Introduction

The ability of development NGOs to learn has been simultaneously praised and questioned. This introductory chapter sets out to investigate learning in everyday practices of NGOs in their interaction with the institutional context of development. It argues for the conceptualisation of development NGOs as organisations. It also relates the notion of organisational learning with organisational management, organisational institutionalism and organisational forgetting, and acknowledges a need to pay attention to the intertwining of learning and power. The chapter ends with a methodological note and a short introduction to the following chapters.