The Overseas Development Institute (ODI)’s Research and Policy in the Development Programme (RAPID) had been operating through several years, which have undertaken the investigation on the functionality of learning in the policy procedures, which in turn has been endeavored in the translation into the practical advice (Cummings and Worley 2014). This also includes the short term action that are taken through the short-term and mid-term consultancies to incorporate the proficiency and abilities in the individuals, which includes the researchers, the policy-makers, the mediators and the practitioners (Fukuda-Parr and Lopes 2013).
This report effectively deals about the RAPID, which has increasingly activated it mode and sphere of operation by handling and playing significant roles in big time projects and programs which has been instrumental for helping of the local organization mostly in Asia, Africa and Latin American domains. This report significantly deals and aims to reflect on capacity building and its development as well as identification of the implications of the approaches that are being used to tackle the capacity improvement process.
The purpose of this report is to understand the roles of the external consultancies in developing of the capacity as well as managing the approaches of this development process. This report further helps in understanding and analyzing the access to the funding practices. Although this report helps in understanding and analyzing the roles yet, the solutions of the problems that are faced by the practitioners are not clearly stated. However, this report can help understand and imply the information to formulate certain provisional actions by the capacity development contributor to direct them in actual application.
Capacity can be classified as neither a non-specific capability nor competency neither it is a undisclosed component. Therefore, the question arises about its classification. This section of the report discloses and discusses about capacity and further discusses about the process of improvement (Trenner and Bawa 2012).
In order to understand and illustrate about capacity, a framework was previously developed by researcher Allan Kaplan at the Community Development resource association, to help describe capacity that has been divided as seven interrelated elements in organizational surroundings (Bourgeois and Cousins 2013).
These are the significant elements that tends to form the hierarchy in consideration to the things that are needed to address the improvement of the capacity of the organization as a whole with the element of the theoretical framework in the top and the materialistic assets in the bottom (Dean-Coffey, Nicole Farkouh and Reisch 2012). However many consultancies and organizations have a written statement of these significant values, the top most elements are considerably inaccessible and transitory. These elements are mostly indistinguishable for the organization itself along with the practitioners, who are fundamental to build the organization competence.
The primary question arises about the factors that encourage the organization to make desperate efforts to develop its capacity. The organizations change and adapt itself according to its perceptions and its capability to adapt and deal with the external environment. However, this perception is a little too complicated since different perceptions would bear different responses (Marshall et al. 2012). This difference in the perceptions in terms of higher significance and lesser ones influences and urges the organization to change or evolve. This would often signify that the political pressure, in terms of powerful relationships amongst the individual final decisive authorities, is a prime factor. To explain better let’s say, if a senior manager does not perceives about any certain problem, then there would be no necessity and urgency for the organization to change or adapt to any change since there would be no political pressure.
The people and the organization have both strong and weak motivation to change and develop their capacity. Due to the influence from the external environments, it is likely that learning and the capacity development plays its part in the individuals or the organization which cannot be forced on them unless the situation demands that they should be cohered into it. The external forces and the bodies can teach as well as shape the motivation for the learning but nothing more than. However, if the change process is not accepted and embrace by the ones whose capacity is to be developed, the changes are likely happen.
It can be argued that the capacity development can often go wrong and more critically due to the complete misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the context. The measures are taken based on the falsified and uncontested assumptions about the certainties that are going to occur and how the change takes place (Story et al. 2017). Provided that the intangible and invisibility of the characteristics of the capacity, the organization cannot be judged by looking at the lone official directives, objectives, process and the structures (Alvesson 2012). However, the perspective that is considered to look into and understand an organization’s context creates a huge difference since the increase and the decreased complexities of the backwardness or the forwardness of interactions enhances capacity (Kuenkel 2015). Thus, it is vital to draw on the diversified viewpoints of the different people.
