International Development Aid: A Complex System

Microfinance Programme Sustainability Analysis Using a Complex System Approach

“…The complexity of a project is measured by its interdependency and differentiation (Baccarini 1996). The humanitarian aid community is an open, complex and adaptive system (Seybolt 2009) involving multiple organisations, issues, relationships and motivations (Wu 2016). The complexity of a development project is determined by interrelated aspects, namely the nature of the intervention, stakeholders and institutions, causality and change, and the embeddedness and nature of the system (Raimondo et al 2015).…”

“…Their environment is unique and surrounded by economic, social, political, legal, cultural and geographic separation among actors (Hermano et al 2013;Ika & Donnelly 2017). Additionally, the project demonstrates the characteristics of a complex system including nonlinearity, connectedness, self-adaptation/selforganisation and emergence (Wu 2016). Sustainability from a system perspective is 'the ability of systems to persist, adapt, transform or transition in the face of constantly changing conditions' (Williams et al 2017), which results from dynamic and long-term maintenance of the system's identity amid constant change (Gallopin 2003).…”

Post‐project sustainability evaluation by using a complex systems approach: A framework and an application to a revolving loan fund (microfinance) project in Indonesia

“…IDP is defined as public sector projects or programmes that are usually financed by a donor to deal with social and economic needs of developing countries (Ahsan & Gunawan, 2010). While aid projects address emergency and short‐term issues, International Development (ID) projects deal with a more stable context to support a longer development process (Golini & Landoni, 2014; Wu, 2016); however, recently, the distinction between the two becomes lessen (Wu, 2016).…”

“…IDPs are complex and characterized by high transaction costs (Ika et al, 2020). Wu (2016) stated ID projects present four characteristics of a complex system, namely, non‐linearity, connectedness, self‐adapting and self‐organizing and emergence. Bamberger et al (2015) revealed the complexity of international intervention is determined by interactions among four aspects: the nature of interventions, institutions and stakeholders, causality and change, the nature of the system and embeddedness and the evaluation process.…”