Hybridity Consulting

Information Technology for Development
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Hybridity, consulting and e-development in

the making: inscribing new practices of impact
assessment and value management
Martin Brigham & Niall Hayes
To cite this article: Martin Brigham & Niall Hayes (2013) Hybridity, consulting and e-development
in the making: inscribing new practices of impact assessment and value management, Information
Technology for Development, 19:2, 112-132, DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2012.690171
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2012.690171
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Information Technology for Development, 2013
Vol. 19, No. 2, 112– 132, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02681102.2012.690171
Hybridity, consulting and e-development in the making: inscribing new

practices of impact assessment and value management†
Martin Brigham and Niall Hayes∗
Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University Management School,

Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YX, UK
This paper examines critically the changes taking place in the e-development sector, and,
specifically, investigates the ways in which private sector information and communication
technology (ICT)-led organizations may be implicated in shaping such changes. We report
on a research into a multi-national ICT consultancy company which is developing their own
offering in the domain of value management and performance management for the
development sector. We situate this initiative within the development literature that
has charted the changing role of donors and non-government organizations (NGOs).
Drawing on actor –network theory, we argue that, with the deployment of value
management techniques, upstream donors are becoming a more central feature of NGOs’
preoccupations and activities. We provide an in-depth analysis of the renegotiation of
the e-development network, and argue that e-development can be understood as a hybrid
practice. The paper concludes with implications and suggestions for further research.
Keywords: actor –network theory; hybridity; impact assessment; performance management;
public value
1. Introduction
The development field is said to have undergone considerable transformation over recent years,
attributed in part to the ambitious Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were set by
the UN at the start of the century (Byrne, Nicholson, & Salem, 2011; Hayes & Rajao, 2011).
Many suggest that this has led to development agencies transforming their ways of operating
and thinking to resemble the discourses and methods of the private sector, and specifically an
intensified focus on measuring outcomes and performance (Hayes & Westrup, 2012b). From
the 1990s, there has also been an increased emphasis on partnership between development
agencies, governments and the private sector as a key means to drive international development,
and also to acknowledge that markets alone cannot bring about development (Heeks, 2010;
Puri, Sahay, & Lewis, 2009; Walsham, Robey, & Sahay, 2007). Global development requires
sharing good management practice where lessons from the private and public sector can be
deployed in the development sector.
This paper focuses on the ways in which large private sector information technology (IT) con-
sultancies may come to shape the possibilities for e-development. In examining this theme, we will
attend to the proprietary methodologies that they employ and the ways in which donors, the
sources of revenue for consultants, are implicated in this. This has implications not only for the
reconstitution of e-development practice, but also for information and communication technology
†
An initial version of this paper was presented at Taking stock of e-development, Ninth International
Working Conference, IFIP WG 9.4, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 28–30 May, 2007.
∗
Corresponding author. Email: n.hayes@lancaster.ac.uk
Sajda Qureshi is the Accepting Editor-in-Chief for this article.
# 2013 Commonwealth Secretariat

Information Technology for Development 113
for development (ICT4D) research. By e-development, we mean the use of information and com-
munication technologies (ICTs) to support development (Avgerou, 2002; Heeks, 2002). More
broadly, we seek to better understand what constitutes the ways in which e-development is
being constructed. This encapsulates not only specific ICTs, but also the range of supporting
activities, discourses and practices that contribute to their operation – including software develop-
ment, training and management consultants (Heeks, 2008; Puri et al., 2009). While much of the
literature on the ICT4D to date has been focused on particular ICTs and/or specific domains of
e-development such as in healthcare, economic development and education, very little of the
ICT4D literature has considered private sector management and IT consultancies and specifically
their discourses, practices and proprietary methodologies (Madon, 2000, p. 88). In this sense, we
echo Silva and Westrup (2009, p. 61) who argued that “Frequently, ICT4D has restricted itself
to what it identifies as the contribution of technologies to development with other relationships
being placed in a black box of context.”
While this paper will focus primarily on the role of IT consulting in the ongoing shaping of
e-development, we will contend that in understanding the ways in which IT consultants are
positioning themselves, it is crucial to comprehend the shifting priorities of donor organizations,
as they are the ones that private sector consultancies will seek to secure their projects and
revenue from. Donors are most typically national governments, groupings of national govern-
ments or supra-national international institutions such as the World Bank, as well as some
large not for profit organizations that fund specific development organizations. ICTs are often
viewed by donors as a means for developing countries to most quickly catch-up with advanced
industrialized countries (Hayes & Westrup, 2012b; Heeks, 2008; Walsham & Sahay, 2006;
Walsham et al., 2007). We are able to offer early insights into this particular feature of
e-development in the making.
To better understand the role of private sector IT consultants in shaping e-development,
our paper has set out to answer the following three research questions. Most broadly, our
paper has set out to examine critically how are upstream donor organizations shaping the
agenda of IT consulting in the development sphere? Secondly, and more specifically, how
are large private sector IT consultancies seeking to position themselves in the e-development
sector? And, finally, how may the methodologies of private sector IT consultants come to
inscribe new forms of development? To answer these three research questions, we draw
upon primary empirical data collected at a multi-national ICT consulting company. We
report on the development of a performance evaluation technique – what is termed the
value management model (a pseudonym) or VMM – at the international development
group (DG) of the consultancy (Omega, a pseudonym). This performance evaluation model
is to be deployed to manage Omega’s development projects, and, significantly, also as a meth-
odology that the consultancy can provide to international development agencies so that they
can evaluate their own development initiatives.
Our paper is structured as follows. Section 2 outlines some of the key issues and trajectories
emerging in the development literature that are relevant to understanding our case. Following
this, in Section 3, we will outline some of key ideas from actor – network theory (ANT), and
focus on hybrids in particular, as this is central to our analysis. Section 4 describes how we
undertook the research and Section 5 outlines our empirical research site – Omega and the
VMM. In this section, we describe the IT consultancy’s concept of value and situate this in
wider debates about public service modernization. Section 6 discusses the empirical findings
in terms of the broader context of development, the inscription of new forms of development
value, legitimacy and emerging approaches to consulting. Section 7 connects our analysis to
the concept of hybridity through an analysis of value management in terms of knowledge,
control and power. We conclude the paper by suggesting future research directions.
114 M. Brigham and N. Hayes
2. E-development: situating a changing context

