Abstract
Many of the capacity building projects initiated in developing countries have not met the goals expected. This situation has resulted in disappointments with various socioeconomic impacts in these countries. The goal of this chapter is to explore how to make capacity building work in developing countries. For this purpose, we look into four capacity building projects in Ghana, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, conduct a case study and a qualitative analysis of 20 interviews with project practitioners, and draw out their success conditions or the right circumstances under which they work. We find out that there are structural, institutional, and managerial conditions, some of which are initial (i.e., they occur in advance of the projects) and others are emergent (i.e., they occur in the wake of the projects). We further identify four meta-conditions for capacity building projects to succeed: multi-stakeholder commitment, collaboration, alignment, and adaptation. Then we show that to obtain and maintain these meta-conditions, proper attention should be given to attainability of objectives and demonstrating value, ability of stakeholders and inclusiveness, planning/design and mutual interest, and monitoring and support. Finally, we boldly submit that capacity building projects thrive when there are high levels of multi-stakeholder commitment, collaboration, alignment, and adaptation.
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Notes
- 1.
While some may actually distinguish between the terms “capacity building” and “capacity development” thereby making a difference between developing existing capacity and building it from scratch (e.g., De Grauwe 2009; Lusthaus et al. 1999; McEvoy et al. 2016), this chapter uses them interchangeably (e.g., Bloomfield et al. 2018; Potter and Brough 2004; Venner 2015).
- 2.
Whereas Ika and Donnelly’s (2017) paper was written for the project management community, this chapter focuses instead on the international development community in general and the capacity building/development audience in particular. Thus, from a theoretical and conceptual standpoint, it includes a fresh discussion on topical questions such as: Does development aid work? Does capacity building work? Why does project management matter? In so doing, the chapter provides more context to a timely project management contribution to the capacity building debate in the development field. Furthermore, the chapter also extends on the literature review and, as such, covers key capacity building definitions and additional key project success factors. Finally, the chapter includes brand new empirical data and findings on respondent assessment of project success, which was not in the paper. All in all, from both conceptual and empirical standpoints, the chapter hence makes a rather stronger contribution to the capacity building debate than the paper.
- 3.
Some hold that capacity building is an upshot of development and, thus, advise to give aid where it is needed the most, to improve institutional development (e.g., Sachs 2005). Others, however, oppose this traditional view and, in contrary, proffer that aid works best where institutions are strong and, thus, instead consider capacity building rather as an independent variable in the aid equation (e.g., Burnside and Dollar 2000).
- 4.
- 5.
By some accounts, the paradox may not be real, but donors are advised to act as if it is and thus prevent the aggregate impact of aid being less than its projects’ effects (e.g., Howes et al. 2011).
- 6.
For example, there may be as many as eight different stakeholders in World Bank-funded projects: The project manager, the project supervisor at the World Bank, the recipient country national supervisor, a steering committee, subcontractors, suppliers of goods and services, beneficiaries, and the population at large (Diallo and Thuillier 2005; Ika et al. 2012).
- 7.
Ideally, it would have been best to select successful cases versus failed ones, to avoid “sampling on the dependant variable,” in this case, project success. However, within the implementing agency selected for this study, finding complete sets of data for failed projects proved challenging. It was explained to researchers that in practice, if a project-level initiative was struggling to move forward, final outcomes could be redefined (in cooperation with the donor agency) and resources could be redirected to aspects of the program that are progressing well, as long as the broad higher program level objectives remain intact. Although “lessons learned” for individual projects were frequently described in case studies and the narratives of project reports, clear evidence for fully failed projects remained elusive. This left researchers with identification of most successful and less successful cases only. The experience of the second author who worked as a program manager at the same implementing agency attests to this reality (see Ika and Donnelly 2017).
- 8.
Asked to provide the researchers with perceived examples of successful local government capacity building projects, the HQ staff initially came up with six projects, but two were dropped because these projects did not have complete sets of existing documentation (reports, case studies, proposals, evaluations, mission plans, etc.) or interview candidates available for the research. Then, in order to further reduce the likelihood of skewed impressions in the overall research results and, thus, increase its overall validity, we later asked a variety of respondents from different hierarchical levels, functional areas, and geographical locations to rate overall project success (Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007; Ika and Donnelly 2017).
- 9.
Not surprisingly, respondents view project success as deliverable success, which is the overarching success dimension for capacity building projects. However, the most successful projects were the ones in Vietnam (administrative reforms), Indonesia (library services), and Ghana (hand-washing). These projects scored higher on the success criteria scales for relevance (country and beneficiaries), impact, and sustainability. Thus, they could be termed deliverable successes. The Sri Lanka project (Waste management) scored lower and thus was considered the less successful one. We also note that even the most successful projects did contain elements of failure; they were not all project management successes (they did not fully meet time and cost criteria). Moreover, the less successful project did in fact come in on time therefore it too contained contrasting elements of both success and failure. Table 5 from our short series of Likert scale interview questions confirms the contrast between most successful and less successful projects and offers a presentation of the success criteria results across all four case projects (Ika and Donnelly 2017).
- 10.
Indeed, while reports, case studies, and evaluations could have provided valuable insights on their own, they did not always contain the context-specific information needed to identify underlying success conditions. Thus, written documentation was used to capture more general project information like the background, objectives of the broader umbrella program, primary participants, scope, main results, and unexpected results of the case projects. Combined, the two sources provided a stronger narrative and clearer snapshot of events as they occurred at the time (Ika and Donnelly 2017).
- 11.
For instance, if a respondent was a manager on the Vietnam project, they were coded as VM1. If VM1 mentioned that the commitment of the beneficiaries was critical to the success of the project, VM1’s statement was coded to C2.2.1 Capacity of Beneficiary Institution to Commit. The total number of respondents who mentioned each framework condition was then added together, giving the researcher a cumulative percentage of positively referenced framework success conditions. In the case of C2.2.1 Capacity of Beneficiary Institution to Commit, 19 out of 20 respondents (95%) mentioned this condition contributed to the success of their program. Framework conditions receiving more than a 60% positive response rate from interviewees were deemed important contributors to success. In our view, although these percentages of individual respondents mentioning the same success condition are not meant to support any statistical test of hypotheses, they are offered as a better indicator of overall importance of this particular success condition than the absolute number of times it is expressed and coded as a relevant success condition theme.
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Ika, L., Donnelly, J. (2019). Under What Circumstances Does Capacity Building Work?. In: Chrysostome, E. (eds) Capacity Building in Developing and Emerging Countries. Contributions to Management Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16740-0_3
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