AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

Results-based management (RBM) has become a central management policy to enhance aid effectiveness and achieve results of development interventions. This thesis examines the relationship between policy and practice and how this relationship unfolds in the context of RBM policy and the practices of INGOs and NGOs in Nepal. Based on interviews with development actors working in INGOs and NGOs in Nepal and within a conceptual framework derived from ethnographic studies of development, our findings suggest that a disjuncture emerges between development policy and practice, because of the marginal influence development policies have on practices, since practices are generated by other logics and rationalities than that of the policy. Our findings furthermore point to the issue that the disjuncture is rather unacknowledged due to processes of translation and brokerage within which development actors conceal the disjuncture and produce an appearance of order. This is shown to have negative impact on development since it results in a construction of a ‘virtual reality’, which poses problems for learning and evidence-based decision-making, and thus for the hope of making development aid more effective. Advisors/Committee Members: Olwig, Mette Fog (advisor).