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.