This section reviews some of the key themes emerging with regard to the reformulation of the
international development sector with a focus on ICTs and the private sector.
2.1 Donors, NGOs and e-development

Concerns with value – in different forms such as financial, social and environmental value and
across scales in terms of upward and downward accountability – are increasingly ubiquitous in
development contexts. One of the most significant changes in the development sector has been in
relation to the ways in which donors allocate funds to non-government organizations (NGOs). It
has become increasingly commonplace for a number of states to pool their funding and then dis-
tribute resources to one NGO to undertake the development projects on their behalf. This has
resulted in the development institutions such as the World Bank positioning themselves as
central in the development network through claims of being a knowledge broker for develop-
ment activity (Dar & Cooke, 2008; Hayes & Westrup, 2012b). Consequently, donors also
now take a much stronger lead in framing the priorities for NGOs (Wallace, Bornstein, &
Chapman, 2006). Madon (1999), for example, argues that where donors frame NGOs as imple-
menters of their development projects then donors decide about the problems to be addressed
(Gould, 2005). Elsewhere, Madon (2000) highlights how this conglomerate approach to devel-
opment has led to NGOs becoming more concerned with meeting the donors’ expectations than
undertaking work that is crucial in specific developing contexts (Lewis & Madon, 2004).
Especially pertinent to this paper is Hulme’s (1994, p. 257) claim that the expansion of
NGOs throughout the 1980s has resulted in the third sector “being encouraged to restructure
itself . . . into a contractor of national governments and international aid agencies.”
Donors have also been reported to have become increasingly concerned with seeking to
make NGOs more accountable for their “impacts.” While some have suggested the increased
centrality of donors has led to often excessive accountability upward and too little downward
(Lewis & Madon, 2004; Madon & Sahay, 2002), there is a view emerging that that evidence
of the performance of NGOs has been elusive (Lewis & Madon, 2004). This has led to
donors questioning the effectiveness of NGOs and hence increasing demand for more sophisti-
cated ways to measure the impact of activities through, for example, evidence-based program-
ming and evaluation.
ICTs are often a central strategic priority area for donors (Hayes & Westrup, 2012a; Sahay,
Monteiro, & Aanestad, 2009; Walsham & Sahay, 2006) both in terms of the possibilities they
provide for developing countries to be able to participate in transnational economic, political
and social networks (Braa, Monteiro, & Sahay, 2004; Sayed & Westrup, 2003; Thompson,
2004), and also in relation to measuring performance (Hayes & Westrup, 2012b). Indeed, Lewis
and Madon (2004) argue that ICTs have an important role to play in enhancing data about the per-
formance of NGOs and specific projects, thus allowing for more accountability and performance
measurement. Silva and Westrup (2009) draw our attention to some of the critical management
studies work that questions the pre-eminence of market-based assumptions and standardized
templates for management best practice in development contexts (Dar & Cooke, 2008).
2.2 Partnership and development

Many have argued that the broadening range of goals and targets associated with contemporary
development are exemplified in the UN MDGs. This in turn, it is argued, is leading to increasing
private sector involvement in development contexts (Ballantyne, 2002; White & Black, 2004).
Chattaway (1999) argues that the private sector has an important role to play as it is able to share
experiences from developed to developing countries and can assist in creating stable and com-
petitive markets in partnership with other actors (Moore, 1999). Consultancies, for their part, are
keen to engage in this work as it represents a new and potentially large source of revenue. This
has led to management discourses and frameworks becoming more central in the practices of
international development agencies (Ballantyne, 2002; Dar & Cooke, 2008).
3. Theoretical framework: ANT and hybridity

