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Action Research?

From January to June of last year (2009) as I was putting together my research outline for my PhD fieldwork I came across the concept of action-research. I have to admit that at that point I was relatively new even to the concept of "research", in that I had never really internalized how research exists as an intentional knowledge-generation process. In my master's degree program several years ago I had the standard quantitative research methods class and I had to write multiple papers—usually from a list of books, or a topic that a professor had provided for me in a syllabus—but I never conceived of what I was doing as a form of research. And outside of academia I was as exposed as anyone else to NPR and other news stories that began with "researchers found that…", or "in a survey of 10,000 master's degree students…", but for some reason I didn't "get" what research was all about. Entering into my PhD program I was clear that I wanted to read, study, reflect, write, and yes, generate new knowledge, but how research figured in to all of this was very hazy to me. In future blog posts on this subject I will revisit some of the problematic reasons that I got this far without a better understanding of research (always under the assumption that I was at least an "average" master's degree student—perhaps not the sharpest tool, nor the dullest, but certainly a perfectly good shovel!). But suffice it to say that if my understanding of research was hazy, action research was a completely new concept to me.

Although I lacked a deep understanding of the research side of the AR concept, I had significant experience on the action side of things through my work as an organizational "capacity building" practitioner over the previous ten years or so. In that role I had worked with multiple organizations who were seeking support on intentional change processes, usually meant to improve some organizational process, system, behavior or "capacity". Usually after some process for diagnosing organizational needs we would take action with members of the organization to dig deeper into the problem areas, the underlying factors, and exploring potential ways forward. This work was almost always done in intense 2-3 day participatory workshops in which we combined brainstorming, small group reflection and synthesis exercises, and occasionally the use of participatory techniques such as sociodramas, drawing, and other more creative means of expression and analysis. So I had quite a lot of experience on the action side of things, and since action research almost always starts with a question of the kind, "how can we improve this situation?" (Reason and Bradbury, 2008: 11), it seemed I was halfway to understanding what AR was all about.

But what did we learn from these processes? Beyond diagnosing needs, identifying underlying "causes" and developing action plans to move forward, did we learn anything about how improvement comes about in these organizations, about how they learn and change, or remain the same after the workshops are through? After the cathartic moment of getting multiple key folks together in one place and putting important, often ignored issues on the table, —after so much overwhelming work "in the field"—, what happens next? Did we examine how organizational culture and power relationships often allow us to change just enough in symbolic spaces such as workshops, so that when the workshops are finished things can "get back to" remaining the same? Did we introduce any critical thinking or even theory that might be relevant, and might help us reflect on how we reproduce unhealthy worldviews and behaviors with the people we work with inside and outside of our organization? Did we document key reflections that might be helpful later on, beyond the fully cooked workshop matrices, syntheses, action plans and other outputs that we have to report on?

My answer to these questions is "sometimes, not often enough", and definitely not with an intentional learning focus in mind—neither for the organizations nor the facilitators. So I have helped many organizations address organizational sustainability, financial management, strategic planning and other needs not by helping them learn through the incredible complexity in which they are immersed, but by shot-in-the-arm intense action processes largely devoid of learning and research. I am not suggesting many of these processes were not helpful in some way; I think they often generated important reflection and responded to expectations in many ways. But I do feel that they reinforced a non-critical action culture that most of the organizations and facilitators I know work within, in which the deeper, structural problematic issues around transformational change and one's role in that change are not discussed, and deep organizational assumptions are left unmoved.

This is problematic to me and it relates to a dichotomy that exists in much development practice, which Reeler (2007) frames in terms of "the ungrounded academic versus the unthinking practitioner". The idea is that much academic thinking on development is very critical and important but not grounded in ideas on how to go about doing things differently. On the other hand, much development intervention—often run through projects—lacks spaces and practices of reflection, theorizing and critical thinking. As Smit (2007) frames it, we're too much in the "to do" mode. Action research, with its focus on combining theory and practice, action and reflection, and respecting emergent change, challenges both poles in this dichotomy and invites us to develop new methodologies for intervening in complex change situations that incorporate A/R principles. The idea that this type of research / practice existed heavily resonated with me as I thought about how to go about my own doctoral research. So I dug deeper and made AR the core part of my research methodology and I have also started trying to more intentionally incorporate AR into the classes I teach.

