Aid Worker Voices

Of bureaucracies and aid organizations

Of bureaucracies and aid organizations

The is a followup to my most recent post which focuses on the question “what is the ‘humanitarian aid system?”.

Framing the discussion
In his 2014 essay The Humanitarian Future Paul Currion points out that, “Of the Fortune 500 firms first listed in 1955, nearly 90 percent no longer exist in 2014, and this type of creative destruction is sorely lacking in the humanitarian sector.”  This ‘lack of creative destruction’ is my point of departure for this second post focusing on the question “can the humanitarian aid system be fixed?”.  Currion is spot on with his observation and below I discuss why this is such an important point from a sociological perspective.

There are many typologies of bureaucracies, and here is a simple version in which includes (1) for profit entities like Apple, Halliburton or Barkleys, (2) governments or governing bodies like the United Nations, the Parliament of Italy or FIFA, and (3) not for profit organizations such as Oxfam, the Catholic Church or the LSE.

One of those types is not like the other two relative to the pruning force of ‘creative destruction.’  The second two do not have nearly the same level of competition for survival as does the first.  It is beyond the scope of this essay to discuss type two, governing bodies, but much of what I point out below is as relevant to this type as it is the not-for profit world of humanitarian aid organizations.

The business world functions according to Darwinian ‘survival of range fittest’ principles: big fish eat little fish, and only those corporations with the most myopic focus on maximization of profits tend to survive in the fiercely competitive global marketplace.  Efficiency and focus of operation equals success, certainly, but in the long haul -say between 1955 and 2014- the ability to adapt to all manner of cultural, technological and social changes is even more critical.

The not for profit organizations which are the core of the humanitarian aid system are largely outside this algorithm of capitalism, thus lacking a natural pruning process.

The ‘creative destruction’ phrase that Currion uses above is perhaps misstated.  ‘Creative’ infers a mind and the algorithm of capitalism is merely a blind machine, allowing the survival of economically competitive businesses and selecting out the others.  The forces of capitalism naturally prune weak/failing companies and failure is possible and actually imminent for those that don’t adapt to changing economic and social trends.  Business are bureaucracies and therefore they are forced to be as efficient as possible to cope with the burdens of increased overhead, internal cooperation, and communication.

Weber 101:  The problem with getting bigger
The intellectual grandparent of the analysis of bureaucracies is Max Weber. Below is some of what I have learned from studying his works.

A truism relative to bureacracies is that all organizations have a tendency to get bigger as time passes. Two quickly stated reasons are (1) adding features is always less painful than subtracting and (2) the economy of scale comes into play.  As bureaucracies get inexorably larger, many things begin to happen, most bad.  Here’s a partial list:

• Overhead -administrative and otherwise – increases
• Ability to alter course and mission – decreases
• Bureaucratic ritualism – increases
• Efficiency of internal and external communication channels – decreases
• Access to leaders – decreases
• Dependence upon experts at all levels – increases
• Ability of leaders to stay in touch with all aspects of functioning – decreases
• Tendency to gravitate toward exclusively quantifiable indicators of success – increases
• Overall efficiency in achieving mission – decreases

In the for-profit world these negative factors are muted and dealt with by the forces of competition, but much less so in the non-profit world in which the humanitarian aid systems inhabits.

It is a given that businesses that are on top, like those on the Fortune 500, must stay lean, mean and on task to continue being successful.  But how does a not-for profit humanitarian aid organization deal with all of the entropic forces listed above?

One strategy is to avoid getting too big, and a second is minimizing noise by remaining focused on a specific mission.  More discussion on these strategies below.

‘Crisis caravans’ are clusters of bureaucracies 
Another critical dimension of this discussion is the hurdles faced when two or more bureaucracies must/need to interact with each other.  In the business world market forces insure that over the long-haul inter-organization communication is done efficiently.  In the non-for profit world this is not the case and the forces insuring smooth interagency communication and coordination are much less robust.

To illustrate, here is a specific personal example.

For well over a decade I served as director of Project Pericles at Elon University, Elon being one of 30 like-minded colleges and universities nationwide answering the charge to raise the level of civic engagement and social responsibility in our respective institutions.  The directors of each institution meet once a year to share information and move forward collaborations and initiatives generated by the Project Pericles national office.  The bigger picture is that there are a good number of other similarly missioned national consortia such as Campus Compact and Imagining America.

Here, yes, are gaggles of academic types who have common cause, are all passionate about their missions, and certainly are aware of the explosive and positive synergy that can come about when like minded, well resourced individuals come together. One might think that certainly within the Periclean institutions there would be constant, productive communication and that between the national Pericles office and the national offices of the other consortia there would be coordination and cooperation.

