| We present here a summary of the methodology used for the study. A link below provides access to the full methodology. From the base document, tailor made methodologies were designed to guide each case study. |
Study of Capacity, Change and Performance: Notes on the methodology
The lack of capacity in low-income countries is one of the main constraints to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Even practitioners confess to having only a limited understanding of how capacity actually develops. In 2002, the chair of Govnet, the Network on Governance and Capacity Development of the OECD, asked the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) in Maastricht, the Netherlands to undertake a study of how organisations and systems, mainly in developing countries, have succeeded in building their capacity and improving performance. The resulting study focuses on the endogenous process of capacity development – the process of change from the perspective of those undergoing the change. The study examines the factors that encourage it, how it differs from one context to another, and why efforts to develop capacity have been more successful in some contexts than in others.
The study consists of about 20 field cases carried out according to a methodological framework with seven components, as follows:
- Capacity: What are the components of capacity, i.e. the capabilities, in a given context?
- Endogenous change and adaptation: How do processes of change take place within an organisation or system?
- Performance: What has the organisation or system accomplished or is it now able to deliver? The focus here is on assessing the effectiveness of the process of capacity development rather than on impact, which will be apparent only in the long term.
- External context: How has the external context – the historical, cultural, political and institutional environment, and the constraints and opportunities they create – influenced the capacity and performance of the organisation or system?
- Stakeholders: What has been the influence of stakeholders such as beneficiaries, suppliers and supporters, and their different interests, expectations, modes of behaviour, resources, interrelationships and intensity of involvement?
- External interventions: How have outsiders influenced the process of change?
- Internal features and key resources: What are the patterns of internal features such as formal and informal roles, structures, resources, culture, strategies and values, and what influence have they had at both the organisational and multi-organisational levels?
The outputs of the study will include about 20 case study reports, an annotated review of the literature, a set of assessment tools, and various thematic papers to stimulate new thinking and practices about capacity development. The synthesis report summarising the results of the case studies will be published in 2005.
The long version is available in pdf-format:
P. Morgan. Background paper on methodology. 2003
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