Institution-Building and Planned Organisational Change in Development Assistance

Summary

Steinar Askvik, ‘Institution-Building and Planned Organisational Change in Development Assistance’, Forum for Development Studies, No. 2, 1993, pp. 149–165.

The purpose of the article is to present an organisation-oriented approach to institution-building. According to such an approach, organisations become institutions when they achieve wide external and internal support for their existence. Deliberate efforts to build institutions should consider (i) the environments of an organisation, (ii) its internal structure and processes, and (iii) relevant methods for improving internal and external sustainability. On the basis of present research into organisations in the less developed countries it is argued that knowledge of environments, organisational forms and proper change methods are limited. To overcome the lack of knowledge a learning strategy to institution-building in development assistance is proposed.