No abstract

The international development sector is increasingly implementing collaborative approaches that facilitate a range of sectoral-level stakeholders to jointly address complex problems facing sustainable public service delivery, for which guidance does not explicitly exist. The literature on collaborative approaches has been built on experiences in high-income countries with vastly different governance capabilities, limiting their global relevance. A Delphi expert panel addressed this need by evaluating 58 factors hypothesized in the literature to contribute to the success of collaborative approaches. The panel rated factors according to their importance in low-income country contexts, on a scale from Not Important to Essential. Experts agreed on the importance of 49 factors, eight of which were essential for success. Rich qualitative data from open-ended responses revealed factors that may be unique to low-income country contexts and to service delivery applications, including how government capacity, politics, donor influence, and culture can influence decisions on structuring leadership and facilitation roles, appropriately engaging the government, and building legitimacy. Key considerations for future practice and research are summarized in a table in the appendix. This study contributes to both literature and practice by identifying the relative importance of factors to consider when designing collaborative approaches in low-income countries with limited governance capabilities.

Amongst growing sociotechnical efforts, engineering students and professionals both in the international development sector and industry are challenged to approach projects more holistically to achieve project goals.  Engineering service learning organizations must similarly adapt their technological projects to consider varying cultural and economic structures, ensuring more resilient social progress within development efforts.  In practice, systems thinking approaches can be utilized to model the social, economic, political, and technological implications that influence the sustainability of an engineering project. This research assesses the utility of integrating systems thinking into Engineers Without Borders (EWB) project planning and development, thereby improving project impact and more effectively engaging members.  At a workshop held at an EWB-USA 2016 Regional Conference, the authors presented a planning and evaluation framework that applies group model building with system dynamics to foster systems thinking through factor diagramming and analysis. To assess the added value of the framework for EWB project planning and development, extensive participant feedback was gathered and evaluated during the workshop and through an optional post-workshop survey.  Supported by thoughtful observations and feedback provided by the EWB members, the model building workshop appeared to help participants reveal and consider project complexities by both visually and quantitatively identifying key non-technical and technical factors that influence project sustainability.  Therefore, system dynamics applied in a group model building workshop offers a powerful supplement to traditional EWB project planning and assessment activities, providing a systems-based tool for EWB teams and partner communities to build capacity and create lasting change.

Collaborative approaches can overcome fragmentation by fostering consensus and connecting stakeholders who prioritize similar activities. This makes them a promising approach for complex, systemic problems such as lack of reliable, safe water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services in low-income countries. Despite the touted ability of collaborative approaches to align priorities, there remains no comprehensive way to measure and map alignment within a network of actors. Methodological limitations have led to inconsistent guidance on if, and how much, alignment is needed around a common vision (e.g., universal, reliable access to WASH) and/or around an agreed set of activities (e.g. passing a bill to promote water scheme maintenance models). In this work, we first define alignment as the extent to which actors work with others who share priorities. We then develop and test a method that uses social network analysis and qualitative interview data to quantify and visualize alignment within a network. By investigating how alignment of two strong, well-functioning WASH collaborative approaches evolved over three years, we showed that while alignment on a common vision may be a defining aspect of collaborative approaches, some alignment around specific activities is also required. Collaborative approaches that had sub-groups of members that all prioritized the same activities and worked together were able to make significant progress on those activities, such as drafting and passing a county-wide water bill or constructing a controversial fecal sludge disposal site. Despite strong sub-group formation, networks still had an overall tendency for actors to work with actors with different prioritized activities. While this reinforces some existing knowledge about collaborative work, it also clarifies inconsistencies in theory on collaborative approaches, calls into question key aspects of network literature, and expands methodological capabilities.