Building Analytical and Adaptive Capacities

for Organisational Effectiveness
The world is changing at an accelerating pace and with increasing complexity. Globalisation, and ever more sophisticated information and communication technologies, have dramatically increased both the range of actors and events which affect life at local, national and international levels. We seem to be ‘living in a much more dense, interconnected world – and the speed of interactions in all societies has increased’ (Morgan, 2005).
As civil society around the world develops, unpredictable and frequently unfavourable environments present major challenges to the diverse civil society organisations (CSOs) that are emerging. They are required to respond within contexts of political and economic instability and to the upheavals brought about by crisis and conflict. CSOs are also required to respond and adapt to new bodies of knowledge and ever changing development targets, whether this is gender mainstreaming, HIV/AIDS or the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), even if these are not part of their mission and may be beyond their existing capacities.
In regions where civil society sectors are embryonic or emerging, individual CSOs can be relatively inexperienced with limited access to stable funding. This vulnerability often means that they feel obliged to comply with donor or government agendas in order to survive. The situation is not helped by the power imbalances that have persisted, or even deteriorated, within and between the different regions in the world. So how can CSOs stay afloat in this unpredictable sea of change and be effective in achieving their mission?

 

Rihani1 suggests that the route to success is to consider development as a ‘local affair’ of survival, adaptation, and learning. Future development interventions would therefore aim to create conditions that enable locally driven development to take place as an evolutionary process where local communities and organisations accumulate knowledge, interact freely in the complex systems in which they operate, and respond to opportunities and threats in their environment. To achieve this, CSOs require the ability to observe and analyse their environment and continuously adapt to new situations by developing flexible ways of operating while staying true to their vision and mission. In doing so, they are anticipating and proactively responding to internal and external forces for change rather than limiting themselves to adopting short-term, reactive coping strategies. To do this successfully, CSOs therefore need the capacity to continuously reflect critically and act effectively.

This Praxis Paper argues that there is a need to recognise and enhance these analytical and adaptive capacities in order to strengthen the organisational capacity of CSOs (i.e. to improve their effectiveness and sustainability in relation to their mission and context). This recognises that the current emphasis on strengthening the technical and management capacity of organisations, rather than analytical and adaptive capacity, has limited the impact of organisational capacity building work2 with its drives towards outcome measurement and results-based management.
The paper is not a definitive piece of research or a comprehensive review of all the relevant literature. It is a discussion piece which aims to stimulate a debate on analytical and adaptive capacities and their relevance to CSOs. As an overview and exploration of the issues the paper draws on fields such as organisational learning, strategic planning, change management, systems thinking and complexity theory.
In Section 1, we explain what we mean by analytical and adaptive capacities and how the two are interlinked. A suggested model for the process of analysis and adaptation within an organisation is explored. In Sections 2 and 3 we focus on developing a clearer conceptual understanding of analytical and adaptive capacities drawing on insights from existing theories and models. In Section 4 we explore how these concepts might be useful for putting theory into practice to strengthen the analytical and adaptive capacities of CSOs. The conclusion in Section 5 recognises that further questions remain to be answered if practical solutions are to be found for improving existing, as well as developing new, approaches to strengthening analytical and adaptive capacities which are appropriate within different cultures and contexts. Since the aim of this paper is to open a debate on the issues, the next steps are then highlighted indicating how, through INTRAC’s Praxis Programme, practitioners can become engaged in taking forward these challenges.