Dissertation

While discussing service delivery of aid, DfID(2002) does not seem to mention anything about contractors. This seems to me quite unnatural because funds committed to aid cannot smoothly be disbursed only through channels of recipient governments although its primary focus on direct budget support correctly represents the logic of minimising transaction costs of aid management and enhancing capacity building in the area of public expenditure management (PEM).

Firstly, I think I need to find out whether there at all exists any donor that does not use any sub-contractor to deliver aid. (At least, WB, USAID, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan use contractors (including NGOs) for aid delivery.)

Another issue that has to be investigated is technical assistance (TA).
Since DfID (2002) emphasises importance of PEM and disucusses decentralisation, it is quite natural to consider how donors will be able to contribute to building capacities in PEM and planning and managing development at lower tiers of national public administrative structures of developing countries. However, the way DfID (2002) argues TA poses critical questions about how TA should be provided to developing countries, such as whether pooled TA may necessarily be the best way, if TA necessarily imposes higher levels of transaction costs on developing countries.

Indicators to measure effectiveness of aid delivery may be identified through the lens of the new institutional economics (Williamson 2002; Marsten 2002; DfID 2002).

Plan of Future Research 01

I will investigate contractual behaviour of donor agencies of international development assistance. What has motivated my research is my strong interest in donors' behaviour in general. Since there exist various actors in the system of international development assitance, it is not straightforward to explain behaviour of each of these actors. Among them, governmental agencies or international organisations such as United Nations' agencies and the World Bank, seem to be governed by rather complicated interests than formally stipulated organisational mission or other management systems.

In the course of the preliminary reading for my current research, I have encountered the theory of contract. Since I am having in my mind some possible interventions for changing organisational behaviour of donor agencies, I started my reading with organisation theory, organisational change, or organisation development. In fact, a donor agency as an individual entity involves difficult issues in management such as multiple organisational goals, not seeking profit maximisation and multiple cultural contexts. In addition, as have been implied, it is critical for them to establish and maintain effective inter-organisational relationships with other external entities such as national governments, contractors, consulting firms or non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Donor agencies in general do not deliver services directly due mainly to resource constraints both in knowledge of diverse localities and technical expertise. Hence, significant parts of their activities are to entrust specific interventions in different countries to external organisations, and to control them ensuring achievement of intended objectives, which are usually governed by contractual relationships. However, through my experience, it seems that formal contract documents do not necessarily govern the behaviour of donor agencies. This is partly because of power relationships between donor agencies and contractors, and partly because of significant transaction costs of managing contracts.
Having considered those my lived-experiences, I have come to think of necessity to clarify what forces and incentives are functioning in the operation of donor agencies. Without these information, it would be almost impossible to determine how we should intervene in adjusting their behaviour for more effective development interventions.

Relevance of the contract theory to organisations involved in the system of the international development assistance seems to lie in that it deals with behaviour of economic organisations through the lens of contract instead of the lens of exchange (Williamson 2002b).
As Williamson (2002a) mentions, organisations are arenas where various interests (incentives) are functioning in determining their behaviour as well as economic interests.
It seems to me quite suitable for my research interest to apply this conceptual framework that sufficiently pays attention to organisation theory.

As has been already mentioned above, since donor agencies' behaviour does not seem to only be governed by formal contracts, objects of my research should include informal (less visible) contractual relationships within the aid systems. These informal contractual relationships will also include the relationships between donor agencies and their respective national governments and governments of developing countries. For the former relationships, national politics and diplomatic strategies and practices would be sufficiently taken into account since all these may affect donor agencies' behaviour. As for the latter, it is also critical to clarify the mode of transfer of aid funds, and its underlying agreements, which altogether should be reflected on the ways of managing formal contractual relationships within donor agencies.

Integration? Combining?

I want to find out what effectiveness in aid delivery is?
To answer this question, first, I think I need to define several concepts.

Concept 1: Aid delivery
Aid delivery refers to any activity donor agencies conduct in order to convert their pledged aid budgets into concrete goods or services.
The goods and services include commodity, equipment, technical assistance, consultancy, cash transfer, and so forth.
In the case of funding to external entities for their developmental interventions, certain agreements have to be made between donor agencies and respective entities.
Cash transfer signifies direct transfer from donor agencies to governments of developing countries.

Concepts 2: Effectiveness in aid delivery
This refers to the extent to which prior agreed purposes between donor agencies and suppliers/ contractors on certain development interventions have been achieved.
The indicators will be derived from terms and conditions stipulated in respective agreement documents.

