Development and the Learning Organisation: Essays from Development in Practice(Development in Practice Reader)

As development NGOs and aid agencies embrace the idea of "becoming a learning organization", they are increasingly concerned with issues of knowledge generation. This collection, drawn from the contents of the acclaimed journal Development in Practice, presents the work of development scholars and practitioners from a range of institutional backgrounds, 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.

Table of Contents:
Contributors Preface Development and the Learning Organisation: an introduction 1 Operationalising bottom-up learning in international NGOs: barriers and alternatives 22 Should development agencies have Official Views? 40 Engendering organisational practice in NGOs: the case of Utthan 58 Organisational learning: a borrowed toolbox? 76 Making the organisation learn: demystification and management action 89 Achieving successful academic-practitioner research collaborations 110 Knowledge to action: evaluation for learning in a multi-organisational global partnership 121 Guest learning and adaptation in the field: a Navajo case study 132 Can bilateral programmes become learning organisations? Experiences from institutionalising participation in Keiyo Marakwet in Kenya 152 A chocolate-coated case for alternative international business models 169 Learning leaders: the key to learning organisations 190 Leading learning and change from the middle: reconceptualising strategy's purpose, content, and measures 205 The struggle for organisational change - how the Action Aid Accountability, Learning and Planning System emerged 225 Heifer International: growing a learning organisation 242 'New learning in old organisations': children's participation in a school-based nutrition project in western Kenya 261 Organisational learning in NGOs: an example of an intervention based on the work of Chris Argyris 277 Mainstreaming disaster mitigation: challenges to organisational learning in NGOs 294 The learning process of the Local Capacities for Peace Project 303 Humanitarian principles and organisational culture: everyday practice in Medecins Sans Frontieres-Holland 316 Perceptions and practices of monitoring and evaluation: international NGO experiences in Ethiopia 332 Learning from complexity: the International Development Research Centre's experience with Outcome Mapping 356 Modelling learning programmes 366 Learning for change: the art of assessing the impact of advocacy work 373 Resources 388 Index 412

About the Author :
Jethro Pettit is a fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, UK. He has worked with international NGOs, including World Neighbors and Oxfam America. Deborah Eade was Editor-in-Chief of Development in Practice from 1991 to 2010, prior to which she worked for 10 years in Latin America. She is now an independent writer on development and humanitarian issues, based near Geneva.