In future blog posts I will go deeper into what is AR to me (and others), how that is playing out in my work and life, and why I think students, organizational change facilitators, development practitioners, and social change organizations in general, should incorporate more AR into their work. As Dreze (2002: 818) notes, "the case for action-based research appears to me to be particularly strong if the aim of the research is to facilitate human advancement and social change". But for now I'll end with a quote by Peter Reason, an author that was particularly helpful to me in understanding "why research?", which I believe is important before assuming that learned research techniques (the "how" of research) might be meaningful to students and practitioners.

The quest for living knowledge is directly connected with working with people in their life situations, working with how people experience their worlds and how we might work together to change them. (Reason, 1996: 19)

References

DREZE, J. 2002. On Research and Action. Economic and Political Weekly, March 2, 2002, 3.

REASON, P. 1996. Reflections on the Purposes of Human Inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 2, 13.

REASON, P. & BRADBURY, H. (eds.) 2008. The Sage Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice, London: Sage.

REELER, D. 2007. A Theory of Social Change and Implications for Practice, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. CDRA.

SMIT, M. 2007. We're Too Much in 'To Do' Mode: Action Research into Supporting International NGOs to Learn (Praxis Paper 16). In: INTRAC (ed.) Praxis Papers. Oxford: INTRAC.

The capacity building / project management echo chamber

[This post is taken from an email I wrote focusing on capacity building of biodiversity conservation organizations]

For the last few years I have worked as an organizational development facilitator as well as coordinator of various 'capacity building' programs, projects and consultancies in Africa and Latin America primarily. I would say that about half of the work I have done has been in the conservation sector, and the rest in other development sectors (obviously, much of this work crosses the somewhat arbitrary lines of sectors). In much of my experience I found myself trying to help organizations strengthen their capacity to manage their project cycles better, from conceptualization, proposal writing and design (often using 'logical' frameworks), to monitoring and evaluation. Organizational sustainability (often narrowly understood as 'we need more money'!) was also frequently a priority theme, as were issues of financial management, organizational governance and other capacity areas. In quite a few cases, either because the organizations (often local partners of larger NGOs) desired it, because their donors 'encouraged' it, or because me and my colleagues explained the merits of it in a spirited and convincing way , organizations decided to take a look at their overall organizational capacity, setting aside a block of time to brainstorm, debate and 'improve' the relationships (read, 'gaps') between actual and ideal capacities in multiple areas of organizational development. This overall look at an organization brought together programmatic areas and support areas, and eventually, usually, ended up in an 'action plan' conspicuously similar to the types of plans the organizations used in their projects and programs.

Over time I started noting three major problems with the premises that much of our strengthening was based on. First the premises or 'assumptions':

1. Projects, usually based on cause and effect logics, are taken as given—as 'making sense'—as the main vehicles through which development interventions should be carried out
   
2. Capacity building increases capacities (in whatever area), which leads to an increase in effectiveness, or performance as some like to call it. The application of this capacity increase is expected to be relatively timely as well; otherwise it can't really be justified within the 'logic' of the time boundaries of a project
   
3. Organizations have the bandwidth to tackle multiple capacities at one time (and it is desirable to do so in the first place)
   

There are some problems with these assumptions, some which I 'felt' or saw as things didn't work as planned, and others that I have picked up as I have been in my PhD process. First, much of the social change (i.e. literally human change in behavior—socioeconomic, socio-environmental, etc.) that most of the organizations I have worked with (and my own at the time) were trying to support was outside their control. In other words, for the long-term behavioral changes that they were pursuing to actually take place, multiple other 'factors and actors' would also need to intervene to generate the conditions needed for change, and those actors and factors were not programmable or controllable by the organization—regardless of how neatly packaged a logframe and project was. But not only were many of the known actors and factors largely outside the control of the project; many of these broader conditions for change were unknowable to start with. From multiple perspectives on what might constitute meaningful change at a micro level, to broader issues of enabling environments, governance, power, culture (even the weather!); the inherent complexity of many change situations rendered them uncontrollable, 'unplannable' (at least in the traditional sense)—'unprojectable' (Reeler, 2007). The objectives, results and indicators could really only be known and defined emergently, along the way, and might get more precise towards the end as a team of people learned in continual execution and redefinition of activities what they couldn't possibly have known going into it. This would obviously require a change in planning mentality—from preplanned to iterative (see Ortiz and Taylor, 2009); from linear (i.e. direct cause and effect) to nonlinear (accepting complexity), from optimization (often in unrealistic logframes) to learning (concept from Checkland, 1985).