Not the case.

Despite many and compelling reasons to make more and better inter-organizational communication, coordination and collaboration a high priority and despite the fact that, when asked, the various administrators and directors would say, yes, they would like it to be so, the grade card on this effort reads a C- at best.

One factor that plays a part in this ‘failure’ is that we are all perpetually occupied with the day to day work on our campuses, always “putting out the fire nearest to us”.  The same is true for people in most jobs:  looking at the big picture is a rare luxury, and spending time on activities which don’t fall clearly in our job description (read: for which we get rewarded, i.e., “count”) is hard to justify.

That is to say, if you think intra-organizational communication and overall functioning is a challenge, the situation only gets worse when you add efforts toward inter-organizational communication, cooperation and collaboration.  It almost goes without saying that the more organizations in the consortia (or cluster of like-missioned entities), the lower the chances for productive, concerted action.  This is not a problem specific to higher education, of course, but rather a general truism regarding interaction among and between large organizations in general.

And so it is with the ‘humanitarian aid system’; Polman was shooting fish in a barrel with The Crisis Caravan (2010).   [Look here for a post on the ‘crisis caravan.’]

Muting the inherent challenges of a growing bureaucracy
Though I have not done a thorough reading of the history of MSF, I’ll suggest that the fissioning into now 24 semi-autonomous entities over the years was a natural reaction to the sense that they were getting too big to handle as one bureaucratic organization.  MSF has, essentially, followed the franchise model from the business world with the Geneva main office remaining in charge of branding control and much of the administrative work while the many semi-autonomous affiliates remain smaller and leaner.  They have also dealt with the challenges of inter-organizational coordination and cooperation by having stated and unstated policies of being as self-sufficient as possible.  Cluster meetings, peut-être, but not much beyond that.

As a side note, another possible reason for having several affiliates in different countries is making the most of fiscal regulations (i.e., some governments offer tax relief on charity donations as long as the charity is registered in country) and/or local grants (again, some  grants are restricted to charities registered in a specific country).  It’s not necessarily the case for MSF but it is for other organizations.  For instance, the European Commission Humanitarian Aid & Civil Protection Office (ECHO), which is one of the biggest humanitarian aid donors, only funds charities that are registered in one of the EU member states.

Though there are many other examples of organizational fissioning, here are just two.  Founded in the 1940’s, OXFAM is now a confederation of 17 organizations around the world. The  International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was founded in 1919 and today it coordinates activities between the 188 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The brute force of positive human will
It is a testament to the dedication of workers within the humanitarian aid sector that coordination and communication among the various humanitarian aid entities happens at the high level that it does.  In May 2016 the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) will be held in Istanbul. The WHS is happening in spite of the overwhelming challenges to intra-organizational coordination. It is happening because of the brute force of positive human will and collective desire within the humanitarian aid sector to respond in dignity enhancing ways to the needs of those who have been crushed by wars, famine and marginalization of all types.  More and more humanitarian aid organizations are adhering to trans-organizational agreements on standards (e.g., the Core Humanitarian Standards).  Sector-wide cluster meetings are becoming increasingly organized and coordinated.  The humanitarian aid system moves forward despite a multitude of challenges, such as:

• the above mentioned inherent and inevitable bureaucratic functioning hurdles
• a work force that tends to have dysfunctionally high turnover
• a mission that is increasingly compromised by the actions of various militaries
• changing technology allowing for real-time social media scrutiny and kibitzing
• all manner of MONGO-types muddying the waters
• a decreasing respect for the sanctity of the humanitarian space (read: good people die in the line duty).

Is the aid system broken?
That there will be constant chatter about how the ‘aid system is broken” is a given.  Recent The Guardian op-eds  by J and Currion are great examples. People experience frustrations when they see inefficiency, stupidity, waste and lack of coordination, especially when lives are on the line. But is the humanitarian aid system broken? No.

Are there aspects of the system that could be improved? Definitely.

My guess is that Weber would be astounded at the frequently creative but always relentlessly stubborn actions of many devoted individuals who have mightily resisted and overcome the many challenges faced by these large, complicated bureaucracies

No, the humanitarian aid system is not ‘broken’.  Just the opposite, it embodies a heroic response to the greatest human challenge of them all, that of harnessing our innate human urge to make the world a little bit more free from unnecessary suffering and indignities.

I agree with J.  We should all just calm down, but at the same time never ease up in our efforts.

Contact me with your thoughts, feedback or snarky comments.

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