Capacity Development Revisited
Until recently, capacity development was viewed mainly as a technical process which often implied the transfer of organizational and performance models from North to South. Not enough thought was given to the broader political and social context within which capacity development efforts take place. This led to an overemphasis on what were seen as “right answers”, as opposed to approaches that best fit local circumstances and the needs of the particular situation. For related reasons, there was insufficient appreciation of the importance of local ownership of capacity development initiatives.
The new consensus, articulated strongly in the 2005 Paris Declaration, sees capacity development as a process, strongly led by local partners. According to this vision, political leadership and the prevailing political and governance system are critical factors in creating opportunities and setting limits for capacity development efforts. The conditions may however still be right to support locally-owned processes of improvement in certain organisational spheres even when the conditions in the wider system are suboptimal.
PEMConsult acknowledges that whereas there is a common consensus on the necessity of capacity development as the most central element in any development intervention, the concepts of capacity and capacity development have now evolved to become so all-encompassing that practitioners have often found it difficult to make operational sense of them.
It is therefore important for practitioners to begin by asking the question “capacity for what?” and focus on the specific capacities needed to accomplish clearly defined goals. The “best fit” approach to capacity development then calls for a systematic effort to think through what might work in the particular circumstances. This can be done by ensuring that adequate attention and appropriate capacity development tools are applied at both individual, organizational and enabling environment level.
Emerging “Best Practice”
PEMConsult is of the belief that a range of best practice capacity development approaches and tools are today available. Tools which are responsive to the above mentioned requirements and tools which can be implemented in collaboration with stakeholders.
Help in understanding the broader enabling envi-ronment can for example be obtained from the “institutional analysis”, “power analysis” or “drivers of change analysis”.
At the level of organisations, standard assessment methods need to be supplemented with thorough diagnostic analysis covering both formal and in-formal aspects. As organisations are “open” systems, thinking about possible change processes needs to include the role of external as well as internal stakeholders. Capacity needs assessments should begin with the definition of specific capacity development objectives and avoid the trap of providing generic training on broad topics, disconnected from the capacity and performance requirements of specific organizations.
There are several well known tools of organisational assessment (SWOT analysis, stakeholder analysis, etc.). These can usefully be applied to organisations that may be indicated as sites for capacity development. But they provide only a starting point. It is important to get beneath the surface of an organisation, and look for both formal and informal, hidden aspects that may crucially affect performance. A diagnosis of weak capacity that focuses only on the “functional-rational” dimension of the organisation will normally be misleading and ineffective. It is important also to understand the political dimensions, including those that may actually or potentially have a positive effect on performance.
PEMConsult has with success facilitated capacity development interventions using the ROACH Ap-proach (Results-Oriented Approach to Capacity Change). This approach fits well with the programmatic aid approaches (SWAps and budgetary aid linked to overall poverty-reduction strategies) currently being adopted by most development agencies but also with specific organisational change scenarios. The three cornerstones of ROACH are
- Organisations can conveniently be understood and analysed as open systems.
- Both the “functional-rational” and”political” perspectives must be applied in understanding how organisational capacity is shaped and reshaped over time.
- A focus on specific organisational outputs and related standards (services, products) is useful in understanding organisations and their changes, as well as in adopting a relevant analytical van-tage point.
The term ‘capacity’ is used to denote the ability of an organisation to produce appropriate outputs to an agreed standard. The definition applies at both organisational and sub-organisational level. ROACH is based on the understanding that organisational capacity can be broken down into elements. The interaction between these elements leads and organisation or organisational entity to deliver performance. While acknowledging the necessity to analyse and assess external factors of influence, the internal elements of capacity can usefully be addressed under the headings of strategy, organisation, management, skills and competencies, system tools, communication, inter-relations and incentives.