Enter capacity building. Organizational change is also a complex endeavor, yet much capacity analysis assumes a similar design to the linear project model. Capacity is thought of as an objectively definable and obtainable 'thing' that can be strengthened through a relatively short process of capacity assessment and action planning. The changes needed, in multiple areas (financial management, leadership, HR, etc.), can be addressed at once and, once gotten onto the annual organizational activities docket, can be sure to be carried out and improve organizational performance. But in practice, 'just as development interventions cannot be thought of to linearly 'cause' development outcomes, capacity strengthening cannot be thought of to linearly 'cause' improved capacities, nor can these capacities be assumed to contribute linearly to social change' (Ortiz, 2010 forthcoming). But much capacity building is implicitly geared towards trying to increase an organization's ability to carry out the project management cycle—from fundraising and proposal writing to execution and M&E. Poor capacity is implicitly understood to be poor ability to generate project funds, design projects, manage projects, and evaluate projects. Or, it is defined as project cycle capacities and organizational management capacities, which can be transferred to any organization in a 'best-practice' framework. 'Every organization needs HR, financial management, leadership, etc., and the business world has been doing that forever', the assumption goes. 'We just need to professionalize organizations a bit by strengthening these broader management capacities, so that they will better support the organization's ability to carry out its technical work (read 'projects')'.

I'm intentionally over-generalizing a bit to make a point, which is that capacity building is often implicitly conceived of as a way of strengthening organizational project cycle and general management capacities, without regard for whether these capacities actually help the organization deal with—make more sense of—the complexity that they face as they try to support meaningful change. By taking the linear project model and worldview as givens, capacity building unwittingly becomes a process that helps organizations increase their ability to use planning instruments, to account for outputs and render accounts in a more 'professional' way, and to structure organizations to be better at this very cycle; even when (in many cases) the complexity of the change that they wish to support is unresponsive to this type of model and thinking. So the problem is often not a project management capacity issue, but a problem of the indiscriminate use of linear planning models (and the worldviews behind this) that don't take into account the inherent complexity of what organizations are trying to do. And missing is capacity building that might actually help an organization take purposeful action as it grapples with complexity.

In response to this, in my research we (two co-action-researchers in Ecuador and Peru and me) are working with (developing) a methodology (tentatively called 'Systemic Theories of Change'—STOC) that tries to better match the way conservation organizations (and other social change organizations) strengthen themselves, with the changes (i.e. impacts) that they are trying to support. It tries to customize capacity development to what a particular organization needs, based on its purposes and a deeper understanding of its complex environment. This is in contrast to more general best practice models that apply the same standard capacity categories to every organization, regardless of their unique circumstances. We believe those models can still be useful as devices for generating debate about certain areas of capacity that most organizations need, but not very helpful in strengthening organizations to confront their particular and unique realities in complex situations. We also think that regardless of the framework(s) used, the process should not assume that the world is simple and controllable; rather that the 'sustainable' human change ideal is complex and often reveals itself along the way (if at all). This requires new ways of seeing the world and planning (and strengthening oneself to do so), which we hope to discover with the organizations we're working with. We are conscious of the pressing realities of immediate problems of funding, or project management, or organizational governance, or human response capacity; but we think that these issues shouldn't be addressed in reference to themselves, but in relation to the change that the organization supports, understood from a non-linear complexity lens (which, by the way, comes to development studies via biology).

What capacities does an organization need in relation to the complex change it wishes to support? We think the answers to this question are not necessarily so straightforward and 'logical', and may demand capacities that are outside of the frameworks that we're used to operating within.

References

CHECKLAND, P. 1985. From Optimizing to Learning: A Development of Systems Thinking for the 1990s. The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 36, 757-767.

ORTIZ, A. & TAYLOR, P. 2009. Learning purposefully in capacity development: Why, what and when to measure? In: IIEP (ed.) Rethinking capacity development. Paris: IDS.

REELER, D. 2007. A Theory of Social Change and Implications for Practice, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. CDRA.

