The road to adaptive management: knowledge, leadership, culture and rules

“Adaptive Management” starts with the recognition that the context of any programme or initiative that pursues systemic change is difficult to understand, in the first place, and changes frequently (and should if the project is making a difference). Therefore, at the very least programme staff should be ready to react to new information in their efforts to become more effective. At the most, adaptive management calls for programmes that use a systemic approach to take an additional leap into embracing a purposefully experimental, hypothesis-based approach. “Adaptive Programming” is then a description of a project that is using adaptive management approaches successfully.

This study examines the incentives and constraints to adaptive programming across the donor implementer relationship – and how the behaviour that results influences market systems programming. There is some agreement that flexible and adaptive management, throughout the programme cycle and in the financial and operational management of implementation, is essential for programme effectiveness. Yet for a wide variety of reasons, most organisations have far to go to reach this adaptive ideal in any comprehensive manner. We hope this study will provide a catalyst for an open discussion of the many challenges to adaptive management, point toward innovations in programme design and management that are useful, and provide examples of emerging good practices.