Triaging Values: How NGOs make decisions about resource allocation, 2013-2017

Krause, Monika (2018). Triaging Values: How NGOs make decisions about resource allocation, 2013-2017. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852840

In the past decades, value-led organisations and networks have assumed a greater role in processes of governance - that is in processes that affect the distribution of material and symbolic resources. "Triaging Values" investigates the ways in which managers in such organisations make decisions about how to allocate resources, and how to manage their commitments to specific causes, specific people and specific territorial units through in-depth interviews.
Value-driven organisations face the problem of triage in specific ways, as values usually do not lend themselves easily to prioritisation. Pragmatic decisions about effectiveness usually involve complex knowledge-claims about the world and the effects of intervention within it, and criteria for success in non-profits defy easy calculation. This study focuses on human rights organisations, Christian churches and conservation organisations, all organisations that pursue particularly boundless values. The project investigates how ideas, management tools, controversies about knowledge and organisational constraints affect provision. It contributes to debates about global governance, and it seeks to offer new understandings of how territoriality and space is managed by non-state organisations.

Data description (abstract)

Qualitative interviews with managers in human rights NGOs (n=36), conservation organisations (n=44), and churches and mission agencies (n=30) about practices of prioritization.
Our research aimed to address the following questions: How do these organizations allocate resources to specific areas, and specific groups of beneficiaries and specific types of activities? What are the time-frames of allocating resources, measuring results, and managing staff and partners? What are knowledge-claims involved and how are these resolved? What is the role of ideas? What moral dilemmas arise for actors involved in these decisions and how do they
manage these dilemmas?

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