Outsourcing the business of development : the rise of for-profit consultancies in the UK Aid Sector

Funding: Economic and Social Research Council - ES/V01269X/1.While much attention has been paid to the ways in which the private sector is now embedded within the field of development, one group of actors — for-profit development consultancies and contractors, or service providers — has received relatively little attention. This article analyses the growing role of for-profit consultancies and contractors in British aid delivery, which has been driven by two key trends: first, the outsourcing of managerial, audit and knowledge-management functions as part of efforts to bring private sector approaches and skills into public spending on aid; and second, the reconfiguration of aid spending towards markets and the private sector, and away from locally embedded, state-focused aid programming. The authors argue that both trends were launched under New Labour in the early 2000s, and super-charged under successive Conservative governments. The resulting entanglement means that the policies and practices of the UK government's aid agencies, and the interests and forms of for-profit service providers, are increasingly mutually constitutive. Amongst other implications, this shift acts to displace traditional forms of contestation and accountability of aid delivery.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Vocational education and training for African development: a literature review

© 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The SDGs mark the clearest global acceptance yet that the previous approach to development was unsustainable. In VET, UNESCO has responded by developing a clear account of how a transformed VET must be part of a transformative approach to development. It argues that credible, comprehensive skills systems can be built that can support individuals, communities, and organisations to generate and maintain enhanced and just livelihood opportunities. However, the major current theoretical approaches to VET are not up to this challenge. In the context of Africa, we seek to address this problem through a presentation of literatures that contribute to the theorisation of this new vision. They agree that the world is not made up of atomised individuals guided by a “hidden hand”. Rather, reality is heavily structured within political economies that have emerged out of contestations and compromises in specific historical and geographical spaces. Thus, labour markets and education and training systems have arisen, characterised by inequalities and exclusions. These specific forms profoundly influence individuals’ and communities’ views about the value of different forms of learning and working. However, they do not fully define what individuals dream, think and do. Rather, a transformed and transformative VET for Africa is possible

Transitioning Vocational Education and Training in Africa

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book takes an expansive view of vocational education and training. Drawing on case studies across rural and urban settings in Uganda and South Africa, the book offers a new way of seeing this through an exploration of the multiple ways in which people learn to have better livelihoods. Crucially, it explores learning that takes place informally online, within farmers’ groups and in public and private education institutions

Transitioning Vocational Education and Training in Africa

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book takes an expansive view of vocational education and training. Drawing on case studies across rural and urban settings in Uganda and South Africa, the book offers a new way of seeing this through an exploration of the multiple ways in which people learn to have better livelihoods. Crucially, it explores learning that takes place informally online, within farmers’ groups and in public and private education institutions

Transitioning Vocational Education and Training in Africa: A Social Skills Ecosystem Perspective

The transition to more just and sustainable development requires radical change across a wide range of areas and particularly within the nexus between learning and work. This book takes an expansive view of vocational education and training that goes beyond the narrow focus of much of the current literature and policy debate. Drawing on case studies across rural and urban settings in Uganda and South Africa, the book offers a new way of seeing this issue through an exploration of the multiple ways in which people learn to have better livelihoods. Crucially, it explores learning that takes place informally online, within farmers’ groups, and in public and private educational institutions. Offering new insights and ways of thinking about this field, the book draws out clear implications for theory, policy and practice in Africa and beyond

Sharing vocabularies: towards horizontal alignment of values-driven business functions

This paper highlights the emergence of different ‘vocabularies’ that describe various values-driven business functions within large organisations and argues for improved horizontal alignment between them. We investigate two established functions that have long-standing organisational histories: Ethics and Compliance (E&C) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). By drawing upon research on organisational alignment, we explain both the need for and the potential benefit of greater alignment between these values-driven functions. We then examine the structural and socio-cultural dimensions of organisational systems through which E&C and CSR horizontal alignment can be coordinated to improve synergies, address tensions, and generate insight to inform future research and practice in the field of Business and Society. The paper concludes with research questions that can inform future scholarly research and a practical model to guide organizations’ efforts towards inter-functional, horizontal alignment of values-driven organizational practice

Towards Sustainable Vocational Education and Training: Thinking Beyond the Formal

Mainstream vocational education and training has been complicit in unsustainable practices due to its longstanding relationship with productivism, extractivism and colonialism. However, it is beginning to address the need to balance its dominant focus on skills for employability with a growing awareness of the imperative to promote environmental sustainability, in terms of skills for sustainable production. There is also a sense that vocational institutions must also be sustainable in the wider sense of viability, durability, etc. Whilst these positive steps are welcome, careful analysis is needed regarding how far recent initiatives are limited both by institutional capacities and wider disenabling environments, and how far they are meaningful steps towards sustainable VET for just transitions. Moreover, the current debate is also limited in its overwhelming focus on formal spaces of learning and work. Yet, most vocational learning and work sits outside this formal realm. We contribute to this debate by exploring four case studies of complex skills ecosystems with varying levels of (in)formality taken from both rural and urban settings in Uganda and South Africa. We consider how each ecosystem's dynamics generates complex mixes of sustainability and employability concerns. We suggest that, in cases like the more formalised ones presented here there is a possibility to look at the development of centres of skills formation excellence grounded in sector and place but that this also requires thinking about bigger challenges of just transitions. More radically, by highlighting the contexts of less formalised skills ecosystems in two other cases, we point towards new ways of thinking about supporting such ecosystems' work on sustainable livelihoods in ways that enhance their durability. Although context always matters, we suggest that our arguments are pertinent not just to the countries or the region but have international salience

Towards sustainable vocational education and training: thinking beyond the formal

No abstract available

Operation Orphan and Danbro: an SME-charity partnership

This Practical Note reviews a long-term partnership between Operation Orphan–a small development charity–and Danbro–an accounting services firm. This partnership was formed in 2010 when Danbro committed to underwriting 100% of Operation Orphan’s UK administrative costs, enabling other donations to directly support orphans and vulnerable children in Zimbabwe and beyond. We discuss the core elements underpinning the partnership: governance arrangements, trust, relationship and long-term financial commitment, and explore how issues of power and partnership sustainability are perceived and managed. The case concludes with a reflective note on the broader implications of this type of SME–charity partnership model

Conceptualising regional skills ecosystems: reflections on four African cases

In this article we address the debate on regional skills formation systems in Africa. We draw on the social ecosystems model (SEM) developed by Hodgson and Spours to analyse data from four case studies that reflect the complexities of African economies, rural and urban, formal and informal. The SEM model helps us focus on the three dimensions of a strong skills ecosystem: collaboration between a range of actors, key institutions and system leaders within the region (the horizontal); top-down policies, regulations, and funding streams that enable or constrain the regional skills ecosystem (the vertical); and the points where these two interact, often through mediation activities. In the case of the last of these three, our cases point to the importance of nurturing organisations which can provide SEM leadership, particularly in more fragile ecosystems. Yet, in none of the cases, are public vocational institutions playing the strong anchor role envisaged in the model. The significance of the paper lies in three ways it develops the SEM in relation to regional skills ecosystems. First, we problematise the notion of a facilitatory state and place it within wider national and global webs of power. Second, we insist that the local or regional is always embedded in and networked into myriad national and international levels. This requires a more complex understanding of how social skills ecosystems operate. Third, the notion of an anchor institution requires further elaboration. In most social ecosystems these institutions need to be built or strengthened and a clearer understanding is required of the processes of institutionalisation and what mechanisms make it possible to build this capacity and sustain it over time