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This paper establishes the link between institutional development (ID) and process consulting. It does so by recognising ID’s concern for client exploration and learning and process consulting’s focus on client ownership and increased capacity. In that context, the paper outlines the modalities for generating organisation and efficiency reforms in the Tanzanian civil service. It highlights the central role of middle‐ranking civil servants in the twin process of learning and the building of capacity. It looks at the resulting impact of the organisation and efficiency reforms. Finally, it reviews the process consulting experience in terms of the often elusive states of growing ownership and commitment to the reform process. Both are prerequisites for sustainability; an enduring challenge in the developing world.

In January 1989, the Overseas Development Administration (ODA) started a three‐year, institution‐building project for Malawi′s three city councils. Discusses how it became apparent in Lilongwe that the project′s traditional notions of institution building were limited, and how its concern was for financial and general efficiency, while its environment – the city – was ignored. Examines how the project was, therefore, reinterpreted, and the need was seen to develop strong urban management leadership in the context of a dynamic environment. The process of managing city building, therefore, became central to the council′s institutional capacity. The justification centred on the belief that just because a council may be in financial surplus is no guarantee that it is performing the services or providing the infrastructure which people need. Therefore, institution building could not ignore the environment (the city) in which the institution operated.

The purpose of the paper is to outline a practical perspective for testing performance in the process of institutional reform in developing countries.

The test is presented from a donor's perspective. The paper does so by introducing a framework for testing the sustainability, impact and replication of reforms, to achieve local development. These areas of performance are set against the institutional development agenda of structures, processes and contextual reforms. The test goes on to highlight the sustainable outcomes and institutional consolidation of such reforms. This is considered at community, local and central government levels.

Testing performance is an important part of United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) practice. Its current concerns for sustainability and policy impact are being enhanced by a more explicit connection between institutional reform, through decentralisation, and poverty impact.

The concepts outlined are designed to be of application to a donor concerned with seeking to achieve decentralisation through local development initiatives. The paper's value is as a reflection of current UNCDF policy experiments in the least developed countries (LDCs). These experiments are designed to enrich its practice and influence its partners in the field.

There are few normative frameworks for testing performance on institutional reform. This test is particularly acute in the LDCs, the primary focus for UNCDF work. This technical paper is an attempt to develop a framework to allow donors to test their own work concerning institutional reform, particularly at the local government level.

States that it appears that all civil service reform programmes in developing countries are predicated on the idea of cost savings which is an acid test of project success. Notes that yet a wider notion of reform is also prevalent, concerning governance, which involves the ability of citizens to influence government’s provision of infrastructure and services. As if to give credence to the importance of service provision, the concept of institutional economics has come to the fore. This requires an explicit quantification of the range of public goods and services being generated by the institutions being reformed. All three perspectives are underpinned by the institutional development model. This focuses in range from value and sustainability to exploration and functional analysis, as an organizational starting point. Suggests that the institutional development base is the normative anchor for all substantive interventions in government reform.

This paper is the fourth in a series about institutional development (ID) in government in the developing world. The first sought to establish a general understanding of ID. The second tested ID in the diagnostic phase of organisational analysis in civil service reform. The third looked at the spectrum of ID in civil service reform, in terms of client‐based functional analysis leading to reformed structures and processes. This paper explores the concept and development of these processes, under the generic term performance budgeting (PB). The US federal experience of PB is outlined; it being the birthplace of both the concept and the practice. A comparative review of some OECD countries and US state experience is offered. Resulting general principles are then set against recent practical PB experience by this author in Tanzania and the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The result is to advocate four basic pre‐conditions as the cornerstones of performance budgeting.

Considers five topics in an attempt to review the concept of institutional development (ID): institutions; development; institutional development; projects; technical assistance. Institutions are seen as fundamental to the development process. Development is seen as a political process. ID is seen as exploratory rather than prescriptive. Projects are seen as mechanistic. Technical assistance is moving towards a more exploratory and participatory mode of project formulation and implementation. Seeks to offer a flavour of the considerable and rapidly growing literature on the subject of ID in order to establish some parameters to the concept. These parameters are captured by the scope of the process, modes of intervention and factors for success, distilled from an original literature search. Presents the resulting conceptual framework.

Institutional development (ID) can be an elusive concept when attempts to analyse it are made. The notion of sustainability is even more intangible, save for the fact that the results of any ID should be able to continue after the external or technical assistance is withdrawn. Attempts to define both ID and sustainability and reviews the case of establishing an urban management system. Addresses its performance and sustainability and presents a method of quantifying the analysis of sustainability, using the case material. The method is dominated by the client′s self‐assessment. The role of the expert is to offer a quantified structure for that assessment.

Develops an original 12‐step management of technology protocol and applies it to 51 applications which range from Du Pont’s failure in Nylon to the Single Online Trade Exchange for Auto Parts procurement by GM, Ford, Daimler‐Chrysler and Renault‐Nissan. Provides many case studies with regards to the adoption of technology and describes seven chief technology officer characteristics. Discusses common errors when companies invest in technology and considers the probabilities of success. Provides 175 questions and answers to reinforce the concepts introduced. States that this substantial journal is aimed primarily at the present and potential chief technology officer to assist their survival and success in national and international markets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the transitions practitioners undergo as they move from dental school to their first job in a dental clinic and their learning in the workplace. The paper aims to investigate their use of ethical principles as they engage in practice, providing a theoretical explanation for the gap practitioners experience when moving from the school to the workplace, and also suggesting some viable alternatives for dental education.

The database for this study consists of videotaped interviews with dentists. To analyze our data we followed the principles of interaction analysis, analyzing the data both individually and collectively, until some hypotheses were generated. Then, discourse analysis was used to analyze the interviews.

From an activity theoretical perspective, the results show that dentists can and do learn ethical principles when working in their dental clinics, interacting with patients, and the findings and suggestions are of especial interest for curriculum planning and development in educational institutions.

This study suggests that theoretical discussions about ethics are not enough to provide practitioners with the skills necessary to work ethically when interacting with patients. From the findings a complementary approach to teach ethics in dental schools is suggested.

Workplace learning has become a preferred topic within many disciplines, such as, for example, sociology, education, and anthropology. However, although there is an established field of medical sociology, little if any attention on workplace learning has been paid to the health sciences in general and dentistry in particular.

Traditional competition across apparel store types reflects the dynamics of market positioning in practice. Previous research found that apparel related purchases accounted for over half of the money rural consumers spent out of town. Research on apparel shopping intentions according to store types helps identify to what extent different retail formats compete with each other for customers and enables rural retailers to improve their positioning strategies. Results describe apparel shopping behaviour, in rural population, relative to store type and variables influencing consumers’ shopping intentions. Factors influencing consumers’ shopping choices among different apparel retail formats are identified. Descriptive statistics indicated most apparel shoppers frequented independently owned stores and cross‐shop among retail formats. When store categories were created, data revealed that the retail format category department, discount, and chain stores attracted more customers than the other retail format categories.