Event

How Development Cooperation Can Support ‘Managing For Empowerment’ and Achieve Better Public Sector Performance 

Image: TheBlowup / Unsplash

Date: September 26, 2024
Date: September 26, 2024
Time: 15:30 - 17:00
Location: Zoom
Start date: September 26, 2024

The Swedish Development Research Network (SweDev) and SEI’s Development Policy and Finance Team are happy to present Dr. Dan Honig as the keynote speaker for the next Dialogue on Development Research on 26 September, 15.30-17.00 CEST.  To join the dialogue, please register here.

Topic 

Join Dr. Dan Honig for a discussion on how development cooperation can support “management for empowerment” to achieve better development assistance. Dr. Honig will present his new book, ‘Mission Driven Bureaucrats: Empowering People to Help Governments Do Better’, and explore the benefits of allowing public sector workers to perform their work driven by a desire to deliver on the goals of their agency. Aid agencies manage projects in (differentially) narrow ways, often requiring varieties of reporting that can crowd out judgment and undermine performance, particularly when tasks are hard to measure and monitor. This induces local government partners to use accountability systems that constrain mission-driven bureaucrats in recipient countries, inducing through “management for compliance” rather than “management for empowerment”. Dr. Honig explores the role of autonomy, cultivating competence, purpose, and creating connection to peers in accountability systems that might best help partners attract, retain, and support high performing ‘Mission Driven Bureaucrats’.  

The dialogue will include a discussion with Rebecka Kitzing-Ivarsson who has a long career in the development sector and is currently working at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). 

The moderator for this Dialogue on Development Research will be Janet Vähämäki, Senior Research Fellow and Team Lead at SEI.

About the speaker

Dr. Dan Honig has a long and traveled career within global development and public policy advocacy. Currently, Dr. Honig is an Associate Professor of Public Policy at University College London and at Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy. He is a member of Georgetown’s Better Government Lab; a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development; an associate of Harvard’s Building State Capability Program; an SNF Agora Faculty Affiliate; a member of the Scholars Strategy Network; a senior fellow at Artha Global, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Public Policy, amongst other appointments. His work extends beyond academia, ranging from running a local non-profit focused on helping post-conflict youth in East Timor to being an advisor to successive Ministers of Finance in Liberia. 

About the discussant

Rebecka Kitzing Ivarsson is currently Senior Advisor on Results Based Management & Adaptive Management at Sida. She has long experience from various organisations in the development sector, such as e.g. the UNDP, the Council of Europe and Swedish local and state authorities.  

Agenda

  • Opening remarks: Janet Vähähmäki
  • Keynote presentation 
  • Discussion   
  • Q&A session   
  • Concluding remarks 

Participation

The dialogue will take place digitally via zoom. To join the dialogue, please register here.