ANT, our theoretical underpinning, posits that when tasks are being undertaken, we should
consider the heterogeneous engineering (e.g. across social, technical and natural domains and
so on) that makes them possible. Networks themselves become stabilized and taken for
granted when the interests of actors are aligned over times and spaces (Law, 1992). This stabil-
ization and alignment of networks involves processes of translation. Latour (1987, p. 267)
describes translation as “modifications, deflections, betrayals, additions and appropriations
that displace subjects and objects into someone or something otherwise.” In the context of
our research, ANT lends itself to assisting in understanding the translations that are taking
place in the e-development sector more generally – between donors and private sector IT
consultancies’ propriety methodologies.
Callon (1986) discerns four moments of translation: Problematization, this is where a focal
actor seeks to define the problems to all other actors in their terms, and by doing so, establish
their own superiority. Interessment involves enticing other actors to undertake the roles that
they identify for them. Enrolment refers to the actual undertaking of such roles; in this
process of translation, certain actors seek to establish what constitutes an obligatory passage
point through which all other actors must pass through, so that the particular actors becomes
indispensible in the network. Inscriptions are central to establishing particular courses of
actions as indispensible. Inscription refers to the processes of creating a technical artifact that
is aligned closely to the focal actor’s interests and through doing so, serves to ensure their cen-
trality to the network. Examples of inscriptions include policy documents, performance manage-
ment models and software programs. Through such processes, focal actors seek to make their
dominance in the network irreversible (Monteiro, 2000; Walsham, 1997). Thus, in the context
of our research focus, we might say that in order to answer our research questions, we want
to understand how the e-development actor network is being reconstituted by the emergence
of large multi-national conglomerates of donors, the centrality of NGOs and transnational IT
consultants.
A further important, though often overlooked, tenet of ANT is Hybridity. Latour (1993,
p. 50) argues that though hybrids are all pervasive, we tend to view the world through binary
schemas (developed versus developing, for instance). Though this has a utility of action,
Latour claims that this does not reflect the way the world operates in practice. Instead, he
suggests we should best conceive of the world as co-constitutive entanglements. We have,
according to Latour (1993), been distracted by the supposed dualisms between society and
nature, beings and things, social and technical, to name a few, while hybrids have proliferated.
The analytical task is then to restore our ability to conceive of hybrids, as multiply connected
networks (Latour, 1993). Watson and Shove (2008), for instance, demonstrate that practices
are located neither in the subject or the object, but through distributed practices that enlist
and circulate the agency. Even if subjects and objects are not commensurate, it does not
mean they are separable because what counts is the hybrid network. Such hybrid connections
are never fully guaranteed, however, and therefore active work is required to bring hetero-
geneous elements together over times and spaces – for, in other words, the network to hold
and stabilize (Elam, 1999).
Hybrids signify the invention and the emergence of new ways acting where “new realities
are created out of dreams and schemes of diverse agents and experts based in a multiplicity
of locales” (Miller & O’Leary, 1994, p. 120 – 121) as much as hierarchical relations within
specific domains. Put in these terms, hybrids denote not just the inter-connections of established
entities; they are also the immanent condition for new ways of acting, thinking and intervening
(Bloomfield & Hayes, 2009). This means that what comes to be framed as development is
played out through the emergence of new development hybrids – through development
networks composed of, among others, of donors and consultants, their techniques and
methodologies. Charting new forms of development practice means tracing the emergence of
new development hybrids.
In the sections that follow, we will draw upon the concept of the hybrid to develop our
analysis of the emergence of the VMM at Omega. We will describe the entangled practices
of donors, private sector consultants, local actors and non-human actors, most notably the
value management methodology. We will contend that this entanglement can be conceived of
as hybrid practices that comprise changes in knowledge, technologies of control and power
relations. We will argue that this is not an intentional outcome necessarily, but represents the
ways in which different actors within the e-development network become co-constituted –
with many intended and unintended consequences.
4. Methodology
In order to critically examine the ways in which IT consulting organizations are shaping
e-development, our study of Omega’s DG is rooted within the interpretive case study tradition.
Such epistemological and ontological underpinnings seek to understand the social phenomena
being researched through the perspectives of the actors, and how the differing meanings attributed
to work are understood and constructed (Klein & Myers, 1999; Orlikowski & Baroudi, 1991;
Walsham, 2006). Our approach is consistent with our theoretical commitments (ANT) and
lends itself to qualitative research methods (Klein & Myers, 1999; Walsham, 1993). Access
was secured through an associate of the authors who worked for Omega at the time. Our associate
had also previously worked for Omega’s DG on a number of occasions. He introduced us to the
head of the DG as well as the staff who had worked or currently work for the DG. Detailed access
was negotiated with the director of the DG. In return for access, we agreed to feedback findings
to the director on the condition that the anonymity of interviewees would be guaranteed.
Primary research was undertaken at Omega from January 2006 to January 2007. This comprises
semi-structured interviews with 12 staff either working for or associated with the DG, and
included the director, operational staff and managers and consultants in the UK and the USA
who had been part of a DG project. We also interviewed a senior member of staff working who
had experience in developing the VMM for public service organizations in the USA. Our initial
interviews tended to be quite broad in scope and gradually as familiarity with the context was
gained and similar issues emerged the questions became more focused. Semi-structured questions
sought to examine the reasons for the VMM being adopted, the history of the model and issues
relating to it being used in an e-development context. We were also interested to understand
how Omega saw the activities of the DG in relation to other parts of the consultancy.
We focused our interviews around the increasing scale of the projects the DG wanted to get
involved in, and diversifying their client base to include a greater range of NGOs. Each interview
lasted at least an hour. A number of consultants and managers were interviewed more than once
either to continue where the prior discussion left off or to ask further questions based on our
analysis of the previous interview, or to discuss emerging issues that were relevant to them.
Interviews were recorded and detailed notes were made, with sections of interviews transcribed
to elicit emerging and common themes. We then compared worked up analytical themes based
on our conceptual of lens – ANT and hybridity. It was during this process that the centrality of
donors in shaping private sector IT consulting practices became crucial. It was also here that the
concept of hybridity, as a key feature of ANT, became central to our analysis.
In conjunction with the primary interviews, we were given access to DG’s internal documen-
tation. This included information on the DG’s structure and operations, but also internal docu-
mentation about Omega’s value management methodology for public services and DG’s strategy
for scaling up its operations from a not-for-profit to profit-making part of Omega. We also made
extensive use of publicly available secondary material such as government policy reports in the
UK and the USA on public value, white papers on value management, and proceedings from
value management conferences in the UK. Given that Omega has significant research links
with high-profile universities in the USA, we also reviewed the academic and practitioner litera-
ture on public value. We tracked the transnational circulation of ideas and practices through the
formation of formal and informal links between Omega and universities in the USA and UK.
5. Research context
This section has two purposes. First, it introduces Omega’s DG and second their vision and
rationale for introducing impact assessment in the form of a VMM.
5.1 Background: Omega’s DG