The logframe made me do it

[Note—this was a response I posted to an interesting conversation on complexity and systems thinking on the discussion board 'Pelican Initiative: Platform for Evidence-based Learning & Communications for Social Change'--
http://dgroups.org/groups/pelican. See http://dgroups.org/ViewDiscussion.aspx?c=3c4b8b5b-d151-4c38-9e7b-7a8a1a456f20&i=277c1aeb-1993-4b61-a84f-c24a19d68d88; and http://dgroups.org/ViewDiscussion.aspx?c=3c4b8b5b-d151-4c38-9e7b-7a8a1a456f20&i=0b9ba608-cf2a-403b-afc2-85a2d4bea34a; for the full discussion.]

I'm currently carrying out my PhD fieldwork with three organizations and Peru and Ecuador. One of the Peruvian organizations is trying to figure out how to offer meaningful, 'empowering' support to individuals and organizations working in community development in an economically-depressed area on the limits of Lima (literally on the edge of chaos!). The possible entry points are numerous, the available resources are limited, and there are multiple organizations (public and private, formal and informal, legal and illegal, etc.), individuals, and 'enabling' or un-enabling conditions and factors in play at all times. Any changes that come about over time—in people's attitudes, capacities, family life, job situation, material resources, etc.—are influenced by so many factors that even 'emergence' becomes too precise a term for describing things. The complexity situation is similar in Ecuador, with a biodiversity conservation organization that owns a 12,000-hectare private reserve in the afro-Ecuadorian northwest region of the country, where most people generally have little or no land and eke out a subsistence living by working for large landholders in the banana and African palm industries. In the middle of the denuded countryside is this private reserve, standing out like an island oasis—unconquered territory for mining, logging and other human activity. The reserve is important biologically, and in contrast to the surrounding destruction, is something that many feel is worth conserving. But there are so many factors that are not only complex (as a general explanation) but inherently irreconcilable, and a major part of the development 'agenda' is figuring out the balances that are feasible and possible in a macro setting that has tended to yield lose-lose alternatives for the majority of the people, and the environment in the process.

Leaving aside the ubiquitous monocrop-solution of the project model for a moment, each of these organizations has to figure out 'what' to do as an overall organizational offering or response in their respective situations—i.e. what should our organizations' strategy be in these realities? To qualify a bit, this example is obviously not the road-building project that Bob mentioned, with its well funded team, resources and enabling environment that allow it to define the goals from the outset, and bring massive resources to bear on constructing that most people would agree to call 'road' or 'bridge' once complete. They have their complexities, but the risk column of their logframe is tied to a budget that virtually guarantees that the project is not going to fail. The amount of resources that goes into developing the risk column itself is substantial—engineers actually take learning about assumptions and risk analysis serious. And chances are, even though goals are clear, they use talented project managers that adapt their approach as complexities hit them in the face (I have a friend who is a project engineer in a large civil engineering firm and he understands complexity intuitively and practically because he's paid to do so.). But the bridge or road is not the human and ecosystemic changes needed in my two cases at least, so I am happy to dismiss the logframe possibility (or its multiple equivalents) with regards to helping each organization make sense out of what to do.

Now that I have joined the kicking-the-logframe tooth-fairy club (thanks Ben), my point. The logframe is a convenient 'object' of 'our' attack because it so visibly reminds us of the things we know or feel are questionable about development intervention and the rules and incentives that support development intervention—from design to evaluation, and the things that happen outside of that logic as well. Speaking of cause and effect, the logframe didn't cause anyone to offer a linear response to complex situations; our desire or at least willingness to use it did. Our often well-intentioned yet linear, or expedient, or heroic, business efficiency-oriented, positivist, Western, aid-industry, etc. ways of seeing the world have more to do with our predisposition or susceptibility to simple cause and effect thinking, I think, than any logframe does. Take the logframe away and, in many cases, you don't remove the tendency towards linear worldviews that were behind it. And you certainly don't do anything to change the incentives structures that support this worldview. For example, why is it that the organizations I'm working with now, and the ones I've worked with in the past, even when they are faced with obvious complexity every day, choose to use the 'project model' to implement their work—even when they have unrestricted funds that would have allowed them to do things differently (not always, but often)? And why does anyone who studies complexity theory seem to 'get it' and start nodding their heads as to how it explains so many things, but still not fundamentally alter the way we work, even as we say that complexity implies 'fundamental shifts in thinking and practice'? I'm not talking about the creative attempts—some successful— to do things differently, but the things many of us end up doing most of the time as we respond to TORs or organizational demands, or donor wishes.

