Event
At peace with results! How to manage results demands with pragmatic bureaucracy
Photo: Vitaly Gariev // Unsplash
Date: November 30, 2026
Welcome to the next instalment of the Academic Insight Seminar exploring how results-based management works in practice and what enables it to support an agency’s mission.
New research examines how the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), a public agency working with peace-building in the intersection of development cooperation and security, navigates competing demands for results. It explores the relationship between requirements for precise measurement and upward accountability and the need for adaptive implementation that responds to partners’ priorities.
The findings challenge the assumption that results-based management inevitably creates tensions and excessive bureaucracy. Instead, at FBA, staff use pragmatic bureaucratic skills to reinterpret results requirements while preserving operational flexibility. The study also raises questions about how organizational structures, processes, and methods serve as signals of progress towards future results.
Agenda
09.00 – Research insights: Navigating competing results demands
The authors introduce the article’s main findings and discuss their implications for results-based management in complex policy environments.
09.20 – Agency practice: How FBA works
FBA’s Director-General Per Olsson Fridh shares the agency’s approach to results measurement and management explaining how demands for results are reconciled with the need to adapt.
09.40 – Panel discussion: Learning across development cooperation and the security sector
Representatives from development cooperation agencies and public agencies in the security sector reflect on the findings and share experiences from their own organizations. The discussion will include questions from the audience.
Speakers
- Janet Vähämäki, Author, Center for Security and Resilience, Stockholm School of Economics & Stockholm Environment Institute
- Fredrik Söderbaum, Author, The School of Global Studies at University of Gothenburg
- Annika Hilgert, Author, Stockholm Environment Institute & Department of Economic History and International Relations, Stockholm University
- Susanna Alexius, Author, Center for Security and Resilience, Stockholm School of Economics & Stockholm Centre for OrganizationalResearch (Score), Stockholm University
- Per Olsson Fridh, Director General, FBA
- Åsa Christiansson, Methods Coordinator, FBA
Panelists
- Annika Blakstad Otterstedt, Department Director ‘Results’, Swedish Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)
- Per Olsson Fridh, Director General, FBA
- TBC – representative(s) from other governmental agencies
The event will be moderated by Martin Carlsson-Wall, Professor, Center Director, Center for Security and Resilience, Stockholm School of Economics.
Time and Place
This event will take place on Monday, 30th of November, from 9.00 to 11.00. Breakfast will be served from 8.30. The seminar will take place in the HOI lecture hall at the Stockholm School of Economics, House of Innovation, Norrtullsgatan 2, Stockholm.
Registration
The seminar welcomes public agency leaders, practitioners, and researchers interested in management, accountability, and organizational learning in development cooperation, peacebuilding, and security. To attend, please register on the SSE website here. Note that this is an in-person only event without digital participation, though a recording will be available after.
Organisation and funding
This event is hosted by the Center for Security and Resilience at Stockholm School of Economics, Folke Bernadotte Academy and Stockholm Environment Institute. The research has been financed by Folke Bernadotte Academy.