Omega is a major management and technology consultancy employing over 100,000 people and
has offices in 48 countries. Omega established its DG as a not-for-profit initiative late in 2001, it
was piloted in 2002 and a formal structure was established in 2004 including a global roll-out.
The organizational structure comprises the director who reports to the DG board, an operations
division that is responsible for internal and external marketing, recruitment, training and finan-
cial management, and a field programs division responsible for setting up projects, project man-
agement and coordination.
DG “provides high quality business and technology consulting to the international develop-
ment sector, working with charitable organisations that wouldn’t normally have access to these
skills” (Omega, undated document). DG’s mission is to help their clients in the development
sector achieve their goals by adopting leading-edge business and technology. Since its establish-
ment, DG has completed over a 100 projects across Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern
Europe. Their clients have been mainly international NGOs such as CARE, Plan and Action
Aid, national development agencies such as the UK’s Department for International Development
(DFID), and international institutions such as the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) and the World Bank. The DG has undertaken projects in areas relating to IT systems
analysis and design, supply chain, leadership development, knowledge management and per-
formance measurement. These are all areas in which Omega has long established expertise,
albeit in the private and public sector context. In order for the projects to be non-profit-
making, Omega staff working with the DG accepts a 50% salary reduction for the duration of
their time spent working on a DG project. Consultants usually work on DG projects for
between 3 and 6 months and then return to their role at Omega. A partner is assigned to the
field team to oversee each specific project.
5.2 Omega’s DG’s problematization of impact assessment

As a consequence of the growth in the number of projects being undertaken, and their increasing
scale, the founder and director of DG had become increasingly concerned that they could not
provide evidence of the impact of their projects, and sought to make impact assessment central to
DG’s strategic aims:
I would like to see us to move from opportunistic and ad hoc consulting and technology services to
the non-profit and development sector to get a little bit more strategic in terms of deeper relationships
with organisations that we really think we can impact rather than working broadly with loads of
people.
Specifically, he was interested in impact assessment in three domains of activity. First, he was
keen to account for the impact DG projects had had in relation to wider socio-economic issues
such as poverty reduction or improvement of living conditions in the areas where DG works.
Second, he was keen to explore the specific project impact in relation to clients, and, finally,
he was also interested to account for the impact of the DG internally within Omega itself. In
relation to the latter, DG was marketed as an attractive option for staff considering joining
the company, and as a way to highlight the company’s corporate responsibility. Importantly,
he considers impact assessment to be a crucial issue for DG and NGOs alike. The director
anticipates that
I think these demands will increase on us to demonstrate our impact . . . there will be more rigour and
focus on looking on outcomes than there has been in the past. So that’s really the problem, it’s a
future problem that I am anticipating.
The director described the information it has on its impact as being “very light, very limited, very
ad hoc.” It stemmed from the personal experiences of the consultants, and through a rudimentary
questionnaire that clients complete upon the conclusion of a project. The questionnaire is based on
a similar one that Omega uses for its commercial projects in developed countries. The DG has no
information about the wider socio-economic impact of the projects they have undertaken nor does
DG follow up their interventions so as to gauge medium-to-long-term impacts.
5.3 From new public management to public value: the VMM

