coordination and integration. The structure, on the other hand, tends to be complex if it is informal, non-hierarchical, decentralised, contains relatively more units, and the units are independent and perform different tasks. One central point in system complexity is the requirement for coordination and integration (Israel, 1987). Organisations requiring greater coordination among multiple units are more complex, and vice versa (Israel, 1987). An integrated rural development project involving multiple organisations from a range of sectors, for example, would be a complex organisation (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith 1990, 1992; Israel, 1987).

The complexity of the technology can put pressure on system resources through its scale of operation, cost of coordination, supervision and staff motivation. Structural complexity can affect incentives for organisational actors, and thus encourage some forms of behaviour while discouraging others. In addition, complexity may influence the transaction costs and flow of information within the system, which may affect system sustainability. For example, structures that generate excessive transaction costs are often non-viable (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 1990: 35). Similarly, formal structures, as opposed to informal ones, are difficult to maintain in developing countries as formalisation tends to increase transaction costs because it requires specialised training, familiarisation with new roles, and so forth. Therefore, organisations that use intricate technologies or have elaborate structures are apt to be difficult to sustain (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith 1992:372).

In the operating environment of an organisation, the SCOPE identifies both direct and indirect influences. According to the prevalence of these influences, the environment may be hostile or helpful. Environmental hostility, like complexity, is inversely related to sustainability. The most critical external sustainability variable proposed in the framework is the demands of the stakeholders – both resource providers (patrons) and resource users (clients). According to the political economy

view, the SCOPE proposes that these demands may be economic or political in nature (e.g. a desire to retain control over power). In either case, an organisation, in order to be able to sustain itself, must fulfil its stakeholders’ demands through the production of outputs that will be valued by them.

In addition to direct environmental influences, some other factors – such as a change in government commitment, bureaucratic opposition, the relative visibility or clout of the organisation’s clients or major changes in the environment – are also proposed in the SCOPE as having indirect influences on an organisation’s institutional sustainability (Gustafson 1994; Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith 1990, 1992).

In addition to the internal and environmental conditions, the SCOPE authors propose “strategic management” as an important sustainability variable. Strategy is important because of the political, social and economic uncertainties in the operating environment of an organisation. These may affect both internal operations and the way that stakeholders judge the value of the organisation’s products. Therefore, sustainability would require a strategy to match the organisation’s internal strengths and weaknesses and the environmental contexts (demands) in which it operates (Gustafson, 1994: 123-124).

Four types of managerial strategies are proposed in the SCOPE (Figure 2.2). The strategy can have an internal versus an external focus. An internal strategy takes the environment for granted, while an external strategy involves an active engagement with the environment, surveying it and perhaps even trying to affect it, for example, by making attempts to involve the stakeholders and thus increase their commitment to the organisation. The strategy can also emphasise either an active dimension (doing things right), or a reflective dimension (doing the right things). Based on these active versus reflective, and internal versus external distinctions, managerial strategies may take four forms: mechanical, adaptive, reactive, and interactive (Fig 2.2).

According to the SCOPE, the mix of strategy that would be important for sustainability is a contingent decision. No organisation can belong to a single type of strategy. Although the SCOPE emphasises learning, it takes a neutral stance and suggests that how much learning is appropriate depends partly on the internal

complexity of the system and the level of hostility in the environment. If the system is complex and the environment is hostile, a mechanical strategy is not likely to work. However, in most developing countries, despite well-recognised environmental hostility, donor funded projects often tend to have a mechanical strategy. The reason is the financial oversight and accountability demanded by donors’ own stakeholders (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 1990, 1992).

Orientation

Internal External

Active Mechanical Adaptive

Dimension of

capacity emphasised

Reflective Reactive Interactive

Figure 2.2 System strategies for translating capacity into performance

(Source: Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith 1992: 41)

Despite the origin of the SCOPE in the context of a developed country (USA) and private profit-making firms (Goldsmith, 1992), the framework was applied in the nineties to evaluate the sustainability of various donor-supported projects in health, agriculture and rural development. The lessons learned are summarised by Finsterbusch (1990).

The relationship between organisational performance (project implementation performance) and sustainability was affirmed (Finsterbusch, 1990; Ingle et al., 1990). A good (implementation) performance in terms of demonstrated success influenced the decision makers and beneficiaries to sustain the organisation. However, quite opposite to the speculations in the SCOPE, the studies also revealed that some institutions that produced low quality outputs were better sustained compared to those that produced high quality outputs. Thus, the results were inconclusive, and Finsterbusch (1990) argued that more research was necessary in this regard. Two important explanations were provided by

Finsterbusch (1990) as to why some organisations were sustained despite their poor performance. First, vested interests within bureaucracies tended to protect incompetence and thus maintain their status quo. The second explanation was a lack of significant inter-institutional competition in the environment. Despite poor performance, incompetent institutions continued receiving budget allocations from their patrons.

As regards organisational strategy, considerable involvement of staff, beneficiaries and other stakeholders and sharing power with them were all important for developing ownership. This, in turn, resulted in improved performance. However, although stakeholder involvement was found to be important for sustainability, the findings reported by Finsterbusch (1990) do not provide adequate guidelines as to what nature and degree of involvement and power sharing were associated with organisational sustainability.

The SCOPE framework was also applied in academic research to study the relationship between learning and institutional (the term is used in an organisation sense) sustainability of donor-supported programmes in the Caribbean (Brown, 1996). The study did not reveal any strong relationship between learning and sustainability, and concluded that some forms of learning always take place in organisations, but they are not necessarily adequate to ensure sustainability. The author (Brown, 1996), however, supported the claim made by the SCOPE proponents that the framework is “generic” in the sense that it is applicable in the analysis of all forms of institutions.

The SCOPE framework was also applied to study the institutional sustainability of the T&V projects in agricultural extension (Gustafson, 1994). For the sake of comparison, the findings are discussed along with the other descriptive-empirical literature in section 2.3 of this chapter.