However, if it can be considered that capacity is the addition of all the interaction between the different performers within any systematic framework, often acting in its own volatile ways, it can be considered that the capacity must be present in the relations and the interfaces of the different actors, both internal and external. The capacity helps develop the interactions between these actors’ progress, for example, an employee who has returned from a training session would have to deal with the working group, the manager and the respective coordinates. In such, individuals and their interactions are the spot of capacity where the interventions must be taken into account.
Hence, the capacity development needs to focus to not just the capacities needed to achieve the technical results and objectives but also on the strategies that is necessary to build a more effective and efficient as well as dynamic relationship that can be considered to continue.
Sometimes it can be identified that the consultants convey about getting burned, which usually occurs when the consultants role, which has been prepared, leads to a no gain situation. For example, a contributor’s preliminary perception about the relationship and the intervention may be different and efficient from certain instance that which would be different from what the client wanted, needed or expected, such a situation is more likely to end up with disappointing results without understanding the client’s perspective and acting according to it.
Establishing or setting up of a clear understanding and relationship regarding the objective of the consultation can help in the determination and ensuring of a healthy relationship between the client and the consultant. This can be clearly achieved by the complete understanding of the client’s perspectives.
With this report based on the significance of the roles of external consulting firms or the advisors to help in the development process of the capacity of the organization, it can be explained that consulting is more than just imparting and giving advice. Each year several management consultants receive millions for their consultation services (Benn, Dunphy and Griffiths 2014). Much of this money is paid for the several impractical data and poorly incorporated advices. To mitigate this situation the client needs to incorporate a better understanding about the purpose of the consulting assignments and need to ask more from the advisors who in turn must learn to satiate their expanded expectations. The main cause to give rise to any crisis is due to the falsified consultation and advice as well as the lack of the client interaction to cross-examine the validity of the consultation. The management consulting is a vast sector of activities and one such way of determining the area of expertise is to understand the significance of competitive analysis, corporate strategy, operations management and the human resource management (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe and Jackson 2012). It is significant for both the client and the consultant to understand and analyze the significance of the consultation purpose since the client is tender any amount of remuneration to the consultancies who should be liable to impart with the correct and rational solution to the clients (Burke 2017).
Moving up the hierarchy of the pyramid towards a more ambitious purpose it needs a higher level of sophistication and skills to execute the process of consultation and managing the efficiency of the client-consultant relationship. More often, a professional advisor tries to shift the primary purpose of engagement even though the drift was not really demanded or necessary, in this process the firm loses track of the line and fails to differentiation between the understanding of what is best for the client and what is best for the consultation business (Sekaran and Bougie 2016). Even though sometime reputable consultants do not try to elongate the engagement or enlarge their scope. So basically, whenever the relationship starts on the pyramid, it is the external consultant’s first priority and to address to the client’s request and requirements (Anderson 2016). So in order to understand and accomplish the objectives of the engagement the consultants or the advisors should be aware of the key actions. Providing information, effective problem solving, efficient analysis, recommendation of rational actions, implementing of changes, building consensus and commitment, facilitating client learning, organizational effectiveness should be taken into consideration (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015).
The increased accord, obligation, learning and future effectiveness are not really the projected substitutes for the usual purpose of consultation but they are the desirable outcome of an effective consultation role. The extent, to which they can be built into the methods of achieving a more rational goal, depends on the effective understanding and the skills of the entire consulting relationship that needs to be managed.
However, behavioral objectives can be achieved with higher levels of success when the consulting firms approaches with more integrated and traditional approaches. Also, it is completely natural for the clients to expect that irrespective of the specialty of the consultation firms, they should empathize on the relationships, process and the skills to help the organization improve their current scenario and the concerns (Goetsch and Davis 2014).
The perception of assuming that the success of the consulting solely depends on the analytical expertise and the ability to represent convincing report have started to lose its foot hold partly since more and more people in the organizations with the necessary analytical techniques are present in the organization itself. Although, increasingly the best management consultants define their objectives not only by recommending appropriate solutions but also helping institutionalize more efficient management procedures (Fincham 2012).