The development of the VMM, DG’s preferred impact assessment model, can be situated in
policy and academic debates relating to public service modernization and development manage-
ment over the past two decades. The emergence of new public management (NPM) has been
central to the emergence of these debates. NPM denotes a range of government-led policies
deployed from the 1980s onwards, aimed at changing governance practices, improving effi-
ciency and establishing a flexible organizational structure for the provision of public services.
The central tenet of the NPM approaches that emerged was the premise that the lessons learnt
from the corporate sector could be better if it could be applied across public sectors and the
third sector. Public value is also emphasized, where politicians as primary drivers of change,
ultimately control public managers as agents through constitutional powers such as oversight,
appointment, budgeting and legislation (Moore, 1995; Whynes, 1993).
Value management has its origins in NPM. It draws upon ideas of liberal democratic citizen-
ship and attempts to strengthen community and civil society across developed and developing
countries. Moore (1995) proposed that value can be understood as a strategy to produce out-
comes that meet “users” needs and to re-orientate public bodies or NGOs away from means
to consider the ends to which activity is focused (e.g. health, sustainability, etc.). This involves
co-production and competition between different definitions of value as the means through
which value can be negotiated and realized. The role of managers is to help build a collective,
shared notion of the interests (Moore, 1995). Accountability requires managers to attend to
not only market relations but also to community values, professional standards and citizens’
interests (Denhardt, Denhardt, & Aristigueta, 2001).
While the concept of public value is associated with the public sector, for Moore (2000,
p. 186), the distinctiveness of the public sector can also be applied to the not-for-profit or
third sector; he states: “The principle value delivered by the non-profit sector is the achievement
of its social purpose and the satisfaction of the donors’ desires to contribute to the cause that
the organisation embodies” (emphasis added).
In terms of managing value, the public sector and the third sector can be understood in
similar terms as their revenue is provided by people who are paying “for external benefits to
people other than themselves rather than customers who buy things for their own benefit”
(Moore, 2000, p. 189). NGOs create value because they can act as a channel for individuals’
and societies’ aspirations. For Moore (2000, p. 202), this means that value is also created
“upstream” and this means that “the encounter with donors is value creating, as is the encounter
with clients.” This formulation of value also emphasizes “achieving positive social and
environmental outcomes” and to do this, argues Moore (1995), there needs to be engagement
with relevant stakeholders and in particular with the range of actors who might contribute to
the decisions on NGO funding (Stoker, 2006, p. 47).
The VMM at Omega is premised upon Moore’s (1995) conception of value management.
Specifically, the VMM measures quantitative and qualitative performance against two dimen-
sions: outcomes (the purpose, aims or social achievements) and cost-effectiveness (with a
view to minimizing costs for the agency and citizens).
In the private sector, value is generally defined as the total return to shareholders. The shareholder
value methodology states that value is created as a combination of growth and spread . . . Although
this definition is not applicable directly to the public sector, it is possible to learn lessons from . . . and
apply them to the government sector . . . Agencies can isolate individual outcomes and determine
which factors are the most meaningful for driving overall value. (Omega, undated: 3)
Omega’s definition of outcomes follows Moore’s (1995) concern with the value creation
citizens’ receive even if they are not direct recipients of services:
Our approach looks at any public service as something that is of value to all citizens as singular ben-
eficiaries. We understand the value a service produces as the value generated both directly for users
as well as indirectly for non-users who nevertheless benefit from the operation of the service.
(Omega, undated: 4)
Our research suggests that the director of DG is evaluating an intervention technique for NGOs
based on the VMM. The director believes that with some adaptation, the VMM can be offered to
NGOs and other development organizations interested in evaluating the outcomes of their
activity with a view to improving their ability to measure outcomes:
I mentioned our clients have to do impact assessment and I think that’s an area where we can help
them as consultants, to come with the processes, the methodologies and the tools to do that effec-
tively . . . I think a lot of the thinking behind the VMM tool and the intellectual property behind it
could be adapted by DG to come up with an offering, a generic offering that could be a good line
of business, a good consulting non-profit revenue stream for us.
The emphasis on managing outcomes as opposed to solely tracking the outputs of an institution
is a major selling point for the VMM, as a senior manager specializing in the public sector
explained:
The question is if we want to help governments and agencies to become high performance organis-
ations, how we would know that they are performing well. That is the motivation to create the VMM.
The VMM is a technique to help organizations to find a balance between the pressure for increas-
ing outcomes and reducing cost. According to Omega’s literature on the VMM, it is a technique
for measuring and evaluating. It does not judge the performance of a particular institution as
appropriate or inappropriate; it provides evidence of outcomes against costs. Rather the
VMM provides a tool for evaluating the performance of agencies and institutions, in terms of
performance over time and though comparison (Talbot, 2008, 2009).
Debates within Omega about the VMM centered upon defining relevant outcomes for devel-
opment organizations. According to a senior manager at Omega, the VMM usually works with
three to seven outcomes. In a pilot study of a police department in the USA, outcomes included,
for example, reducing crime, investigating crime and maintaining public safely. There are
usually three building blocks that are used for defining the outcomes. These are the stakeholders
(government, welfare recipients, citizens, agencies and so forth) and their expectations. A further
building block is the mission statement of the organization, and another is the core function of
the organization. Usually the different outcomes of an organization are not of equal importance
and this is something the organization decides upon. Outcomes are, therefore, weighted before
they are used in the VMM. Once the outcomes are established and weighted, corresponding
indicators need to be established in order to monitor the outcomes. For example, in the case
of reducing crime in the pilot police study, a metric may be the number of days between a
murder per 1000 citizens, or the number of days between thefts per 1000 citizens.
While some thought that the VMM would work equally well in the development sector, some
were more skeptical. One consultant considered the main question to be whether one could
define common outcome models across specific development sectors in which the DG is
working, which would then allow comparison between a specific organization with the
average of the sector. Some people we spoke to expressed the difficultly of filtering out the
specific contribution of the DG against wider socio-economic outcomes achieved by other
institutions. A number of those we interviewed articulated how the work of the DG was
mostly strategic and thus direct outcomes and impacts are difficult to measure and are long
term. The director of the DG describes this in relation to the work that the DG has done with
a mobile phone operator in Bangladesh:
I know that the work we are doing in mobile phones in Bangladesh alone is bringing technology to
480 villages in Bangladesh which is 80 percent of the rural population in Bangladesh and giving
them access to this kind of business in a box. Now, that’s on a huge scale in terms of millions of
people but I don’t know how many jobs will be created, I don’t know how the GDP of Bangladesh
will be increased. If the GDP of Bangladesh goes up 1 per cent the next year, is any of that attribu-
table to what we have done?
The director of DG, despite some difficulties of operationalizing the technique, remained enthu-
siastic about developing the VMM into the NGO impact assessment with a view of offering this
as a consultancy service to clients.
6. Discussion: translating e-development

This section examines the ways in which impact assessment specifically, and the inclusion of the
private sector more generally, may be implicated in reshaping e-development. We argue that our
case, of one of the leading consulting companies in the ICT sector, offers an insight into the ways
in which e-development is currently being constructed. In ANT terms, we suggest that the
current shaping of development can be understood as being at a stage of intense hybridization,
where the different NGOs and the private sector are aligning themselves with donors’ expec-
tations. Table 1 highlights the key analytical issues.
6.1 Establishing development trajectories

