Pragmatic Bureaucracy: An Antidote to Obsessive Measurement Disorder?

Judgment and Experiential Knowledge

In Chapter 2, we discussed sensemaking as a core process of uncertainty reduction. When seeking answers to our research question of whether and why OMD is experienced or not in this daily toil of aid bureaucrats, we conclude that those answers are highly dependent on whether they are able to make sense of the formal regulations and oversight and whether they can find ways to interact with the rules in a meaningful way. Another key to pragmatic bureaucracy is the willingness and practical opportunity to develop not only one's professional judgment but also the courage to use it.

In his essay, Ahrne (1993) uses the metaphor of the organizational centaur (part human, part organization) to make the point that what an employee wins in access to resources and opportunities within the realm of an organization is at the same time lost in terms of individual independence. There typically remains some room for one's own sensemaking and professional judgment of how to act in a given role and situation (Goffman, 1968, 1972), however, and hence the metaphor of the centaur. Previous research tells us that even in highly institutionalized and highly regulated fields of operation, decision-makers can apply professional judgment and possess a broad repertoire of responses to institutional pressure, including ways to flexibly adjust or even ignore some rules and performance measurement requirements (see e.g. Alexius, 2007; Eyben, 2010; Oliver, 1991; Vähämäki, 2017). As an illustration of the “aid centaur,” several of our informants talked about the situation when, in 2017, Sida adjusted its Trac system and took the decision to ease requirements and formally allow individual program officer to exercise more flexibility and judgment. We found that many program officers handled this novel freedom with caution or even hesitation, which to us indicates that, when regulations are eased, some form of compensation must occur, and not all aid bureaucrats have these professional compensating competencies.

A pragmatic bureaucrat is typically someone who is not new to this complex field of operations and been around long enough to have seen different “waves of reform” come and go and different management methods being tried out. Long enough also to have had ample opportunity to develop sound professional judgment from this rich and varied experience, and who, through this tacit experiential knowledge, has come to the lived conclusion that one cannot fully rely on rules or formal steering if one wishes to make good things happen on the ground in development aid projects. In fact, if one was to attempt to remove all uncertainties and handle everything by the book, very few aid projects would be up and running at all. Thus, a pragmatic bureaucrat realizes that not only does it take tacit knowledge, imagination, and improvisation to find workable and ethically defendable paths forward, it also takes courage, and yes, some degree of risk-taking, to apply those mental resources to intervene when important projects risk getting stuck in red tape. This means that rather than placing trust only in impersonal sources of trust such as management technologies, it is also placed in individuals and context-specific conditions. To compensate for tendencies toward rule-following fundamentalism, pragmatic bureaucrats are mindful about broadening their portfolio of work approaches. And although vulnerable, when experience tells them it is necessary, they dare to be open to both unwritten and unspoken rules and to engage personally in the creative process of “rule-bending” (Jassey, 2013) in order to make the right decision.

Rule-Bending Closet Relationists

As described in Chapter 7 and in previous literature on the professional, everyday life of aid bureaucrats, brokering skills are heavily used in development aid practice (Cornwall et al., 2007; Eyben, 2010; Jassey, 2013). In an official text regarding bureaucracy at Sida, a Sida aid bureaucrat wrote about the “unspoken rules of the game” in the following way (Jassey, 2013, p. 133):

At Sida, there is often talk about a tacit “Sida knowledge” – a knowledge that you can’t gain from reading manuals or even talking to others, only through years and years of actual work. This is experiential knowledge in its finest form. And a lot of this knowledge is about how to bend the rules. Maybe more importantly, though, part of “being in the know” is to know how and when the real decisions are made. It is a knowledge that makes it possible for a Sida desk officer to create the flexibility and risk-taking that is required in development work. And, quite possibly, our whole system would come to a standstill if that knowledge didn’t exist.

The cited passage exemplifies that, according to this aid bureaucrat, effective aid bureaucrats are not those that follow rules and procedures to the letter but those who acquire their intention and meaning and then apply this tacit “Sida knowledge,” to bend the rules responsibly (rules stipulated in handbooks, for example). The citation also exemplifies how it takes years of actual work to gain such knowledge and thus that it is typically the most experienced bureaucrats who possess this type of knowledge. Another text describing aid bureaucracy follows the theme of the “Beast of Bureaucracy,” and the make-believe Nordic development aid organization Valhalla (Cornwall et al., 2007) tells the story of how the imaginary “Lagom” project (Swedish for “just enough”) was tried to test the rules of bureaucracy. The authors of that text argue, in line with Weber's own critique of bureaucracy, that the “unwritten rules” were critical in order to maintain a balance that would enable creativity and learning:

Lagom had worked on an assumption of uniformity and a need for formality. Yet everything we’d learnt about Valhalla told us of an organisation in which individuality was prized, in which unwritten rules accompanied the creative process of rule-bending to get around a formidable and cumbersome bureaucratic system, and in which communication (and much of what would be thought of as “organisational learning”) happens through informal, often barely visible, networks and interactions.

