In an excellent book on how aid agencies manage foreign aid projects, Dan Honig argues that tight top-down controls and a focus on target-setting and metrics often lead aid projects astray. 

If¬†one navigates from the top,¬†one may achieve more management control, more oversight, and more standardized behavior. But this may be at the cost of¬†flexibility and adaptability. By contrast, if one empowers those closest to the ground, and focuses on what field agents can see and learn, we may apply so-called ‚Äúsoft information‚ÄĚ that will in turn allow for more flexibility.¬†

Managing large organizations is not easy. And most politicians and bureaucrats struggle to find the right balance between when to control and when to let go. In the book¬†Navigation by Judgment: Why and When Top-Down Control of Foreign Aid Doesn't Work, Dan Honig argues that a misplaced¬†sense of¬†what it¬†means to ‚Äúsucceed‚Ä̬†encourages many aid¬†agencies¬†to get the¬†balance¬†wrong.

Dan Honig is an assistant professor of international development at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is currently a visiting fellow at Leiden University’s Institute of Political Science, and a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. He was previously special assistant, then advisor, to successive Ministers of Finance in Liberia and ran a local nonprofit in East Timor focused on helping post-conflict youth realize the power of their own ideas.

Dan is busy completing his next book on ‚ÄúMission-Driven Bureaucrats‚ÄĚ, which¬†explores the relationship between motivation, management practice, organizational mission, and performance in the public service.¬†¬†¬†

• Actually Navigating byJudgment: Towards aNew Paradigm of DonorAccountability Where theCurrent System Doesn‚Äôt Work (policy paper, Centre for Global Development)
• Managing Better: What All of Us Can Do to Encourage AidSuccess (CGD Brief, Center for Global Development)
• "Making Good On Donors' Desire to Do Development Differently",¬†Third World Quarterly¬†39:1, 68-84 (Honig & Gulrajani, 2018).
• "Information, Power, & Location: ¬†World Bank Staff Decentralization and Aid Project Success‚ÄĚ, Governance¬†33:4, 749-769. (2020)
• The Limits of Accounting-Based Accountability in Education (and Far Beyond): Why More Accounting Will Rarely Solve Accountability Problems (Honig & Pritchett, working paper, Center for Global Development)
• Dan Honig on Twitter
• Dan Banik and In Pursuit of Development on Twitter
• https://in-pursuit-of-development.simplecast.com/¬†

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