Leadership and Power in International Development

Navigating the Intersections of Gender, Culture, Context, and Sustainability

Randal Joy Thompson, Julia Storberg-Walker

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787439993
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

We live in an era of drastic changes in relationships between countries and of unprecedented responses to both old and emerging global challenges. Working alongside leaders in developing countries, leaders in international foreign aid and development organizations, non-governmental organizations, and private foundations and companies have driven dramatic changes in our approach to these challenges and to international development more generally. Yet little has been written from the perspective of the leaders telling their stories about leading and navigating the tangle of forces acting upon the course of international development. And even less is known about how leading in international development contexts should be modelled in a way that fosters the development of the next generation of leaders. Leadership and Power in International Development: Navigating the Intersections of Gender, Culture, Context, and Sustainability brings scholarship up-todate with practice, collecting the stories and reflections of twenty leaders from Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada, and the United States, many of whom have extensive experience leading within major international organizations. In clear, straightforward narratives, the contributors gathered here highlight their diverse experiences with context, culture, power, gender and sustainability, and they offer strategies and lessons learned derived from their own challenges and successes. Building on these narratives, the book offers a new model or framework for leading in international development contexts. Through an innovative practice to theory process, the first chapter of the book, written by co-editor Julia Storberg-Walker, provides an original analysis of the chapter narratives, and presents a framework for successfully leading international development projects in the 21st century. The framework can be used for designing leadership development programs as well as for future research in leading in international development contexts. Leadership and Power in International Development is essential reading for development leaders, practitioners, and scholars as they continue to confront the complexity of contemporary power-politics.

OVERVIEW PART 1

ON LEADING IN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Randal Joy Thompson

Leaders in international development work on the cutting edge of the global order, striving to create a world where everyone can live a life of dignity with access to resources and services to meet their fundamental needs. Such leaders rarely have the chance to tell their stories. How they lead most effectively in various contexts and cultures has not often been told, nor have the qualities and approaches they employ to achieve success been systematically studied. The purpose of this volume, then, is to fill this gap by sharing these stories and proposing a tentative theory of leading in this context. In addition, the volume offers an innovative practitioner/scholar collaboration model for generating new knowledge directly from the stories and anecdotes of leaders.

We (the co-editors) decided to combine our practitioner and scholar skills and together developed a vision for this unique volume. Chapter 1, Toward a Theory of Leading in International Development, describes the specific steps undertaken to combine research and practice; our goal was to create a vehicle for stories from this leadership area and then analyze the stories to identify commonalities, differences, and critical leadership issues. From the analysis, our goal was to offer a tentative new theory of leading in this context that can be used to inform future research and leader development initiatives. As Chapter 1, Toward a Theory of Leading in International Development, makes clear, the leader stories provided a rich depth of leader experiences to draw from, and a new theory of leading in this context is offered.

Leadership and Power in International Development: Navigating the Intersections of Gender, Culture, Context, and Sustainability provides 18 leaders from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America working in various aspects of international development the opportunity to describe their challenges, successes, and failures in leading change in different countries, different sectors, and at various levels, including national, local, and individual. This overview illustrates the complexities related to leading in this context. We believe that this under-researched area is a critical area for leadership scholars and practitioners, and as such we seek to shed light on key elements of this profession. Specifically, this overview provides a brief examination of leading in international development and then provides a brief discussion of some of the specific issues and experiences faced by the authors in this volume.

The first section, entitled “On International Development Leaders,” posits a preliminary definition of what leaders in international development do. The second section, entitled “The Architecture within which International Development Leaders Lead” describes the organizational context of their leadership. “Approaches to International Development,” the third section, summarizes different approaches to achieving development that leaders have implemented over the years. The fourth section, “How do the Leaders in This Volume Practice Leadership?” highlights leaders’ conception of leadership as well as their reflections on the four factors we initially identified as possibly influencing leadership in this profession, namely gender, culture, context, and sustainability. Power emerged as a dominant factor in leadership in international development in virtually all the stories of the authors. In the Overview Part 2, Anne M. Spear presents an overview of the broader context of the issue of power in this domain and a commitment by the authors to a leadership practice that sincerely focuses on equalizing power relations and creating global harmony.