(Cornwall et al., 2007, p. 58)

This citation also exemplifies the importance of informal networks and personal relations in learning the norms and practices of rule-bending (see also Alexius, 2007, 2017). Some of this learning takes place openly as part of the routines for becoming socializing as a professional aid bureaucrat. As discussed in Chapter 3, there have been times when it has been considered fully legitimate and responsible to decouple completely from what the bureaucrat thinks are ill-fitting rules. However, in our empirical material, we have seen that, lately, with the increased fear of corruption and nepotism and skepticism of close, informal relations, it is no longer legitimate to openly ignore counterproductive rules and regulations (see Chapter 1). According to Eyben (2012), this development has put pressure on aid bureaucrats to become “closet relationists,” meaning that they have now had to learn how to “hide” valuable input from informal relations behind a rhetoric that contains the proper verse on distant accountability and RBM.

In Chapter 4, we discussed the approximation practices needed to make sense of the world in which development aid operates. Pragmatic bureaucrats are aware that ascertaining exactly what aid funds lead to what results remains a “mission impossible,” i.e., it is often simply not possible to explain which money from which donor led to which results. So, although proxies can never provide the real, complete picture of the world, pragmatic bureaucrats do their best to track down and translate results from complex realities. To do so, they rely not only on reporting opportunities and formal meetings but take every opportunity to interact with partners whenever and wherever possible, including in the field. As discussed in Chapter 7, during a field visit, an officer from the Swedish Chemical Agency realized what the impact of a project had been and used that insight to support the partner organization to also report on the impact. Similarly, an officer from the Kommunal union told us that she always tells her recipient representatives to not be afraid to be honest about what is working and what isn't since “we need to ensure that we talk about difficult things and mistakes so that it all turns out good in the end.”

A pragmatic bureaucrat is one who learns and uses information from their role-switching for brokering purposes, as is also illustrated in the examples given in Chapter 5 where the Sida bureaucrat uses her experience via “double membership,” i.e., experience gained from working in the private sector and experience gained when now working in the aid donor role. Needless to say, learning about the particular contexts in which the aid projects operate requires willingness and engagement. And, in practice, this often entails extensive traveling, like the bureaucrat from Kommunal who clocked 135 travel days a year, and maintaining a continuous informal dialogue with partners (see Chapter 7). In following with this finding, in all of our case studies, aid bureaucrats in the recipient role have noted good personal relations with aid bureaucrats who represent the organization in the donor role as a success factor for aid projects. In the highly complex and uncertain world of development cooperation, some researchers even claim that interpersonal trust is the “glue” that holds the complex relations together (see also Eyben, 2010; McGillivray et al., 2012; Pomerantz, 2004; Swedlund, 2017). But, as discussed in Chapter 4, this is clearly a sensitive issue.

In line with previous findings (Eyben, 2010), we have found a tendency, particularly among aid bureaucrats that represent the organization in the donor role, to downplay or even hide (at least officially) interpersonal relations and their role in governance. When asked how they cope with uncertainty, aid bureaucrats in a donor role seldom mention key individuals as sources of trust. As mentioned above, they may even feel the need to act as “closet relationists” due to the risk of critique for acting overly pragmatic. We therefore suggest that this hesitation of those in the donor role both to mention and to actually lean on personal relations stems from legitimacy concerns and, more specifically, from the risk for scams such as corruption or nepotism, the dreaded extremes of pragmatism. It is true that the large distances, many parties involved, long-term investments, different cultures, and complex dependencies that characterize the field make it difficult for aid organizations to demonstrate that the funding is useful (Korsgaard et al., 2015). But there are other factors. A specific fear of corruption and nepotism, and a general fear of media scandals related to taxpayers' money being used unwisely, also present aid bureaucrats with a challenge: the need to place trust in situations where the conditions for and acceptance of interpersonal trust are poor or uncertain.

