Accountability, autonomy, and authenticity: assessing the development waltz conducted to a ‘
            <i>kwaito</i>
            ’ beat in Southern Africa

Abrahams, Mark

doi:10.1080/09614520701778348

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Despite learning being a key RBM principle, it is widely argued that a tension between accountability and learning exists and that accountability has won (Abrahams 2008;Honig 2020;Shutt 2016).…”

Section: Did Results-based Management Encourage Learning In International Development?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a result, the donor-recipient relationship has been defined by this accountability and control paradigm with inbuilt power dynamics (Abrahams 2008). International non-governmental organisations, NGOs and even southern governments depend on funding and are in the business of proving results.…”

Section: Results-based Management and Principal-agent Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst this manifests in the charity landscape in the United Kingdom, mentioned because the case described below has UK 1 grantees, it is amplified by relationships amongst mainly northern donors and southern grantees. The expectation that grantees report against predetermined objectives and indicators (accountability paradigm), combined with unequal power relations between grant-makers and grantees, creates a culture that stifles innovation and learning (Abrahams 2008).…”

Section: Results-based Management and Principal-agent Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Results-based management has been predominantly implemented through logical frameworks with clearly defined project objectives and pre-determined indicators against which organisations had to account, which effectively discourages learning. Abrahams (2008) argues that log-frames could act as an '…"agreed-upon" scheme of accountability which in its dominant mode, is mechanistic and has productivity as its ethic and power at its core'. Whilst RBM did not exclude learning, in reality, it became a bureaucratic exercise where implementing organisations proved that they had achieved their goals, rather than as a guide for reflection.…”

Section: Results-based Management As a Mechanistic Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning to learn: The experience of learning facilitation for grantees of Comic-Relief-funded projects

Lomofsky¹,

Grout-Smith

2020

African Evaluation Journal

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This article shares a learning facilitation process that Comic Relief, a UK-based funder, supported with its grantees. It is based on the case study of a learning cohort that Comic Relief established for one of its grants. The methodology for the case study is participatory action research. The case study demonstrates that by actively encouraging learning, grantees are empowered to adapt essential programmes to enhance programme effectiveness. Grant-makers need to consciously create the conditions for learning to encourage programme adaptation because organisations in international development (or local charities) have operated for many years under the dominant paradigm of results-based management. Results-based management tends to assert upward accountability based on low levels of trust and mechanistic processes for planning and reporting that attempt to control outcomes through forward planning and high-level decision-making. In this paradigm, organisations often end up proving a vision of success, rather than honestly learning from their implementation experience. However, a greater recognition of its unsuitability for working in highly complex contexts necessitates more learning by frontline workers and implementing organisations. This article shares our experience of how a carefully designed learning coordination and facilitation process encourages this kind of adaptation amongst grantees, generating lessons about design and implementation of projects that can be shared more broadly with others working with gang-affected girls and young women.

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Section: Did Results-based Management Encourage Learning In International Development?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Results-based Management and Principal-agent Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Results-based Management and Principal-agent Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Results-based Management As a Mechanistic Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Learning to learn: The experience of learning facilitation for grantees of Comic-Relief-funded projects

Lomofsky¹,

Grout-Smith

2020

African Evaluation Journal

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“…Accountability is expressly intended to mediate power asymmetries, as it is concerned with the conduct of actors, and their duty to be answerable for their actions (Coleman, ; Roberts & Scapens, ; Schedler, ). Accountability requires situated interpretation, as it is also shaped by the power and position of actors and institutions (Abrahams, Sinclair, ). Accountability can take various forms, revolving around how and why actors have a duty to explain their actions, or to be responsive towards stakeholders, even if there are no formal obligations to do so (Koppell, ; Leat, ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical narrative approach to openness: The impact of open development on structural transformation

Bentley

Chib

Poveda

2018

Information Systems Journal

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Openness has become an important, all‐encompassing term denoting activities facilitated by sharing, using, producing, and redistributing information and communication resources within digital information systems. We compare theoretical advancements that emphasize processes and characteristics of openness with the limitations of extant approaches that have largely focused on improvements to productivity and efficiency. Based on Foucault and Bruner's ideas, this paper contributes a new critical narrative approach to understanding openness explicitly focused on structural transformation and power. The analysis focuses on the case of open development, examining 20 key studies based primarily on developing countries. The critical narrative approach unpacked the production of power/knowledge across actors, intentions, and outcomes of openness research and practice. We find that discursive formations are reliant on technocentric and normative ideals of researchers, leading to narratives of hypothetical outcomes that exclude marginalized perspectives. We propose hermeneutic composability and contesting normative narratives of openness as analytical techniques for an integrated, mutually constitutive conception of interactions between individuals, open artefacts, and open social praxis.

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NGO Accountability: A Conceptual Review across the Engaged Disciplines

Kaba

2021

International Studies Review

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Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are pivotal actors in international affairs. They manage billions of dollars in funding, work all around the world, and shape global policies and standards. It thus comes as no surprise that the subject of accountability has drawn the interest of an increasing number of scholars across disciplines. Though there seems to be agreement about its desirability, accountability is also described as chameleon-like and ambiguous. And despite calls for more cross-disciplinary learning and conceptual clarity, there does not exist a comprehensive review of accountability conceptualizations across and within disciplines, or how the different meanings relate to each other. Based on the conceptual review of 217 research articles published within the last twenty years, this study identifies and analyzes conceptualizations of accountability in the major journals of five engaged disciplines: accounting, development studies, international relations and political science, organization studies and management, and public administration. Integrating this broad scholarship reveals that: (1) there exist 113 different conceptualizations of accountability, 90 of which are rarely used and appear in less than 5 percent of all analyzed articles, (2) scholars have used forty-three different conceptualizations in 2019 compared to seventeen conceptualizations in 2009, (3) many conceptualizations refer to same phenomena by different name (duplication), and different phenomena by the same name (conflict), and that (4) conceptual ambiguity contributes to ambiguity among the forty different terms used to measure and operationalize accountability. These findings illustrate a lack of cross-disciplinary learning and accumulation of knowledge, and suggest that new conceptualizations be introduced only if one or more of the 113 existing ones don't already capture an idea sufficiently. The purpose of this article is to serve as a concept map for scholars when debating and charting new directions for the study of accountability.

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Accountability, autonomy, and authenticity: assessing the development waltz conducted to a ‘ kwaito ’ beat in Southern Africa

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

Learning to learn: The experience of learning facilitation for grantees of Comic-Relief-funded projects

Learning to learn: The experience of learning facilitation for grantees of Comic-Relief-funded projects

A critical narrative approach to openness: The impact of open development on structural transformation

NGO Accountability: A Conceptual Review across the Engaged Disciplines

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