We may use logframe thinking sometimes because of lack of better tools, or because 'the donors compelled us', but not most of the time. The other explanations, I believe, have more to do with our own complex worldviews, the incentive structures of much development work, and the 'predispositions' (i.e. habitus) that condition us all in the different fields and subfields we operate in as we try to offer meaningful responses to complex change (or as Bourdieu might say, as we struggle for distinction in the fields we belong to. In this sense, knowledge of linear programming tools is clearly highly valued symbolic capital in the development industry). So my final point is that whether the interventions need to be simple or complex I think that in general we need to generate more critical thought to grapple with complexity, not to be able to master it, but to act purposefully within it (ala Checkland, Burns and others). The frames of reference from which we approach change need to be shaken up and examined, continually. Time needs to be spent in development interventions and organizational change processes on 'complejizando'—literally reflecting on multiple complexities in order to 'concientizarnos' about different ways of seeing and reacting to the world. A simple solution may emerge, but the process may be just as important as the solution.

On my way back from airport today, my suegra (mother-in-law) exclaimed as she yawned, 'el sol me dio sueño' (the sun made me sleepy). Certainly that must be part of the story.

Debating complexity and theories of change connections

(This post is a cross post from a class blog for a class I teach)

I just read an interesting article on complexity by Alan Fowler, 'Connecting the Dots'. I encourage you to read it, along with the response by Chris Mowles at the bottom of the article, and the summary of the debate called 'Debating Complexity'. These give a good overview of some of the key issues surrounding complexity thinking, and if you read them in conjunction with the Snowden, Eyben et al, my research proposal, and the ECDPM articles I think you'll get a good dose of this stuff. I would also encourage you to read the Mowles et al article in my bibliography. If you don't have access to it through the MIIS online journals let me know. The Mowles et al article is a longer version of his criticism of the Fowler article, but in an earlier blog post of mine I 'observed' similar language from Mowles himself (if interested, see the second to the last paragraph of this blog post).

The Fowler article has a lot of relevance to theories of change, and I think has some good general ideas on complexity. On TOC he starts off the article with the assumption 'The function of international development work is to accelerate and guide change in societies'. That's a big generalization--what do you guys think the purpose of int'l development work is? Also on TOC, I found it interesting how he broke down the major worldviews on development by Sachs, Collier and Easterly. What was really interesting to me wasn't that such major thinkers, with many adherents around the world, have different understandings about development--that's probably even a healthy thing. Rather, I found it interesting to see them side by side, and wondered how many adherents of each explore the others' points of view. This goes back to the archetypes framework from the Eyben article, which shows how divergent some of this thinking can be, although its adherents often assume it to be true.



(Recreated from Eyben et al, 2008, Thinking about change for development practice: a case study from Oxfam GB, Development in Practice)

The article has some good language on development conditions under the subsection 'Re-framing Perspectives', which I think you'll be able to spot.

I did find his language to be a bit deterministic, even as he notes the strong linear tendencies of these three major development thinkers.

I could say more, but probably should leave further interpretation up to you. Anyway, I recommend the short reading--which I find overall a good complexity intro article, and at the same time share the criticisms leveled by Mowles. Enjoy.

Adding in some 'personal transformation' to my previous post

Building on some recent reflections of my co-researcher Juan Carlos Giles, which include a challenge to analyze the extent to which we take personal transformation and identity into account when we think about developing the capacities of ‘others’, I offer the following modification to the question at the bottom of my previous post:

To what extent do the management practices and systems of social change organizations take into account the complexity (external and internal) of the social change they aim to support, and the identities and personal transformation of the people who put these systems and practices to use?

I think this is important because of some reflections I've been having on my own motivations for supporting social change, as well as the multiple motivations that different people have for desiring, or not, social change prescriptions from outside. The more I reflect on this the more I feel I need to rethink the way I approach capacity development work in general. Also—in addition to human motivations for change—the implications of the broader situational complexity behind any significant change (i.e. multiple hidden and visible factors, relationships, conditions, etc.), make me really question the logic and philosophy behind some traditional capacity development thinking and methods.