Just like bureaucracy, pragmatism has serious downsides that must be avoided. One such downside that has proven to be very sensitive for the aid officials in our study – hyper pragmatism – is an extreme that can be described as a state of laissez-faire or a “hands-off” approach, where people are left to do whatever they choose. As discussed in Chapter 4, openly relying on interpersonal relations is seen as a vulnerable, risky approach that blurs formal accountability and casts a shadow over the principle of equal treatment. In Alexius and Vähämäki (2020), we illustrated this with a case where a Sida manager dared, without fully trusting either the organization or its representatives, to take the risk of letting the organization develop a funding proposal. The said bureaucrat was benevolent and aware of the risk taken, and the entire cooperation could have ended in distress and no results. However, in this case, the action was successful and led to a project that is still up and running, at the time of writing. Again, this speaks to the importance of taking risks and daring to trust, despite not having full control of the outcome from the outset (see Chapter 4 and Alexius & Vähämäki, 2020).

Going the Extra Mile on the Responsibility Radius

As discussed above, a small group of aid bureaucrats care mainly about compliance with regulations for legitimacy reasons, be this their own legitimacy as aid bureaucrats or donors, or the legitimacy of the project, their organization or the entire aid system. As discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, they have learned that, in the face of great uncertainty, trust can legitimately be transferred from bureaucratic sources (such as rules and measurements, as well as general organizational structures and processes and a range of management tools and technologies such as quality standards and project management methods). By way of such legitimizing ceremonies, an aid bureaucrat in the donor role can help make an organization in the recipient role more trustworthy (Alexius & Vähämäki, 2020). However, as we have seen throughout the chapters of this volume, many aid bureaucrats today are preoccupied with the how of organizing, that is, with the setting up of proper rational and legal structures, technologies, and processes, preferably already in advance of decision-making.

Considering that interpersonal relations may indeed be essential for the achievement of development results (McGillivray et al., 2012), it is fair to ask: What happens if aid bureaucrats come, solely or mostly, to trust and care about legitimizing ceremonies and proxies? Some justify this distanced position with reference to the ancient bureaucratic ideal of sine ira et studio (without hatred or passion) that calls for bureaucrats to keep their professional distance and not get personally involved (du Gay, 2000, 2005). Bureaucrats that reason in this way can come across as somewhat cynical, preoccupied as they are with ticking the right boxes in order to simply do what is expected of them and their organization (see Chapter 5). However, the majority of the aid bureaucrats we have encountered are not content with this position as they think and feel in their hearts that, considering the crucial missions of development aid, ticking the right boxes does not satisfy their goal of doing good, and certainly not when they know from their own experience that the strict following of rules and procedures was not enough – or may even have been counterproductive to good results on the ground. As one of our informants self-reflexively observed:

I realize that we’ve become completely occupied with all these proxies and indicators…. But whatever happened to poverty??

Pragmatic bureaucrats are hence prepared to go against the ideal of formal compliance when they find it meaningless with respect to their partners' well-being and project aims (Hupe, 2019) or in order to compensate for “damage” already done by a strict following of the rules. In this process of gaining and applying their own professional judgment in decision-making, the bureaucrats themselves may feel torn between obedience and compassion (Belabas & Gerrits, 2017) but in the end choose to act in the way that they find most meaningful and possible to justify.

As illustrated in Fig. 7, pragmatic bureaucrats often do much more than formally required. They are not only aware of the need but also willing to “go the extra mile” on the personal “responsibility radius” that stretches from the risk-averse, rule-praising hyper bureaucrat's position, with a minimum of personal risk-taking, to positions where the bureaucrat exercises increasingly more pragmatism and personal responsibility for taking the correct decisions.

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Fig. 7.

The Responsibility Radius: From Hyper Bureaucracy to Pragmatic Bureaucracy.

Often this requires a wider time span. In order to understand what will happen in the longer run, long after a project decision has been made and the funds have been allocated, pragmatic bureaucrats must also look back and not only to results from their own projects but also to other aid interventions from different contexts, to learn and understand what worked and what didn't. The uncertainties related to the frequent mismatch of temporalities in development aid were discussed in Chapter 4. There, we used the example of Bai Bang to illustrate that key results from an aid intervention are sometimes only visible decades after a project has formally ended. The noted example of the Dukoral vaccine shows, in addition, that results are seldom attributable only to single donors but are more often the result of several donors and several different types of support. Pragmatic bureaucrats are interested in both the wider set of results dating back in time and joint results achieved in the wider system, and use this insight to legitimize and make sense of contemporary actions as well as possible future results.