This trend in more significant to the consulting firms since it requires process skills, which emphasize more in the firm’s recruitment and selection process as well as the staff development regulations and policies. Moreover, the more the managers understand about the broader range of the objectives, which excellent consultancies can help achieve, they would tend to select their consultants and advisors more carefully and expect a better output from them (Coghlan and Brannick 2014).
Many projects produces change in one segment of an organization’s functions that does not last or it is proved as counterproductive just because it did not react or mesh well with the other phases of the organization. For example, if the lower levels of employees in one department accept and assumes the responsibilities, this may give rise to clash in another department. Promoting overall efficiency is a concern of each step. While effective listening to the client’s concerns regarding one department requires the consultant to relate it to the activities that is happening in the other departments. However, significant changes rarely take place in the human resource management since most of the time the advisors recommends it.
Although, the consultants are not crusader who are bend and more inclined towards the reformation of the management styles and the assumptions. Yet a professional diagnosis should include the assessment of the entire and the overall effectiveness of the organization. The consultation process should be fundamental in reducing the barriers that obstruct the methods of progressive improvement. It can be assumed that good advisors are practitioner and not staunch preachers, though their practices are consistent with their ideologies, concepts and beliefs. The best professional would encourage the clients to improve the organizational efficiency not with the help of bookish guidelines and issuing reports but the enhanced model of motivation would serve the purpose effectively as well.
Conclusion
With the help of the report, it can be concluded that firms such as Overseas Development Institute’s Research and Policy in the Development Programme has increasingly collaborated with large multinational and multiple-year projects. It is the part where the firm was responsible and liable to help the local institutions to build their capacity and utilize proper knowledge to help improve and the policies and the practices. To effectively analyze and understand about capacity it is necessary to understand about the divisions of the seven interrelated elements in organizational surroundings. The multi-actor engagement and the managing capacity development projects requires the complete understanding and the analysis of the consultant- client relationship that can be influential to effectively meet the purpose and the objectives. Since it can be argued that, the capacity development can often critically go wrong due to the complete misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the context. The measures are taken based on the falsified and unchallenged assumptions about the certainties that are going to occur and how the change takes place. Provided that the intangible and invisibility of the nature of the capacity, the organization cannot be judged by looking at the lone official mandates, objectives, process and the structures. On agreeing with the fact about the capacity development as a political factor, the primary question arises about the aspects that encourage the organization to make desperate efforts to develop its capacity. The organizations change and adapt itself according to its perceptions and its capability to adapt and deal with the external environment. However, this perception is a little too complicated since different perceptions would bear different responses. This difference in the perceptions in terms of higher significance and lesser ones influences and urges the organization to change or evolve.
References
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Alvesson, M., 2012. Understanding organizational culture. Sage.
Anderson, D.L., 2016. Organization development: The process of leading organizational change. Sage Publications.
Benn, S., Dunphy, D. and Griffiths, A., 2014. Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.
Bourgeois, I. and Cousins, J.B., 2013. Understanding dimensions of organizational evaluation capacity. American Journal of Evaluation, 34(3), pp.299-319.
Burke, W.W., 2017. Organization change: Theory and practice. Sage Publications.
Coghlan, D. and Brannick, T., 2014. Doing action research in your own organization. Sage.
Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.
Dean-Coffey, J., Nicole Farkouh MEd, M.P.P. and Reisch, A., 2012. Dimensions of change: A model for community change efforts. The Foundation Review, 4(3), p.42.
Easterby-Smith, M., Thorpe, R. and Jackson, P.R., 2012. Management research. Sage.
Fincham, R.O.B.I.N., 2012. The client in the client-consultant relationship. The Oxford Handbook of Management Consulting, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp.411-426.
Fukuda-Parr, S. and Lopes, C. eds., 2013. Capacity for development: new solutions to old problems. Routledge.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Jacobs, G., van Witteloostuijn, A. and Christe-Zeyse, J., 2013. A theoretical framework of organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26(5), pp.772-792.
Kuenkel, P., 2015. Navigating Change in Complex Multi-Actor Settings.
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