This section considers the centrality of the VMM in establishing the legitimacy of the Omega
DG within the broad context of donors, NGOs and the MDGs. To enhance its legitimacy and
Table 1. The emerging context of e-development: value management as an obligatory passage point in
e-development.
Concept Manifestation
Problematization and Complexity of e-development, need for collaboration and partnership
interessment MDGs
Value and impact assessment
Donors as focal actor
Social capital upstream and downstream
New market for Omega
NGOs lack expertise and scale to measure value comprehensively over
space and time
Translation and enrollment Private sector expertise
Conglomerates of donors
Reforms in NGOs beyond service provision
University origins in the USA
Government interest in public value, particularly in the UK
Inscription Management methodologies become an obligatory passage point for
development projects
Measurement and comparability over time and between agencies become
central as sector-wide impact analysis becomes more important
become an established and significant development sector consulting organization, the Omega
DG sought to align its consulting services with the ongoing reforms and ambitions of the devel-
opment sector (DFID, 2000). Understood in ANT terms, if the DG is to establish a successful
partnership model, it needs to first convince its prospective NGO partners that their VMM,
and thus impact assessment and value measurement is a legitimate concern for the development
sector. Linking the VMM to the attainment of the MDGs such as poverty reduction, commit-
ments, all NGOs have sought to attain, which means that there is an established and legitimate
baseline for performance measurement (Ballantyne, 2002; Hayes & Westrup, 2012b). Further-
more, linking the VMM to the MDGs provides the potential for DG to establish itself as the
obligatory passage point in defining what projects are considered valuable, and what is con-
sidered valuable activity while undertaking such projects. An obligatory passage point requires
other actors to pass through a specific route and thus makes itself indispensible. By DG aligning
itself with the development goals, it becomes difficult for specific NGOs to argue against the
aims and scope of their offering.
Further, through their own links with international development agencies, donors and
governments, who favor this new discourse of development that emphasizes partnership,
value management and impact assessment, also adds to the enrolment and irreversibility. In
other words, the VMM locates itself and allies itself closely with the discourse of “modernizing
development,” meaning it would be very hard for any prospective client or partner to argue
against impact assessment linked tightly to MDGs. The ability to occupy such a position will
very much depend upon a potential to enrol large, transnational NGOs and, importantly, their
donors as clients or partners. Thus, it is important to recognize that with regard to problematiza-
tion and interessment, this has to be aligned to the focus of the network, the donors and those
ideas that are central to them (Lewis & Madon, 2004).
It is also important to consider that such a methodology has its origins in a leading US
university, and the legitimacy that Harvard provides, had already enrolled actors into a
network of consultancy firms, research centers, publishers and leading US universities who
are global in reach (Thrift, 1997). As such, the VMM gains its durability from the potential
of linking diverse sites of authority and expertise so that is becomes what has been termed a
“soft-law” of governance that cannot be ignored (Nye, 2005). In the context of increasing com-
petition for fewer development resources, we suggest, such forms of governance become
increasingly important. Further, the possibility that the VMM provides to identify where
resources have been used, to the greatest effect, and most efficiently may also prove crucial
in securing partners and donor funding, and expanding the scale of the development consulting
practice of the DG. Indeed, if the DG is not able to align themselves with the donors, then there
would be no partnership.
6.2 Inscribing new forms of value into development

As well as looking at the ways in which different allies are enrolled into a network, ANT also
sensitizes us as to how such material objects may become durable. As Law (1992, p. 3) notes:
Thoughts are cheap but they don’t last long, and speech lasts very little longer. But when we start to
perform relations – and in particular when we embody them in inanimate materials such as texts and
buildings – they may last longer.
Inscriptions through a technological artifact are central if specific actors are to make their inter-
ests durable. Thus for the DG, seeking to establish itself in the e-development sector, they need
to embody a set of relations in durable materials. By doing this, it would make the network of
relationships more stable and not purely based upon consulting discourses. From the DG point of
view, inscription refers to the VMM being an artifact that would represent their interests (Latour,
1992). By establishing the VMM as a way to evaluate the impact of development projects, this
may provide a way for the DG to establish itself as being the actor that is best placed to undertake
specific impact evaluations and, importantly, from the perspective of donors, be able to compare
and contrast the performance of different NGOs and different projects within specific NGOs.
Thus, the VMM may be seen to be a central aspect of reshaping evaluation, and, as such, is
central in shaping what may come to constitute e-development.
Regular evaluation of projects and interventions is already well established within the devel-
opment sector, but as we have set out in the previous section, the VMM inscribes specific ways
of seeing and acting that has novel features. Evaluation based on the VMM constitutes certain
forms of success and failure in particular contexts. Inscription in ANT refers to how technical
artifacts may be created that can protect an actor’s interests (Latour, 1992). This leads to
other actors’ possibilities for action being configured by such an artifact. Akrich (1992,
p. 208) describes innovation – or creating new forms of value, in our terms – as a process of
inscription that culminates in particular “scripts” and “scenarios.” The DG can be understood
to be actively seeking to increase its influence on development through a distinct methodology
for performance evaluation. This may start to change the nature of e-development projects,
which would become far more focused on achieving identifiable impacts defined through the
lens of the VMM. If the VMM becomes sufficiently durable, the concept of value assessment
may provide a new form of control and coordination, and, in so doing, has the propensity to
form an immutable mobile that positions itself as the mechanism for distinguishing good
value from poor value development initiatives. Of course, the degree to which it becomes immu-
table depends very much on whether the DG can secure the allegiance of donor agencies. If it
does, this may lead to excessive accountability upwards and too little downwards as is discussed
below (Lewis & Madon, 2004).
Moore’s (1995) work highlighted the importance of attending not just to those downstream
undertaking the work in a particular setting, but also to the authorizing environment. In the
public sector, this includes political actors, the media, interest groups and citizens. In the devel-
opment sector, it comprises individual and institutional donors, national development agencies
such as DFID, international organizations such as the UN, the World Bank and the International
Federation of the Red Cross. What Moore is suggesting is that by “focusing up” and supporting
the well-being of donors, whether they are organizational and individual, is a legitimate concern
for NGOs. It helps NGOs to secure ongoing resources from donors. The recognition that the
satisfaction of donors is an important feature of NGOs work, and one that should be measured
through techniques such as the VMM, inscribes a view that suggests that the benefits to
those who donate is as important as those who are the recipients of donors’ resources. The
VMM can, then, be conceived in terms of not only boundary spanning between Omega and
its transnational network, but also in terms of constructing new forms of value for development
– specifically value defined in terms of the “‘authorising environment” or “focusing up” (Moore,
1995) of NGOs’ work as an important end in itself.
Evaluating the processes and outcomes in terms of value becomes important for sustaining
NGOs funding and for demonstrating appropriate governance practices. The upstream impacts
that the VMM measures provide offer as a further means to demonstrate the impacts of NGOs’
activities in terms of expanded range of capabilities (Sen, 2005), including upstream citizens,
in Sen’s (2005) – capabilities inscribed onto the donors of revenues not just those typically
considered, the recipients of development initiatives.
The origins of the VMM model were also important. The VMM model was originally
derived from the broadening of a shareholder value model to public management contexts.
More directly, Omega has direct experience of applying the VMM in public sector consulting
engagements in the USA and the UK. Thus, in the public sector, the model privileged modern-
ization, and, in relation to consultancies located in advanced economies (Barrett, Sahay, &
Walsham, 2001; Rajao & Hayes, 2009). In terms of the public management, the vast majority
of the revenues come from taxation and effectiveness is the impact on citizens. The development
context, by contrast, is composed of a greater number of actors. Development projects are
funded by donations from advanced countries, corporations and individual, while impacts
occur in a developing country on groups designated as “beneficiaries.” Because those who
receive development assistance are “beneficiaries,” this raises concerns about approaches
being “top-down.” Gardner and Lewis (1996) argue that the language of beneficiaries
encourages a view of groups as “variables” to be managed by project staff with policy formu-
lation and decisions about how to evaluate projects decided elsewhere. Thus, we contend that
the VMM may transplant assumptions about how value should be understood from its private
and public sector origin to developing contexts. This will, we suggest, further compound the
dilemmas of such practices being far removed from the development context itself – the
VMM is a technique that formalizes a multiplicity of actors, both downstream and upstream,
as legitimately concerned with impact.
6.3 Gaining legitimacy and changing forms of consulting