A pragmatic bureaucrat is also one who not only listens to and learns from key partners but who also considers different types and sources of information, research findings, etc., in an aim to better understand the aid context and to make better decisions. Often this requires that they work with and learn from practices and activities other than the ordinary project-reporting documentation and ordinary project meetings. As one of our informants stated:

We continuously try to participate in activities they arrange even though a lot of what they do is not within our core competence and something we know anything about… We try to participate as much as possible and see what they do in reality. Not just to request reports.

Needless to say, engaging like this and caring about the project and their partners typically takes additional time. But it may also be the case that, in the long run, these practices actually free up time and capacities, thanks to the fostering of a trustful donor–recipient relationship (Alexius & Vähämäki, 2020). As described in Chapter 7, pragmatic bureaucrats are like “spiders in the web” who, if working in aid organizations in the donor role, must deal with a “web of external experts” and colleagues to comply with their task. The pragmatic bureaucrat then has the professional judgment to determine what competencies are needed and when and knows that contracting a certain type of external expert is sometimes required to reduce uncertainty (Chapter 6). Rather than assuming that “this is the way it should be,” they dare to be vulnerable. When they pose the open question “How will this land?,” they are prepared to really listen to the replies. The pragmatic bureaucrat thus typically acts as a generalist and knows a little about a lot of tasks and areas of expertise (administration and procurement rules, different thematic fields, how to handle aid projects and help desks, etc.). In essence, as described by one of our informants in Chapter 6, pragmatic bureaucrats use all of this knowledge and their judgment to “make the system work for you.”

Pragmatic bureaucrats can be found all over the aid net. In Chapter 7, we discussed the two different approaches of two consultancy companies (AIMS and Niras), where the first was stuck on promoting a certain technology whereas the other was foremost interested in asking “how” the approach would land and who would take responsibility for balancing the different professional interests. The latter approach required a lot of courage and embracing of uncertainty.

Main Conclusions

First of all, we conclude that OMD is not an objectively verifiable state but an individual experience of perceived overregulation (of, e.g., a project, organization, interorganizational relationship, or larger system). What matters to this experience is the way in which different rules and regulations and measurement schemes are developed, communicated, and used by the parties in a relationship (e.g., in the relationship between bureaucrats who represent an organization in the donor role and bureaucrats who represent an organization in the recipient role). As discussed in the Methods appendix, and as concluded in previous research (Eyben, 2010; Vähämäki, 2017), it is important to study what happens at the micro level in aid organizations where regulations are crafted and responded to. When conducting these studies, and talking to many bureaucrats about their individual experiences of bureaucracy, more nuance emerges, allowing us to conclude that it is not the amount of regulations per se that leads some people in the aid system to experience OMD.

As shown in the cases in this volume and as discussed in the Methods appendix, we have identified a variation in terms of how bureaucrats and their organizations experience the same type and amount of regulation. This leads us to conclude that we cannot only use measurements to understand the effects of measurements; we need to look beyond the measurements to study the organizational cultures and societal institutions in which they are embedded. In contrast to the typical (and, if we may say so, rather loose-fitting) assumption that reducing control technologies and measurements will automatically lead to more trust and innovation, we have found that more important than the amount of these control measures is how they are introduced, communicated, and motivated. The worst cases and highest risks of experiencing OMD are seen in situations where a bureaucrat stops caring and taking responsibility for how bureaucracy and measurements affect the parties involved.

Another individual factor we have seen that may contribute to persons having a greater tendency to act as hyper bureaucrats is a lack of awareness that control and measurements systems can cause counterproductive effects. The root cause for this unawareness can naturally be a simple lack of experience. But often, linked to this lack of experience, we find fear, which can lead to tunnel vision and a fixation on measurements at the expense of more unquantifiable aspects of performance and the need for context-specific adjustments (Smith, 1995; Vähämäki & Verger, 2019). This can be a fear of losing control or losing one's job or an unrealistic belief in the role counting and measurements play when it comes to solving development problems. Also, some people are just more prone to becoming preoccupied and excited about the technical and logical schemes of measurements and matrices than others, and when they spend increasing amounts of time collecting data and monitoring their activities, there is a risk of crowding out core activities in the field (see also Chambers, 2010; Forssell & Ivarsson Westerberg, 2014; Patton, 2010; Thiel & Leeuw, 2002).