One of the exciting things for me is the potential I see in learning based methods for capacity development. An example could be participatory action research not ‘into’ capacity development, but as capacity development. With these methods it’s OK to ask questions and assume that we don’t know the answers going in (i.e., we can assume that there is not already an existing best practice—waiting to be discovered—that can be applied in each case). This kind of approach can support more emergent CD processes that take into account where the individuals that call themselves ‘organization’ have come from and how that affects where they see themselves going, both individually and collectively (as well as what key stakeholders outside the organization have to say about that). It can also take into account local realities, which are situational, emergent, and potentially ill-suited to homogenizing best practice management models.

Brainstorming on the general applicability of management ‘best practice’ to social change organizations

• I would start from the premise that, although social change organizations can learn certainly from 'business-like practices', it might be helpful to first understand the premises and worldviews that underlie these practices and systems before trying to adopt them as a 'best' practice. The NGO I worked with for 9 years, (and many other grants management NGOs), promotes financial management 'best practice' with its grantees, which essentially means 'solid, professional, transparent, efficient, etc.' financial management systems that are mostly geared towards rendering accounts to donors. That might be OK if, in the process, internal users of financial information (e.g. what financial information does any individual or team need to be better informed and make better decisions), and internal users of financial services (e.g. things such as getting paid, or requesting an advance, etc.), were taken into account as part of the design of 'best practice' systems. I feel that internal needs and downward accountability needs are often not addresses in these 'best practice' systems.
  
• I think there is a big difference between the 'best practice' systems that are promoted within the development industry and best practices in the private sector, usually because (in my opinion) the tools, models and practices in many development NGOs represent very dated (and a tiny selection of what is actually out there) private sector best practice. Human resource management is an area, for example, where private sector practices and HR theory are light years ahead of what most of the NGOs I've worked with are using. Issues of job design, extrinsic (theory X) versus intrinsic (theory Y) rewards and sticks, and even issues of shared identity have been debated for 30-40 years, yet most of the NGOs I have worked with have administrative focused HR systems that don't do much for developing shared vision and co-construction of organizational and individual identity.
  
• I think we can learn a lot from systemic thinking and its philosophy in this area. Many best practice management systems assume that there are objectively definable problems and issues for which 'hard' systems can be engineered to solve—project management best practice is an example. In my research I am using Checkland's soft systems theory to rethink systems and the worldviews that underlie them. A log frame is a classic example of a management best practice hard system that might be useful for designing a bridge, but, with its linear design towards predefined 'objectives', it often ignores the emergent, unpredictable nature of 'soft' human challenges and development, for which there is no one right, objective answer (and even if there was, it couldn't be known far in advance).
  
• There are also the critical and emancipatory systemic thinking traditions that offer even deeper critiques of management systems, their worldviews and their boundaries. Related, but not from the systemic tradition is critical management studies (CMS) movement, which has some really good critiques of blind application of management best practice, although some of the authors seem to find a conspiracy of world domination in everything they see J
  
• Local theory and organizational learning—I am interested in creating local, organization level organizational theory and systems, and then enrich them with good external thinking if relevant, but not start from the outside. There is a lot here to be explored.
  
• I recently used Wordle (an online tool for creating 'weighted' word diagrams based on any selection of text) to create the two images below. The first came out of an organizational self-assessment facilitated (by my previous NGO team Ecuador) in 2003 with three Ecuadorian indigenous federations on the capacities that they perceived as important for their own organizational effectiveness. The second diagram is a Wordle of the McKinsey best practices model for nonprofit capacity. The question I would ask is if the McKinsey model applicable as standard best practice in this particular situation? I don't see how it can be. I believe that organizational management is situational (based on local realities, including the broader context) and emergent. McKinsey (and multiple other best practice models), in my opinion, assumes management is static and pre-definable. This is a clash of worldviews/philosophy, which needs to be addressed at that level as well.
  

Figure 1--Indigenous federations' 'rough' capacity development worldviews

Figure 2--McKinsey nonprofit 'rough' capacity development worldviews

• A research question that goes directly to the management side of things (my own research question is more on a strategic and methodological level) might be:
  

  To what extent do the management practices and systems of social change organizations take into account the complexity (external and internal) of the social change they aim to support, and the identities of the people who would put these systems and practices to use?