ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the development industry in terms of the reasons for this uneven performance, and what might be done to improve matters. It focuses particularly on the difficulties development agencies have with learning the lessons of experience. One problem with reforming the development industry is that foreign aid has no natural constituency, and its procedures and effects are invisible to voters, for the most part. There are three broad reasons for the organizational inability to learn: the paradigms that dominate development work, the scripts or development narratives that this paradigm generates, and the collusive structures in which the development partners seem to be locked. Bureaucratic procedures and internal patterns of incentives and sanctions make it difficult to try new approaches, to express skepticism or disagreement with organizational orthodoxy, and to learn from outside groups. The chapter concludes with some recommendations for reform, including changes in accountability, incentives, and mechanisms for organizational learning.