Yet another identified risk factor is meaninglessness. Somewhat surprising to us, most aid bureaucrats we encountered are open to various interpretations of meaning. Bureaucracy could be introduced as a well-intended means to increase efficiency and good results, but it could also be introduced in an attempt to enhance legitimacy in the face of external criticism and suspicion, or simply as a handy proxy for the effects that have a tendency to show up long after a project is formally finished and assessed (see Chapter 4 on the mismatching of temporalities). We thus conclude that how a particular control technology will be perceived depends on the circumstances and, not least, on whether aid bureaucrats (and other people in the system) have the knowledge, imagination, and motivation to make sense of the regulation.

As demonstrated by psychological research and research on the human brain, sensemaking helps us cope with uncertainty as it lowers our levels of anxiety, which in turn calms the mind and allows us to think wisely and see the bigger picture (Kåver, 2004). As a comparison, people who suffer from OCD are most often aware of their obsessions (Smith & Segal, 2018). Despite this awareness, however, they often continue with their obsessive behaviors. Smith and Segal's advice therefore focuses on how people with OCD can learn to resist obsessive rituals. One tip is to not avoid discussing and thinking about the fears that cause the obsessive ritual (ibid.).

Along similar lines, Smith and Segal (2018) also suggest writing down or recording obsessive thoughts and worries and thereafter setting aside times or “worry periods” during which all of these worries are exposed and discussed, preferably together with others, in support groups. If we translate this to aid bureaucrats and OMD, common fears among aid bureaucrats are that aid money may not be being spent correctly and that partner organizations or their representatives may prove to be untrustworthy. Alleviating these fears might, for example, be addressed through talking openly about them with colleagues, in support groups. Translating the same tip to development aid organizations could mean holding meetings to discuss all of their worries about recipient partners not spending aid money correctly, as well as allowing oneself, on other occasions, to speak in more hopeful terms about the unknown and to discuss signs of positive development in partners and projects that can be trusted, even with less control.

In times of worry, it usually helps to stay actively engaged, to do something about the uncertain situation. As discussed in Chapter 2, in Western (management) culture, taking a passive approach to great uncertainty is more the exception than comme il faut. Here, we can note that we did find a couple of cases of passive-aggression in our data, but the calming acceptance advised by mindfulness experts was lacking. We therefore conclude that actively responding to uncertainty is in itself an institutionalized expectation. However, where the active response of many aid bureaucrats means using approaches and practices of pragmatic bureaucracy, others respond actively by adding further layers of regulation. Several times in this volume, we have come back to the case where Sida's top management's response to external critique of overregulation was to undertake serious efforts to simplify measurements and reporting requirements and make formal regulations more flexible. We have, however, identified different responses to this de-regulation and encouraged flexibility, depending, it seems, on the individual's level of knowledge and experience. Some less-experienced individuals responded, contradictory to the original purpose, by actually adding further rules and regulations. We have explained this response reaction with what we call the “trust paradox” – the finding that trust is often transferred from rules, regulations, and measurements, which are typically described as the opposite or as hinders to trust (Alexius & Vähämäki, 2021) (see also Chapter 2). While these impersonal sources of trust can in some cases support the trust-building process, they can also constitute a serious hinder since every added regulation and measurement creates the expectation that it should be acted upon, something that can impede real-life experiences and learning.

As also seen in the historical exposé in Chapter 6, the trust paradox helps to explain why formal decisions for a more flexible bureaucracy is no quick fix since for some staff, such reforms can lead to the perception of added uncertainty , and an experienced need for new strict measures (that are decided on, and added at the project level, at the individual bureaucrat's own initiative). Thus, socialization in organizations can sometimes foster newcomers into a pragmatic bureaucracy culture, but in other cases or at times of harsh external critique and crisis, we instead see socialization into more of a hyper bureaucratic culture. Needless to say, it is not easy to stand alone as a pragmatic bureaucrat in an organization with a hyper bureaucratic culture, but the opposite is also true.

A precondition for learning how to become a pragmatic bureaucrat is continuity of the staff responsible for a project or people in the units that handle certain matters. However, since staff changes are highly frequent in development aid work, this is clearly an obstacle for fostering a learning, pragmatic bureaucracy culture. Awareness is important but, since difficulties most often arise during implementation (Vähämäki, 2017), this is where professional judgment and experience comes in. People with experience in the field know how to handle these situations, where two of the most common pragmatic bureaucratic responses tap into the multivocal brokering skills of decoupling and translating (see Chapter 7). However, sometimes long experience is not enough. Some aid bureaucrats, specifically those who have held a narrower specialist position earlier (such as a controller or auditor), might run rabbit when they obtain a power position. Thus, hyper bureaucrats without much formal power can be counteracted by pragmatic bureaucrats, while hyper bureaucrats with more power can be disastrous: Beware of hyper bureaucrats in power positions!