The introductions to each of the five parts of the volume also highlight some of the key findings regarding leadership in international development. Part 1, Challenges in International Development, of the volume includes stories that introduce the reader to some of the most common challenges faced by leaders in international development. Part 2, Leadership for Women’s Empowerment and Equity, describes the leadership moments of leaders who have devoted their career to promoting women’s empowerment and equity. Part 3, Spirit-filled Grassroots Leadership, describes leadership by faith-based leaders who work at the grassroots level. Part 4, Leading Major Donor Projects, contains stories by leaders who work for major donors or their projects. Finally, Part 5, Leadership Lessons to Reflect On, provides leadership lessons for the reader to reflect on.

ON INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT LEADERS

Who Are Leaders in International Development?

One of the hopes of this volume is to initiate a conversation about how to conceive of a leader in international development. At this point, we begin with the assertion that a leader in international development is a change maker dedicated to transforming complex systems and their components in developing countries (and by implication in the global world) such that all individuals in the world can live in equitable societies, free from want, able to achieve their aspirations, and in harmony with the environment.

What Is Unique about These Leaders?

What leaders do in international development is unique in many respects. When expatriates, they cross sovereign borders, bringing know-how, resources, and technologies, as well as principles, values, assumptions, ways-of-doing things, and worldviews to bear on the change they wish to make in the developing countries in which they work. What they bring with them may clash with what leaders in developing countries carry or what the society can manage and adjust to. They often represent a power and privilege imbalance, the result of which can appear overbearing and authoritarian and arrogant. They may be offering an unwelcome change or a change only supported by certain groups in the developing countries. They can disrupt power relations and cultural norms that either will be resisted or may cause instability. When leaders of development come from within their own countries, they may represent certain powerful groups that may oppose providing benefits to groups that could disrupt the power hegemony. Or, they may come from disenfranchised groups that may threaten the powers-that-be. These various characteristics of what leaders in international development do and who they are, the impact of their leadership, and their effectiveness are explored by various authors in their chapters.

THE ARCHITECTURE WITHIN WHICH INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT LEADERS LEAD

Leaders in international development lead within a complex global architecture of international and national organizations established shortly after World War II, which has evolved over the years through various phases driven by changing theories of how to catalyze international development and alter geo-political relationships as well as by vehement critiques of the sometimes negative impact of the practice of development on the lives of its beneficiaries. Although human, financial, and material resources and know-how have traversed global boundaries throughout history by migrations, cross-border trade, conquests, war, technical assistance, humanitarian aid, and religious zeal, the contemporary era of “international development” and “foreign aid” is generally considered to have begun with the words of US President Harry S. Truman delivered in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 1949:

More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery…Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas… Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. (Truman, 1949)

International development or global development historically has been closely linked to the concept of economic growth, although its definition has been broadened over the years to include human development and, more recently, sustainable development. Such development is directed by the policies, programs, knowledge, and resources within developing countries augmented by transfers of financial, technological, informational, and human resources from more developed ones. Leaders in international development are responsible for these transfers.

At the time of Truman’s speech, the foundational architecture of international organizations that would play key roles in international development and foreign aid had already been built with the creation in 1944 of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now part of the World Bank Group), and in 1945 the United Nations. Further, the Marshall Plan for the Reconstruction of Europe was initiated and the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was created in 1948 to administer the Plan. The Marshall Plan served as a significant step forward in the advent of international development by focusing on the provision of technical and humanitarian assistance while at the same time creating a political and economic bloc opposed to the Soviet Union that would play an important role in international development henceforth. The conceptual foundation of development during this period and during the 1950s was the modernization theory posited by Walt Rostow and other American economists (Rostow, 1960, 1990).