Next, I need to operationalise these concepts so that I could collect data in order to analyse either qualitatively or quantitatively, or combining them.
As has been shown in the Concepts 2 above, those indicators seem well suitable for qualitative analysis than quantative analysis. This is because they require to be analysed for their contents, rather than to be counted such as words or specific clauses of contract documents.
However, it may be possible later on to apply quantitative methods to capture the whole picture of practices in contractual relationships that donor agencies are conducting.

Since I have not known much about actual contractual practices of donor agencies, it seems more important first to investigate them from relatively smaller scale of samples.
It is expected that the qualitative analysis will in detail describe those practices, and may make it possible to generate some hypotheses, which may present issues to further make inquiries.
Then, these hypotheses will be tested by quantitative methods.

In this way, one of the weaknesses in combining the two methods will be that it has no systematice procedures.

This is the idea about integrating quantitative and qualitative methods in my research at the moment.

What would you like to find out? and How?

To start with, I need to be clear about what I want to find out through my research.
To think about answering this question already includes some assumptions inevitably because what I want to know must be constructed by existing knowledge, theories, concepts, or whatever, or I need to use existing relevant language to describe what I want to know, why I have come to want to know this.

Next, I also need to be clear about how I am going to approach my research questions.
This is often called as researchers' epistemology.

Research methodology is referred to as combination of those mentioned above. Therefore, it includes research questions (including how the reseacher has reached these questions), objectives, underlying value, design, sampling methods, ways of analysis, and assumptions about possible modes of presentation of research outcomes.

What I have learned from the module on research skills may be that we have to understand the whole picture concerning research (investigation, inquiry into social problems) so that we will be able to avoid being trapped in pitfalls that make us concerned only with diverse sets of knowledge about study types, designs, methods for data collection and analysis, and so on. In other words, I have just studied philosophies (epistemology and ontology) of reseach of social science.
At this moment, I have noticed that I will have to learn more about practical techniques of social science research...

Theory, Construct, Concept: Hierarchy of Knowledge

Theory refers to a set of propositions to explain or guide social actions.
In inductive research strategy, to establish a theory from empirical data is the goal.
On the other hand, deductive research strategy will mainly test hypotheses that are derived from existing theories.
To research is, by the way, motivated some aspiration to find out reality.
This aspiration will vary according to what the researcher wishes to find out.
In this sense, this aspiration may determine objectives of a research.
Hence, objectives of a research also vary.
In some occasion, a researcher may be interested in describing what is going on in a certain societal circumstance. In other, objectives may contain subsequent action based on what will have been identified as a result of the research.
Despite the variety of those objectives of or motivation towards research, it should be entailed by some abstraction from data.
In the terminology of research, there is a hierarchy of the abstraction.
Concepts will be defined by each researcher, and they will form a building block of his/her knowledge claims, which will be generated through research activities. In other words, concepts would be regarded as assumptions for the research.
Constructs will be derived from analyses of data in the course of the research.
They need to be based on concepts defined prior to those analyses of data. So, constructs may be seen as something derived from abstraction of related concepts in the same research.
Theories would be further abstracted general rules, institutions, or systems, which will explain outcomes of the research.
Those theories are said to be continually created by human beings. And, they will be utilised in defining concepts of other research. (Of course, roles of theory are not limited to this at all. Some of them may immediately be followed by concrete interventions. In this sense, theories are utilised as foundations for making decision on policies, programmes, or projects in order to provide solutions for certain social problems.)

Internal Validity and Research Designs

An evaluation that establishes a causal relationship with great certainty is said to possess internal validity.

Theats to internal validity could be classified as follows:

1. Non-equivalence (or selection bias);
2. Attrition;
3. History;
4. Maturation;
5. Testing;
6. Instrumentation; and
7. Regression to the mean.

In order to eliminate these threats to internal validity, evaluation can adopt different designs, such as, experimental, quasi-experimental, and correlational designs.

Experimental design is quite similar to designs of scientific research in laboratory settings, which secure a control group against which effects occurred in treatment groups will be measured. This design is quite effective to eliminate those threats to internal validity. However, this often suffers from problems of practicality and ethical issues especially in assigning certain individuals to the control group. Also, depending on objectives of research, it may be difficult to avoid the issues of attrition or maturation.

Quasi-experimental designs will establish substitutes for actual control group (in this case it is often referred to as "comparison group.") with variety of methods.

Correlational designs will use statistical treatment to secure internal validity of data derived from treatment groups.

