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2 Organisational Learning in the NGO Sector
2.1 The NGO Context
The relevance and effectiveness of Northern NGOs have been facing a growing
challenge from both donors and organisations in the South. There has been
increasing competition between NGOs and with public and private sector
organisations for shrinking aid budgets. Many NGOs have also shifted their focus
away from direct project implementation and towards advocacy and policy
influencing, civil society strengthening and partnership-working.
Donors, whilst increasingly requiring evidence of impact and learning, still use the
delivery of outputs and financial probity as the bottom line measure for their ‘return
on investment’. Most donors require the use of Logical Framework Approach (LFA) as
a planning framework and there is significant evidence that this acts as a constraint
to learning 3 at least at the project and programme level. The constant pressure for
NGOs to demonstrate results generates an understandable concern about publicising
or even sharing lessons learned from programme experience. The reluctance to be
open about learning may be particularly strong where a
programme has not achieved what was promised in funding
applications for fear of the repercussions that may result.
At the turn of the 21 st These pressures have led most
NGOs to adopt an action
orientation or ‘adrenalin culture’
century many NGOs have also been
where the delivery of outputs is facing significant levels of organisational change. These
seen as the main measure of changes have included rapid organisational growth (often
success
through mergers and ‘swallowing’ competition),
organisational re-structuring (and particularly
decentralisation of decision-making), greater emphasis on
partnership working, and technological changes (particularly
improvements in information and communications technology). Each of these creates
a potential learning agenda for the NGO, some of which may overlap or even
conflict. For example, orthodox thinking suggests that flat organisational structures
with fewer management layers and increased delegation of decision-making will
provide an environment that is more supportive of the lateral exchange of
knowledge. However, the evidence from some larger NGOs is that decentralisation
creates disconnected ‘silos’ which have little lateral contact and no longer have the
channels of exchange once provided through specialist advisers based at head office.
These pressures, combined with the sheer scale of the task facing them, have led
most NGOs to adopt an action orientation or ‘adrenalin culture’ where the delivery of
outputs is seen as the main measure of success. According to the NGO Tearfund, the
problem is so endemic that they refer to it as ‘the NGO disease’.
3 For a critique of LFA see Earle 2002.
Praxis Paper 3: Organisational Learning in NGOs by Bruce Britton 6