IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/idsxxx/v41y2010i3p108-117.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Between Pragmatism and Idealism: Implementing a Systemic Approach to Capacity Development

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine Fisher

Abstract

Implementing a systemic approach to capacity development is more challenging than stakeholders expect and can be difficult to communicate to colleagues, donors and intended beneficiaries. This article explores challenges faced by the IDS Knowledge Services as it sought to turn an understanding of capacity development into practice. Drawing on the experience of one small scale programme it argues that: • for organisations to facilitate capacity development, they themselves need to change; • customary understandings of capacity development are an obstacle to effective demand‐led approaches; • promoting critical reflection may be the most sustainable activity for facilitating capacity development. It concludes that the process of translating an understanding of capacity development into practice requires treading a line between pragmatism and idealism. This approach has ethical and practical challenges which capacity development practitioners need to counter by considering the impact that they have on others, by being aware of their own capacity and working to change understandings of capacity development.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Fisher, 2010. "Between Pragmatism and Idealism: Implementing a Systemic Approach to Capacity Development," IDS Bulletin, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(3), pages 108-117, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:idsxxx:v:41:y:2010:i:3:p:108-117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/idsb.2010.41.issue-3
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shames, Seth & Bernier, Quinn & Masiga, Moses, 2013. "Development of a participatory action research approach for four agricultural carbon projects in East Africa," CAPRi working papers 113, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:idsxxx:v:41:y:2010:i:3:p:108-117. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0265-5012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.