Safeguarding from Scrutiny: Toward a Critical Consciousness of Organizational Culture in Humanitarian NGOs

Humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (HNGOs) face a moment of reckoning brought on by decades of operational complexity and conceptual tensions between self-espoused values and external pressures as social change movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter demand organizational accountability. Humanitarian aid is being questioned systematically as most HNGOs continue reconciling with their colonialist origin stories from the Global North. Alongside a shrinking British foreign aid budget, and mounting pressures for proving value for money, HNGOs face a record number of natural disasters, energy crises, armed conflicts, and other major emergencies to respond to across the globe. As the British aid sector continues to deal with the policy aftermath of the Oxfam abuse scandal from the 2010 Haiti earthquake, growing calls for new safeguarding measures have resulted in unresolved implications around organizational culture. This dissertation shows that the sector has delivered a largely technocratic response, with new policies, procedures, and management positions while trying to meet the competing demands of British aid actors. As public accounts of wrongdoing continue, these calls for sectoral change involve far-reaching goals but reinforce the lack of clear consciousness around the complex cultures surrounding these global giants of aid distribution. A more comprehensive understanding of the unconscious dynamics of power at play is critical for these accountability actors to achieve effectiveness across the institutional landscape of humanitarianism. This qualitative dissertation utilized Cameron and Quinn’s Competing Values Framework (CVF) as the theoretical foundation for document analysis involving the Charity Commission and Parliament, with their institutional responses to the Oxfam scandal. After analyzing after-action inquiry reports and Parliamentary proceeding transcripts, the key findings center on (1) an overreliance on hierarchical ideas of organizational culture and (2) a lack of sufficient cultural consciousness around HNGOs on the part of actors responsible for their oversight and regulation. The dissertation builds on the CVF by proposing a new four-phase developmental model for greater cultural consciousness in HNGOs: (1) organizations have cultures, (2) organizations are cultures, (3) culture makes sense of reality, and (4) culture is reality. Policy recommendations for organizational development including humanitarian safeguarding efforts, charity oversight and regulation are proposed for implementation across the sector

Terahertz spectroscopy of explosives and drugs

Terahertz frequency radiation possesses a unique combination of desirable properties for noninvasive imaging and spectroscopy of materials. This includes the ability to obtain chemical and structural information about substances concealed within dry packaging, such as paper, plastics, and cardboard. As a result, the application of terahertz frequency spectroscopy for the sensing and identification of materials of security interest, such as explosives and, to a lesser extent, drugs-of-abuse, has caught the attention of a number of researchers and security agencies. We describe terahertz time-domain spectroscopy and examine the terahertz spectra of a wide range of drugs-of-abuse, pure explosives, and plastic explosives

Evaluation Criteria for Implementation of a Sustainable Sanitation and Wastewater Treatment System at Jiuzhaigou National Park, Sichuan Province, China

The administration of Jiuzhaigou National Park in Sichuan Province, China, is in the process of considering a range of upgrades to their sanitation and wastewater treatment systems. Their case history involves an ongoing series of engineering design flaws and management failures. The administration of the Park identified sustainability, environmental protection, and education goals for their sanitation and wastewater treatment system. To meet the goal of sustainability, environmental and economic concerns of the Park’s administration had to be balanced with socio-cultural needs. An advanced reconnaissance method was developed that identified reasons for previous failures, conducted stakeholder analysis and interviews, determined evaluation criteria, and introduced innovative alternatives with records of successful global implementations. This evaluation also helped the Park to better define their goals. To prevent future failures, the administration of the Park must commit to a balanced and thorough evaluation process for selection of a final alternative and institute effective long-term management and monitoring of systems. In addition, to meet goals and achieve energy efficient, cost-effective use of resources, the Park must shift their thinking from one of waste disposal to resource recovery. The method and criteria developed for this case study provides a framework to aid in the successful implementation of sanitation projects in both underdeveloped and developed areas of the world, incorporating socio-cultural values and resource recovery for a complex group of stakeholders

Traditional Livelihoods, Conservation and Meadow Ecology in Jiuzhaigou National Park, Sichuan, China

Jiuzhaigou National Park (JNP) is a site of global conservation significance. Conservation policies in JNP include the implementation of two national reforestation programs to increase forest cover and the exclusion of local land-use. We use archaeological excavation, ethnographic interviews, remote sensing and vegetation surveys to examine the implications of these policies for non-forest, montane meadows. We find that Amdo Tibetan people cultivated the valley for \u3e2,000 years, creating and maintaining meadows through land clearing, burning and grazing. Meadows served as sites for gathering plants and mushrooms and over 40 % of contemporary species are ethnobotanically useful. Remote sensing analyses indicate a substantial (69.6 %) decline in meadow area between 1974 and 2004. Respondents report a loss of their “true history” and connections to the past associated with loss of meadows. Conservation policies intended to preserve biodiversity are unintentionally contributing to the loss of these ecologically and culturally significant meadow habitats