Foreign Aid as an Essential Tool of International Development

The 1960s era of the independence of former colonies marked the advent of Western countries creating foreign aid organizations. Canada, France, and the United States led the way and other countries followed suit in subsequent years. In the United States of America, an advocate of foreign aid, President John F. Kennedy pushed for the enactment of the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961 that established the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The establishment of USAID by Kennedy ushered in a new stage of development in the US. Kennedy’s 1961 Alliance for Progress focused on increasing gross national product (GNP), establishing democratic governments, ending adult illiteracy, land reform, and social planning guaranteed by US$20 billion.

Whereas predecessor US agencies such as the Technical Cooperation Agency, the Institute of Inter-American Affairs, and the US Department of Agriculture doled out highly technical programs, USAID required a new kind of development professional. No longer “well drillers” who worked at the community level, the new professionals were economists, loan officers, planners, senior technical advisors, private sector business executives, and professionals who could undertake policy discussions with ministers and heads of nations (Askin, 2012, p. 29). Development became the focus of “studies, theories, and program approaches and helped usher in what many later characterized as the ‘Golden Age of Development’” (Askin, 2012, p. 30).

Given the advent of bilateral aid donors, the Development Assistance Group (DAG) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was established on January 13, 1960, in order to track aid flows of its members to developing countries. The OEEC was reorganized in 1961 to become the OECD, whose 35 members from mostly high-income countries include some non-Western states. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) was the renamed version of the DAG and focused on promoting development policies to improve economic and social well-being as well as to track resource flows, analyze data to predict future trends, and set international standards.

The United Nations agencies have also played a key role in international development. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), and others have developed key international policies and negotiated with governments to make changes for the betterment of their people.

The architecture has evolved over the years as previously so-called developing countries have become middle-income countries and emerging powers and have become donors in their own right. Further, developing countries have increasingly formed a “Southern bloc” to negotiate for more effective aid and a stronger role in managing it, through the Aid Effectiveness movement and resultant Paris Declaration, Accra Accord, Busan Partnership Agreement, and the Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation.

Multiple Identities of Donors

Within the international architecture of international development, donors are generally categorized into multilateral, bilateral, non-governmental, corporate, and individuals. Multilateral donors, whose funds come from many countries, include the UNDP, the World Bank, and international development banks, among many others. Bilateral donors represent individual countries. Currently, the DAC members are the largest donors. However, China is a growing donor as is India, Brazil, Mexico, and several of the Arab states.

International Non-government Organizations (INGOs) include Oxfam, Save the Children, World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, CARE, Mercy Corps, and hundreds of others, funded by a combination of donations and government funds. Missionary groups are also generally included in this category. Private foundations and philanthropic donors include, among many others, the foundations of ex-US presidents such as the Carter Center, the Clinton Foundation, and the Obama Foundation, and private philanthropic foundations such as the Soros, Rockefeller, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations. Many national non-government organizations (NGOs) also serve as donors.

In addition to the above donors, there are a myriad of private sector organizations that deliver aid provided by multilateral and bilateral donors and who work on the front lines of delivering aid directly to developing countries through a number of different funding mechanisms that will be discussed later. Corporations also have social responsibility strategies that are considered as aid. Further, private corporations provide the majority of resource transfers in recent years from developed to developing countries to stimulate international development, but those transfers are not considered as official aid.

Leaders work in all these various types of organizations and at all levels of this system, including political decision makers, policy makers, program designers, and project implementers in the field. The authors in this volume include leaders who work or have worked for developing country governments, for developing country development organizations, for major multilateral and bilateral donors, and for international and national non-governmenta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Overview Part 1 On Leading in International Development
• 1. Toward a Theory of Leading in International Development
• Part 1: Challenges in International Development
• Part 2: Leadership for Women’s Empowerment and Equity
• Part 3: Spirit-Filled Grassroots Leadership
• Part 4: Leading Major Donor Projects
• Part 5: Leadership Lessons to Reflect On
• Index