What do you think?
Rate this book
Between Power and Irrelevance: The Future of Transnational NGOs
Geopolitical shifts, increasing demands for accountability, and growing competition have been driving the need for change within transnational nongovernmental organizations (TNGOs). As the world has changed and TNGOs' ambitions have expanded, the roles of TNGOs have shifted and their work has become more complex. To remain effective, legitimate, and relevant in the future necessitates organizational changes, but many TNGOs have been slow to adapt. As a result, the sector's rhetoric of sustainable impact and social transformation has far outpaced the reality of TNGOs' more limited abilities to deliver on their promises.
Between Power and Irrelevance openly explores why this gap between rhetoric and reality exists and what TNGOs can do individually and collectively to close it. George E. Mitchell, Hans Peter Schmitz, and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken argue that TNGOs need to change the fundamental conditions under which they operate by bringing their own "forms and norms" into better alignment with their ambitions and strategies. This book offers accessible, future-oriented analyses and lessons-learned to assist practitioners and other stakeholders in formulating and implementing organizational changes. Drawing upon a variety of perspectives, including hundreds of interviews with TNGO leaders, firsthand involvement in major organizational change processes in leading TNGOs, and numerous workshops, training institutes, consultancies, and research projects, the book examines how to adapt TNGOs for the future.
Between Power and Irrelevance openly explores why this gap between rhetoric and reality exists and what TNGOs can do individually and collectively to close it. George E. Mitchell, Hans Peter Schmitz, and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken argue that TNGOs need to change the fundamental conditions under which they operate by bringing their own "forms and norms" into better alignment with their ambitions and strategies. This book offers accessible, future-oriented analyses and lessons-learned to assist practitioners and other stakeholders in formulating and implementing organizational changes. Drawing upon a variety of perspectives, including hundreds of interviews with TNGO leaders, firsthand involvement in major organizational change processes in leading TNGOs, and numerous workshops, training institutes, consultancies, and research projects, the book examines how to adapt TNGOs for the future.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published July 1, 2020
5 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 23, 2021
This book reads as both an adventure novel about the future path of transnational NGOs and a foundational textbook for students of international development. Insightful and well-researched, the book lays bare the tightrope INGOs must walk between being influential and inconsequential.
The authors delve into the history of the sector and how organizations with simple charity missions evolved into a professional sector and began to wield their power and influence to impact larger issues of policy and human rights. They trace the complexity of the systems within which NGOs operate and unveil the uncomfortable truths about their own governance structures, their relationships with national staff, the reality of holding themselves accountable, and the different ways they portray themselves to the public.
Rather than providing pithy proclamations about what the future will hold, the authors take six elements that could play a critical role in NGOs’ futures and examine them in-depth. They don’t promise an answer but provide a discerning examination of how factors such as measurement and accountability, governance, digital technologies, and leadership can play an important role in determining whether transformation will be successful.
Mitchell, Schmitz, and Bruno-van Vijfeijken provide a thorough examination of the possibilities and limitations of transnational NGOs' power and influence and the minefields they must navigate if they want to remain relevant.
The authors delve into the history of the sector and how organizations with simple charity missions evolved into a professional sector and began to wield their power and influence to impact larger issues of policy and human rights. They trace the complexity of the systems within which NGOs operate and unveil the uncomfortable truths about their own governance structures, their relationships with national staff, the reality of holding themselves accountable, and the different ways they portray themselves to the public.
Rather than providing pithy proclamations about what the future will hold, the authors take six elements that could play a critical role in NGOs’ futures and examine them in-depth. They don’t promise an answer but provide a discerning examination of how factors such as measurement and accountability, governance, digital technologies, and leadership can play an important role in determining whether transformation will be successful.
Mitchell, Schmitz, and Bruno-van Vijfeijken provide a thorough examination of the possibilities and limitations of transnational NGOs' power and influence and the minefields they must navigate if they want to remain relevant.
Displaying 1 of 1 review