Here, we discuss the ways in which the adoption of the VMM is shaped and inscribed by the
socio-political context within Omega. We argue that it was also important for DG to enrol the
board of Omega if it was to expand in the e-development sector.
DG is concerned to secure internal legitimacy not least because it is an internally subsi-
dized part of the Omega. Since its establishment, DG has not had to make a significant
profit, but instead to ensure that they did not make a loss. This more charitable aspect was
evident in how consultants take a 50% reduction in their salary for the duration of a
project. At the time the research was conducted, DG was part of the Omega’s worldwide cor-
porate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Most of Omega’s CSR policies originate from its
headquarters in the USA. The DG, in contrast, originated and was based in London. As we
have already mentioned, DG was started from the “bottom up” in Omega, largely as the
outcome of the founder’s experience during a sabbatical project within the consultancy. The
changing identity of DG is, similarly, the outcome of efforts internal to DG. The director of
DG can be described as a “policy entrepreneur.” Hansen and Salskov-Ivensen (2005,
p. 157) describe how such focal actors play important roles in acting on behalf of new
forms of organizing: they “broker their knowledge to their potential patrons and political
allies.” This is central to interessment and network building, where the DG needed to entice
Omega’s executive board to back their expansion.
The DG is not a central part of the Omega’s corporate responsibility initiatives and
neither does the founder and others associated with the DG consider it to be, or want it to
remain as, a CSR initiative. In order to construct DG as integral to Omega, the DG increas-
ingly frames the services that it provides as being a new and innovative form of consultancy
provision for Omega – one which is connected to an emerging market for consultants’
services in developing countries and a different way of managing staff internally. It is
articulated as different from existing ways of organizing and different from other consul-
tancy services Omega offers.
Boundary-making activity is an important dimension of DG’s efforts to transform the
content and context of its interventions. This involved constructing organizational practices at
Omega as needing to be updated – as individuals demand different sorts of career opportunities
(including working in developing countries), as NGOs’ transparency and legitimacy is scruti-
nized and as transnational companies seek new markets in developing countries. Adopting the
VMM for use in a new context is significant because it aligns DG with the type of consultancy
interventions that Omega already deploys in other sectors; it marks DG as more integral to
Omega than CSR activities. This is especially the case with consulting, where the evidence indi-
cates that it is unusual for consultants to start from a blank piece of paper. Instead consultants
appropriate previous practices and reports and seek to modify them to the local context. Thus,
in line with Fincham (1999), it is important when making sense of the emerging context of
development to look at the internal power relations of private sector consulting organizations,
as they are undoubtedly involved in power relations of their own. One instance of this power
is how the DG aligns itself with the possibility of reusing many of Omega’s existing consultancy
services while simultaneously creating a distance from Omega’s current consultancy services.
7. Hybridity and e-development

Based on our ANT informed analysis of the ways in which an ICT consultancy company may be
implicated in shaping the context of e-development, this penultimate section will offer some
concluding insights into e-development more broadly with specific reference to hybridity.
Our research has indicated that e-development should be conceived of something that is
constantly “in the making” (Hewitt, 2000). At present, the e-development sector is undergoing
considerable transformation. This is due to the increased scale of e-development projects
being undertaken by NGOs, the increased power of “conglomerates of donors,” and also the
emergence of private sector IT consultancies and their methodologies in transforming
e-development. This has disrupted the stability of the e-development actor network and
allowed for the reconfiguration we have described in this paper. As illustrated in Figure 1, we
suggest that e-development can be conceived of a hybrid practice comprising changes in
knowledge, technologies of control and power relations. Due to the increasing importance of
donors and the interest of large IT consulting companies in the domain of ICT4D such
themes may also come to shape future the ICT4D research. Each of these themes, which consti-
tute hybridity, is discussed below.
Figure 1. e-Development as a hybrid practice.
7.1 Knowledge and hybridity

