Aid Worker Voices / Closing the gap?

Closing the gap?

Posted on: March 18, 2014 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: Aid Worker Voices book

The real versus the ideal

Some context
In my very first professional presentation as a sociologist I made use of the anthropological terms “ideal culture” and “real culture” in describing the huge gap between the published/public statements on how tenure and promotion judgements were supposed to be made and how they were made. The “ideal culture” as it existed in university statements regarding criteria for tenure and promotion were very far from what I collected in dozens of extensive interviews with faculty and department chairpersons in terms of the operative criteria, i.e., the “real culture.” No big surprise there for any academic. I have always been interested in this gap between what we say and what we do, the ought and the is, and so as I have pored through our survey data I was taken aback by how extreme some of the gaps appeared to be. I will claim no deep insider insights into the aid industry -like my co-author J can legitimately make- but in any case methinks our data indicates a problem which deserves -and needs- to be further described, analyzed and at various levels processed and addressed.

Data!
Let’s start with some data from the survey. In response to the question (Q50), here are the results to date.

This is a huge gap by any measure. Out of all the people who have taken the survey up to this point only 1% reported the “ideal” to be the case, i.e., that there is a complete understanding between the field and the home office, and nearly 38% -as you can see- report that the home office and those in the field -the “real culture” if you will- are on the same page.

When we followed Q50 with Q51 adding a more personal twist the results were as interesting:

People is general were more positive about the connections between the home office and the field, though the massive gap still remains.

As we begin the do more detailed analysis of the data we will explore these questions in more detail, in the meantime here is a quick look at the data when we examine Q50 separating out according to where people reported they were doing their work. Perhaps not surprising data to many of you but interesting to see some numbers, yes? As we get into the last stages of translating and making available the survey in Arabic, French and Spanish -our explicit goal to hear more voices from local aid workers- I am anxious to see how the data fleshed out.

Voices
Here is what some said in the open-ended response section regarding Q50 and Q51:

HQ voices

There is often a large disconnect between the two and while field offices are more intent on doing, HQ’s can often be more intent on process – usually implementing systems which are time heavy and not that useful for the field. Field offices can see HQ management/advisors as pestering, and HQ’s can see field staff as renegades. However, having one good liaison officer between the two can make all the difference, ensuring better relationships and better outcomes for both.
When an organization is large, as is the one I work for, many initiatives have a top down approach. The home office I work for often strives to understand the implications but realise that many of them are unrealistic from what we know from the field office. Thus, the requirements we are aware of and the reality that we know often don’t line up.

Local aid worker voices

Home offices are dwelling in idealism and bureaucracy. They see the big picture, which might sound positive, however often it’s important e to see the small picture. Sometimes, the smaller it is the better. This is exactly where the main issues are closer to the eye, inspected carefully and well understood.
Many in ‘home office’ have not had any ‘field’ experience and therefore have little or no concept of what conditions are like. A bad day in Sydney is missing a bus. A bad day in the field is being shelled, or watching people die.

Expat aid worker voices

There is a disconnect between workers in the field, experiencing and seeing individual issues and struggles first hand, and those that control the purse strings. Home offices seem to be much more bogged down in the politics of aid and humanitarianism, whereas field workers don’t care about the politics, just the work.
The two ‘realities’ are often widely different and it can be difficult to communicate one to the other. The pace at which ‘field’ functions and the daily pressure they face often mean that their priorities and processes are not going to be as aligned as they should with the ‘home office’ which doesn’t face the same pressures and operates at a slower pace.

I recognize that I have implied above that the field is somehow the “real” and the home office is the “ideal”, and that is a misrepresentation: both are real, of course. But the fact remains that there is demonstrative lack of sync between the two. Is this just the nature of the beast or can there/should there be structural and/or policy changes that could address the gap?

The answer is both.

Complex bureaucracies of any sort will, as they grow larger –and there is an inexorable tendency toward growth and greater complexity in most organizations; if you stay the same size you get smaller comparatively– naturally encounter communication problems directly proportional to the number of levels and channels through which messages are transmitted. Additionally, in many cases not being able to make that which is real measurable, the organizational leaders will tend to see -and act as if- that what is measurable is real. This phenomena is much like in the bad joke where one person comes upon a drunk wandering around a lamp post. “What are you looking for?” “I am looking for my watch,” is the response. “Is this where you lost it?” “No, but this is where the light is best,” the drunk answers. Complex organizations must base decisions on “facts” and numbers, though those in the field recognize that much that is true and “works” cannot be distilled to numbers. Max Weber was a realist, to be sure.

In the coming days I will add to this post more illustrative responses from all three groups above regarding their views on the sync between the home office and the field. Stay tuned!

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Tom Arcaro

Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers