Funding conditions for aid effectiveness: A mixed blessing for the sustainable development of host‐country‐national employees

• Author: Sharon L. O'Sullivan
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1318

Funding conditions for aid effectiveness: A mixed

blessing for the sustainable development of host-

country-national employees

Sharon L. O’Sullivan*

University of Ottawa

Abstract

This paper explores whether—and how—aid effectiveness

funding conditions impact the human resource development

of host-country national (HCN) employees. To investigate

this relationship, I conducted a phenomenological study with

31 participants from three international nongovernmental

organizations (INGOs). Results suggest that the pressure

toward funds accountability brings mixed blessings: From

astaff‌ing perspective, more HCNs are being hired instead

of expatriates, building local capacity. However, vital

training and performance review functions are cast as in-

eff‌icient overheads. The paper concludes with a

conceptual framework, practical strategies for INGOs

and donor governments, and directions for larger scale

empirical research. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published

by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: staff‌ing, training, performance review,

human resource development, INGOs, aid effectiveness,

host-country nationals

Résumé

Cet article examine dans quelle mesure et de quelle manière les

conditions de f‌inancement de l’eff‌icacité de l’aide inf‌luencent le

développement des ressources humaines des employés citoyens

des pays hôtes (HCN). Pour étudier cette relation, une étude

phénoménologique est menée auprès de 31 participants issus

de trois organisations non gouvernementales internationales

(INGOs). Les résultats révèlent que la pression en faveur de

l’obligation de rendre des comptes dans la gestion des fonds

produit des avantages mitigés. Du point de vue de la dotation

du personnel, de plus en plus de HCNs sont recrutés en lieu et

place des expatriés, ce qui permet de développer les capacités

locales. Mais dans le même temps, la formation essentielle et

les fonctions de l’évaluation de la performance sont perçues

comme des frais généraux ineff‌icaces. L’article s’achève par

un cadre conceptuel, par des stratégies pratiques pour les

INGOs et les gouvernements bailleurs et par des propositions

pour des recherches empiriques de grande envergure.

Mots-clés : dotation du personnel, formation,évaluationde la

performance, développement des ressources humaines, INGOs,

eff‌icacitédel’aide, citoyens des pays hôtes

Sustainable development requires more than just the

development of environmentally sustainable socioeconomic in-

frastructure. It also requires human resource development—

namely, building the capacity to manage that infrastructure

by developing host-country-nationals’(HCN) human rights

and skills (Tomlinson, 2008). Without such human resource

capacity, international development projects would represent

mere charity, perpetuating dependency over the long term

(Lewis, 2007). Accordingly, when international development

nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) receive project

funding from their governments’overseasdevelopment assis-

tance (ODA), they are expected to prioritize the building of

HCN capacity (Roberts, Jones III, & Frohling, 2005).

To further ensurethat ODA funds are directed to HCN ca-

pacity building, donor governments from developed nations

such as Canada have begun to collaborate with one another

and with recipient (developing country) governments. They

have institutionalized principlesand practices for aid effective-

ness in the form of international agreements such as the Paris

Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action (Tomlinson,

2008). In these agreements, recipient governments have taken

ownership for development strategies that will improve their

institutions and tackle corruption (OECD, 2008), and donor

governmentshave agreed to align their funding initiativeswith

these recipientgovernments’development strategies to ensure

The author wishes to thank the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Academic

Leadership for their Research Writing retreats. The author also wishes to

thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for

their 2008 grant, which funded the project upon which this paper’s data

was based. Additional publications emerging from that data include

O’Sullivan (2010) and O’Sullivan (2011), and are listed in the references.

*Please address correspondence to: Sharon L. O’Sullivan, Telfer School of

Management, University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier Ave East, Ottawa ON,

Canada K1N6N5. Email: sosullivan@telfer.uottawa.ca

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

32: 189–202 (2015)

Published online 18 May 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1318

Can J Adm Sci

32(3), 189–202 (2015)Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 189