None of the designs mentioned above can completely eliminate threats to internal validity. Therefore, it is ultimately necessary to be explained by researchers about causal relationships between outcomes of data analysis and reality that they intend to find out.

One of the popular explanation is sensitivity analysis. This refers to analysis whether the final conclusion of research are sensitive to assumptions made by the researcher.

Cost Appraisal

Cost analysis in project appraisal is significant in senses that:

1. It presents necessary information to decision-makers (or audience of the evaluation) in choosing the best alternative;
2. Because of the rigorous methods that have been developed, it could give us credible evidence on which decisions regarding selection of alternatives are based; and
3. It usually deals with both cost factors and effects of alternative interventions, which are necessary to choose between multiple alternatives.

There are several methods of cost factor analysis for evaluating alternative interventions: cost-benefit analysis; cost-effectiveness analysis; cost-utility analysis; and cost feasibility analysis.

Cost-benefit analysis in principle evaluates alternative interventions by measuring costs and effects in monetary terms. In the contemporary project appraisal, it is common that economic factors as well as financial factors must be taken into account. Thus, cost-benefit analysis is also categorised under the broader umbrella of "economic analysis." In cost-benefit analysis, both costs and effects need to be calculated by either market prices or shadow prices, which refer to prices that cannot be found in the market, or those estimated from, for example, market prices of similar items due to absence of market of perfect competition. One of the advantages of cost-benefit analysis is its possibility to compare alternatives with quite different objectives, or even those in defferent sectors. On the other hand, weaknesses mainly reside in significant risks of omitting factors that are difficult to find out appropriate prices from the evaluation, even though these omissions are allowed only if the factors can be regarded trivial, or these are shared among alternatives to be evaluated.

Cost-effectiveness and Cost-utility analyses are close cousins each other, which evaluate alternatives according to which alternative will generate greatest effectiveness (or utility) at a given cost, or a given level of effectiveness (or utility) at the lowest cost. Effectiveness will be identified as effects of the alternative in relation to the objectives of it. Utility refers to aggregated satisfaction of individuals who may have any stake of the alternative interventions being evaluated. Major difference between the two is the number of measures to be evaluated. Cost-effectiveness analysis assumes that it would measure relatively smaller number of effects. On the other hand, cost-utility analysis can combine different measures of effects into a single measure of utility by putting appropriate weights on respective measures. Both of them, however, cannot determine worth of any alternative in an absolute term. That is, they do not show whether effectiveness (or utility) will exceed costs. Furthermore, in selecting indicators, both analyses require evaluators to be cautious about reliability and construct validity, both of which determine overall rigor of the evaluation. Construct validity refers to consistency between indicators and underlying concepts that they are intended to reflect. As for reliability, if a test yields the same results when applied on repeated occasions to the same individuals, the test is said to possess reliability. As has been implied, since selecting indicators usually involves more or less evaluators' subjective judgement, we need to pay special attention to these regards.

Passive resistance

It is important to take note of proper delegation of authority in managing passive resistance to change.

This is because:

1. Power relations functioning within organisations are generally episodic;

2. Episodic circuits of power are operating under the conditions governed by resource dependency;

3. Situations where resource dependency is prevalent tend to be exacerbated by prohibitive rules (Davenport and Leitch 2005); and,

4. Significant amounts of delegation of authorities could facilitate employees' innovativeness by turning episodic circuits into facilitative circuits of power (Clegg 1989).

Facilitative circuits of power signifies institutions, which aim at facilitating strategic management among stakeholders with different entitlements to power and interests by setting rules that will define (or re-define) relationships among them.

Those rules are usually less rigid and less coercive, rather try to provide significant amounts of autonomy for stakeholders.
This is somewhat overlapping with the concept of "stratigic ambiguity."
Especially in the situation where multiple stakeholders and multiple goals exist, clearly articulated policies or rules tend to be confronted with severe resistance from some of the stakeholders. Therefore, it is a rational strategic option to intentionally leave some ambiguity as a space where stakeholders are allowed to negotiate.

Possible risks attached to facilitative circuits of power, or strategic ambiguity would be that stakeholders, especially those in subordinate positions, suspect increased levels of dominance by authorities. Thus, it is assumed that stakeholders may respond creatively.

I wanted to find out any effective measure to deal with passive resistance to change, and encountered the arguments above.
What I have felt is importance of trust.
Whether managing change, or seeking effective inter-organisational relationship, how to establish collaborative relationships among stakeholders seems critical to success.

It is intersting for me to further investigate what we are actually doing, how we are behaving in our societies, with paying attention not to simply reduce our discursive behaviour.