Contents (PDF 49k)
Contributors (PDF 41k)
Preface (PDF 78k)
Deborah Eade
Development and the Learning Organisation: an introduction (PDF 197 k)
Laura Roper and Jethro Pettit
Section 1:
Power, culture, and gender: challenges to organisational learning
Operationalising bottom-up learning in international NGOs: barriers and alternatives (PDF 72k)
Grant Power, Matthew Maury, and Susan Maury
Should development agencies have Official Views? (PDF 73k)
David Ellerman
Engendering organisational practice in NGOs: the case of Utthan (PDF 154k)
Sara Ahmed
Organisational learning: a borrowed toolbox? (PDF 108k)
David Kelleher and the Gender at Work Collective
Making the organisation learn: demystification and management action (PDF 160k)
Vijay Padaki
Section 2:
Learning together: multi-institutional initiatives
Achieving successful academic-practitioner research collaborations (PDF 120k)
Laura Roper
Knowledge to action: evaluation for learning in a multi-organisational global partnership (PDF 120k)
Marla J. Solomon and A. Mushtaque R. Chowdhury
Guest learning and adaptation in the field: a Navajo case study (PDF 147k)
Gelaye Debebe
Can bilateral programmes become learning organisations? Experiences from institutionalising participation in Keiyo Marakwet in Kenya (PDF 136k)
Samuel Musyoki
Section 3:
Levels of learning: organisational case studies
A chocolate-coated case for alternative international business models (PDF 149k)
Pauline Tiffen
Learning leaders: the key to learning organisations (PDF 130k)
John Hailey and Rick James
Leading learning and change from the middle: reconceptualising strategy’s purpose, content, and measures (PDF 146k)
Colin Beckwith, Kent Glenzer, and Alan Fowler
The struggle for organisational change – how the ActionAid Accountability, Learning and Planning System emerged (PDF 148k)
Patta Scott-Villiers
Heifer International: growing a learning organisation (PDF 139k)
Thomas S. Dierolf, Rienzzie Kern, Tim Ogborn, Mark Protti, and Marvin Schwartz
‘New learning in old organisations’: children’s participation in a school-based nutrition project in western Kenya (PDF 136k)
Charles Ogoye-Ndegwa, Domnic Abudho, and Jens Aagard-Hansen
Organisational learning in NGOs: an example of an intervention based on the work of Chris Argyris (PDF 138k)
Didier Bloch and Nora Borges
Section 4
Learning from humanitarian action
Mainstreaming disaster mitigation: challenges to organisational learning in NGOs (PDF 115k)
John Twigg and Diana Steiner
The learning process of the Local Capacities for Peace Project (PDF 113k)
Marshall Wallace
Humanitarian principles and organisational culture: everyday practice in Médecins Sans Frontières-Holland (PDF 117k)
Dorothea Hilhorst and Nadja Schmiemann
Section 5:
Ways and means: tools and methods for learning and change
Perceptions and practices of monitoring and evaluation: international NGO experiences in Ethiopia (PDF 157k)
Esther Mebrahtu
Learning from complexity: the International Development Research Centre’s experience with Outcome Mapping (PDF 99k)
Sarah Earl and Fred Carden
Modelling learning programmes (PDF 93k)
Molly den Heyer
Learning for change: the art of assessing the impact of advocacy work (PDF 131k)
Barry Coates and Rosalind David
Resources (PDF 190k)
Development and the Learning Organisation
Edited by Laura Roper, Jethro Pettit, and Deborah Eade
As development NGOs and official aid agencies embrace the idea of ‘becoming a learning organisation’, they are increasingly concerned with some form of knowledge generation and organisational learning. To date, the literature on these issues tended to come out of the private sector and reflect a Western world-view. Development and the Learning Organisation is therefore unique in presenting contributions from development scholars and practitioners from a range of institutional backgrounds around the world, some introducing new approaches and models, others offering critical case studies of individual and group learning practice across cultures, and organisational efforts to put theory into practice. Among the lessons to emerge from this cutting-edge work are that learning is hard to do, that we often learn the wrong things, and that huge gaps often remain between our learning and our behaviour or practice. There are clearly no simple recipes for success, but when learning breakthroughs do occur, the organisational whole can truly become more than the sum of its parts.
© Oxfam GB 2003. First published by Oxfam GB in association with Oxfam America and IDS in 2003.
ISBN 0 85598 470 8
All rights reserved.
‘This is an excellent book full of papers presenting different perspectives on how some organizations (mostly NGOs) are increasingly becoming learning organizations. It reflects also a slightly anti-KM approach and deals much more with participatory learning and evaluation processes, focusing on knowledge networking between project team members and beneficiaries and how such networking improves organizational learning.’
Knowledge Networking for Sustainable Development (KN4D)
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