| Organisational
learning, in which leaders and managers give priority
to learning as integral to practice, is increasingly
recognized as critical to improved performance. ActionAid,
DFID and Sida collaborated with the Participation Group
at the Institute of Development Studies to explore understandings
of learning and to document innovative approaches.
Learning
with ActionAid centred on institutionalising
a radical organization-wide approach to accountability,
learning and planning. The new system prioritises accountability
to poor people and partners and so revolutionizes the
way the organization does business. The paper by David
and Mancini documents the struggle to institutionalize
the new system and the extraordinary changes that it
has engendered.
The
learning process with the UK Department of International
Development (DFID) looked at how to reflect
on and improve relationships as a central aspect of
aid delivery. The paper by Eyben provides a justification
for the role of relationships in DFID’s practice
as an bilateral development organization. In their paper,
Pasteur and Scott-Villiers examine the importance of
learning about relationships and offer a set of questions
for the organization wishing to learn.
Staff
of the Swedish International Development Agency
(Sida) worked to explore understandings an
dpractices of participaton across the agency. They experimented
with participatory learning groups, which took different
forms in Stockholm and Nairobi. In their paper, Pratt,
Cornwall and Scott-Villiers detail the learning methodology
and point out pitfalls and possibilities. Cornwall and
Pratt, in a separate paper, explore the realities of
implementing participation in a complex bilateral development
organisation.
These
collaborations resulted from a workshop held at IDS
in May 2001 on “Power, Procedures and Relationships”
which highlighted learning as a way to achieve consistency
between personal behaviour, institutional norms and
the new development agenda (IDS Policy Briefing, Issue
15). At IDS, a group was formed to pursue this subject,
including Robert Chambers, Andrea Cornwall, Rosalind
Eyben, Kath Pasteur Garett Pratt and Patta Scott-Villiers.
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