Introduction

The idea that international development aid needs to be better managed and coordinated gained currency in the early 1990s. The increasing emphasis on management has resulted in the present vogue of ‘managing for development results’ as one of the central tenets in the discourse on international aid. But how appropriate are these ideas, tools, and techniques for non-governmental development organizations (NGOs), and how much does geographic context matter? Examining the current debate on aid effectiveness and the role of NGOs in contributing to it, this book highlights the critical importance of understanding how the global and the local interact to increase aid efficacy and develop more culturally astute ways of managing NGOs.

With a focus on NGOs active in sub-Saharan Africa as case studies, author Frederik Claeyé demonstrates that NGOs are not mere passive recipients of management knowledge and practices emanating from the global governance structure of international aid, but actively engage with these ideas and practices to translate and rework them through a local cultural lens. This process results in the emergence of unique hybrid management systems that combine the pressure to become more business-like with the mission to satisfy the demands of the communities they serve.