Advice to Policymakers and Top Managers

What do these findings mean for policymakers and top managers in the field? First and foremost, we recommend that you ensure that you maintain a growing cadre of staff with pragmatic bureaucratic competence that can help to counteract tendencies toward OMD. Pragmatic aid bureaucrats can make the most of every aid project by considering its particular context and conditions and finding ways to interact with partners that support the achievement of development goals; they know how to occasionally bend or adapt rules responsibly. Hence, we agree with the following conclusion from a human resource management blogpost ³ :

An organization should include pragmatic and bureaucratic management from the top down. Therefore, by mixing these different ways of thinking and working, an organization will be well-balanced and ultimately capable of creating the best outputs.

For top managers of aid organizations, this means, firstly, ensuring and honoring your own pragmatic bureaucratic awareness and competence and, secondly, daring to support, justify, and foster the same in others. Here, it is important to note that it can be challenging to formalize learning that leads a more pragmatic bureaucrat since the type of tacit knowledge involved is traditionally shared and learned informally.

As shown in this volume, the multivocality that typically comes from previous experience of work in different knowledge domains is an unquestionably valuable asset for pragmatic bureaucrats . However, one must also look for individual qualities such as courage and dedication, in line with our reasoning about a person's responsibility radius (Fig. 7). How willing and able is that person to go that extra mile in this uncertain context? For example, in order to safeguard empirically well-motivated variation in regulation and governance (see Chapter 5 on the risk of isomorphic conformity in the development aid field). As a general conclusion: rich and multifaceted knowledge of different domains among staff is crucial but so are the organizational memory and available arenas and practices for learning.

We have seen that in the longer run, most senior aid staff become more or less socialized into the pragmatic bureaucratic approaches and practices. We have also concluded that these skills are most often learned, not in formal processes but informally in-between colleagues in everyday project interactions. It is therefore important to strive to retain senior staff who have already obtained and mastered these skills and to allow them the time and opportunity to share them more openly with junior staff and newcomers .

And since juniors and newcomers are typically the most anxious, it is vital to also encourage this group to listen and learn from the more senior pragmatic bureaucrats. It is also important to acknowledge, however, that these types of processes that involve maturing and cultivating one's judgment normally take time and cannot be rushed since judgment must to some extent be based on one's own life experiences (Alexius & Sardiello, 2018). There is also a need for staff who persistently dare to talk about the purpose of measures and how different rules, regulations, and measurement schemes affect the partners and wider system, to be permitted and encouraged to take part in developing these measures.

Ideas for Future Research

As the world is becoming increasingly complex by the minute, we believe that it is both timely and relevant to learn from those who, despite all, dare to take on this compelling “mission impossible.” Future research on management and governance in other complex fields (such as health care and corrections and social care) can take inspiration from the extreme case of development aid, leading the way to fruitful studies, comparisons, and discussion of the prevalence and importance of pragmatic bureaucracy in those other settings.

One of the methodological approaches in this volume has been to look at the field of development aid from a historical perspective, by presenting, in Chapter 6, three eras of Swedish development aid. Based on these eras, we concluded that the conditions for a pragmatic bureaucratic approach to development aid have differed over time. Since the professional composition of who “does” aid bureaucracy has changed, and there are more controllers and fewer program officers today, as well as more focus on “doing things right,” we can assume that there may also be fewer pragmatic bureaucrats today than there were in previous eras. Historical comparisons of bureaucratic ideals and practices thus constitute another possible avenue to pursue in further studies.

In our own upcoming research, we are also interested in finding out more about where, when, and how individuals and organizations acquire (or not) the competencies of pragmatic bureaucracy and aim to study more cases on its actual chances of counteracting OMD and tendencies toward OMD.

We also welcome studies on the different conditions for and consequences of the use of POPs (discussed in Chapter 5). In particular, we believe that the classic question of acceptance of variation versus conformity is well worth exploring, not least in relation to currently ongoing debate about the goals of Agenda 2030 and similar undertakings officially proclaimed to encourage multistakeholder collaboration.