Accountability, Strategy, and International Non-Governmental Organizations

Increased prominence and greater influence expose international non-governmental development and environmental organizations (INGOs) to increased demands for accountability from a wide variety of stakeholdersdonors, beneficiaries, staffs, and partners among others. This paper focuses on developing the concept of INGO accountability, first as an abstract concept and then as a strategic idea with very different implications for different INGO strategies. We examine those implications for INGOs that emphasize service delivery, capacity-building, and policy influence. We propose that INGOs committed to service delivery may owe more accountability to donors and service regulators; capacity-building INGOs may be particularly obligated to clients whose capacities are being enhanced; and policy influence INGOs may be especially accountable to political constituencies and to influence targets. INGOs that are expanding their activities to include new initiatives may need to reorganize their accountability systems to implement their strategies effectively. This publication is Hauser Center Working Paper No. 7. The Hauser Center Working Paper Series was launched during the summer of 2000. The Series enables the Hauser Center to share with a broad audience important works-in-progress written by Hauser Center scholars and researchers

Empowerment as Development: An Outline of an Analytical Concept for the Study of ICTs in the Global South

This chapter turns to the concept of “empowerment” as a result of disenchantment with the concept of “development” in the study of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social change in the global South. It is a certainty that the proliferation of ICTs (mobile phones in particular) has opened up a range of possibilities and new avenues for individuals, aid agencies, and NGOs. However, overviews of communication supposedly for development reveal a field based on economic understandings of development biased toward techno-determinism. Moreover, these understandings lack sufficient critique and do not take larger contextual factors into account. Therefore, it is argued that empowerment is a better concept to draw upon in the critical study of ICTs and social change. However, empowerment is not an easy concept to define, and no analytical outline of the concept has been found in the existing body of literature. Addressing this lack, this chapter will trace the roots of empowerment in community psychology and in feminist and black power movements as well as explore different understandings of the concept from various disciplines. From this overview, the chapter suggests that empowerment should be studied on a) an intersectional level, b) a contextual level, c) an agency level, and d) a technological level. It further argues that these four levels intersect and must be studied in tandem to understand whether processes of empowerment are taking place, and if so, in what ways? The chapter ends by shortly applying these levels to a study involving market women’s use of mobile phones in Kampala.</p

Empowerment as development : An outline of an analytical concept for the study of ICTs in the Global South

This chapter turns to the concept of “empowerment” as a result of disenchantment with the concept of “development” in the study of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social change in the global South. It is a certainty that the proliferation of ICTs (mobile phones in particular) has opened up a range of possibilities and new avenues for individuals, aid agencies, and NGOs. However, overviews of communication supposedly for development reveal a field based on economic understandings of development biased toward techno-determinism. Moreover, these understandings lack sufficient critique and do not take larger contextual factors into account. Therefore, it is argued that empowerment is a better concept to draw upon in the critical study of ICTs and social change. However, empowerment is not an easy concept to define, and no analytical outline of the concept has been found in the existing body of literature. Addressing this lack, this chapter will trace the roots of empowerment in community psychology and in feminist and black power movements as well as explore different understandings of the concept from various disciplines. From this overview, the chapter suggests that empowerment should be studied on a) an intersectional level, b) a contextual level, c) an agency level, and d) a technological level. It further argues that these four levels intersect and must be studied in tandem to understand whether processes of empowerment are taking place, and if so, in what ways? The chapter ends by shortly applying these levels to a study involving market women’s use of mobile phones in Kampala.</p