The Bretton Woods Institutions and the Environment: Organizational Learning within the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Abstract

Due to a growing public awareness, in the last 40 years environmental impacts of development projects financed and supported by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have come into view. Since then, the member states have pressured both organizations to implement environmental concerns. We analyze the reactions of the World Bank and the IMF's bureaucracies towards their principals' demands. To reveal if, and to what extent, the observed reactions of both bureaucracies towards environmental integration can be assessed as organizational learning, we develop in a first step a heuristic model that allows for a distinction between different levels of learning (compliant and non-compliant, single-loop and double-loop). In a second step we describe the efforts of the bureaucracies of the World Bank (from the 1970s until today) and the IMF (from the 1990s until today) to integrate environmental protection into their activities. Due to our interest in the quality of the organizational changes, we finally analyze if and to what extent the bureaucracies' reactions to the new external demand qualify as organizational learning. Furthermore, we discuss which factors helped or hindered organizational learning.

Learning in Lending: The World Bank’s Organisational Learning Journey in Albanian Health Financing Reform Projects, 1994–2022

“…It also sheds light on an under-researched country, Albania, within this context (Druga, 2022). Moreover, the study advances our understanding of organisational learning in IOs, an area underexplored in existing literature (Lindenthal & Koch, 2013;Koch, 2015). Notably, it empirically illustrates IOs' challenges in balancing standardised approaches and customisation, particularly in operational knowledge (rather than policy recommendations).…”

“…In contrast, another group of studies informing this study examines the WB's organisational learning processes by applying management concepts to IR literature. Notable examples include Lindenthal and Koch's (2013) investigation into forty years of WBfinanced development projects, exploring the role of organisational learning in environmental protection, and Siebenhüner's (2008) study on how the WB's deliberate reflection and learning led to a fundamental re-evaluation of strategies related to environmental issues. This article builds upon and synthesises insights from this perspective, aiming to contribute to understanding organisational learning at the operational level -specifically lending activities -in the context of a different policy area, health.…”