With regard to changes in knowledge, the emergence of the VMM represents a melding of
knowledge from different sectors and with different histories. Links between Omega, govern-
ment policy-makers in the UK and an Ivy League university in the USA are constitutive of
this melding activity. Melding occurs through a series of translations of texts, practices and
knowledge claims stemming from the private sector, the public sector and the e-development
sector. As discussed, in contrast to the private sector practices focusing on competition (specific
marketplaces and niches), public sector knowledge is concerned with coordinating the generation
and allocation of resources wisely for the best of citizens as a whole (Chattaway, 1999; Ciborra &
Navarra, 2005). Though they serve a great diversity of citizens with very different requirements, as
does the e-development sector, one might argue that the complexity of the e-development sector,
or civil society more broadly, is greater while the infrastructure from which to operate is not as
up-to-date (Harriss, 2001). Further, we have a melding of knowledge that has its context in the
developed and developing world. Thus, we suggest that we should come to understand e-
development as a melding of knowledge with different origins, rationalities, expectations and
priorities. With reference to Harris (1999), we argue that it is becoming a hybrid configuration
of knowledge pertaining to market mechanisms and ideas, statist modes of accountability and
administration and civil society organized ideals of common goals, values and needs.
7.2 Technologies of control and hybridity

In relation to the durability of the codification of knowledge, we suggest that the emergence of
new management technology and IT of control as being centrally shaped by hybrid practices
(Bloomfield & Hayes, 2009; Law, 1992). The literature highlights that once knowledge
becomes codified through such a methodology, it becomes more durable, and as such more
difficult to untangle (Hasselbladh & Kallinikos, 2000). This occurs through processes of
purification, where hybridized contexts (i.e. the public and development sector or donors and
recipients) are separated out as distinct zones that make hybridized roots of practices less
accessible (Frenkel & Shenhav, 2006). In our research, we witnessed the beginnings of an
internal purification process, to use ANT terminology, with the DG articulating its innovative
practices, with DG as a “new model” of consultancy for Omega, as distinct from other activities
within the organization.
The concept of hybridity should not, however, be taken as a symmetrical mixing or as an
attempt to reconcile contradictory practices. Hybrids are part of and embedded in power relations
and, as such, hybrids do not deny asymmetries in power. Power is invoked when the hybrid
becomes stripped of its historical trajectory and the melding of distinct practices are black-
boxed so that they become unquestioned. Once purified, the hybrid can be deployed from
context to context – it becomes a universal technology of control and coordination which is
decontextualized and can be deployed in a range of contexts. Such technologies of control will
become the basis for donors and NGOs to prioritize future funding in part, we suggest, through
the infrastructural black-boxing that occurs through, for example, the development of ICT
systems. It is commonplace for NGOs, for instance, to develop their internal management report-
ing systems, and embody these in ICT systems, in line with their major donors reporting practices.
It is central to the interests of all members working on projects that have such measures of
performance to be seen as performing well to their upstream, authorizing environment. It is well
established in the performance management literature that staff often seek to conform, or at the
very least account for, their activities in relation to the introduction of new performance
measures (Lewis & Madon, 2004; Townley, 1999). For the private sector to provide a manage-
ment methodology such as the VMM (as typifies such large consulting companies) such an offer-
ing needs to be generic enough so as to allow them to sell its application from context to context
(Bloomfield & Danieli, 1995; Howcroft & Light, 2006; Lui & Westrup, 2003). Applying generic
consulting frameworks is likely to require the putting together of broad understandings and prac-
tices across very diverse contexts. Thus, comparing and contrasting projects between such
diverse contexts at anything other than the most general level is likely to be potentially mean-
ingless. Making the project work in specific development contexts will require staff to seek to
ensure that they are mindful of both the frameworks being deployed as well as making the
project work locally. These practices of accountability are then likely to supplement rather
than supplant the everyday practices undertaken in a development context. This is likely to be
especially so when there are tensions between the management technologies criteria and the cri-
teria “on the ground” in developing contexts.
The introduction of management technologies such as performance measurement that are
not sensitive to the local situation, or that identify inappropriate criteria for selection, could
not only have a negative impact on a specific project, but also as they may be used to identify
the donors’ future criteria for funding, and may influence e-development projects more broadly.
When comparing the value that is attributed as deriving from one e-development project with
another within a particular NGO, or the performance between NGOs, then ICTs are likely to
be fundamental as they will be seen as a way to enhance performance data and thereby may
allow for greater accountability (Lewis & Madon, 2004). We can, therefore, suggest that
these new technologies of control are likely to play a prominent role in shaping the e-develop-
ment sector. Here, it is important to be reminded of the many accounts that have pointed to the
westernized notions of development that dominate the development of e-development (Heeks,
2002; Thompson, 2004). In relation to hybridity, NGO staff are likely to undertake practices
that aim to satisfy the new measures of performance so as to secure ongoing funding from
donors, while also seeking to ensure that they make a difference in specific e-development
contexts (Heeks, 2002). Following Silva and Westrup (2009), we suggest that it is likely that
there will be ongoing dilemmas between upstream managerial decision-making versus local
priorities for development.
7.3 Power and hybridity

One of the central themes arising out of our analysis has been the changes in power relations
between the different stakeholders involved in the current making of e-development. Donors,
or more accurately stated “conglomerates of donors,” have become central to the development
network over the last 20 years. This has led other groups to seek to align themselves with the
donors and their development goals in terms of receiving resources for projects. Or with
regard to the private sector being able to generate an income from NGOs by helping them align-
ing themselves with donors (Ballantyne, 2002). However, by focusing on donors, there is a
potential danger that they will not be aligning themselves with the requirements of specific
e-development contexts (Lewis & Madon, 2004; Madon, 1999). Melding these two requirements
will be central to the hybrid practices of those working in the developing context. Further, as
our research has shown, private sector organizations also have to provide an offering to the
e-development sector that not only meets their requirements, but also the requirements for profit-
ability and internal power relations within their own organizations (Fincham, 1999). Aligning
the interests of internal stakeholders, donors, NGOs and the development context itself is
central in understanding the hybrid practices that are emerging in the development sector.
It also demonstrates the multiple tensions and realizations of social capital (Fine, 2002), as
citizens, donors and consumers increasingly guide the deployment of development resources
and interventions (Peacock, 2000).
With regard to power, knowledge and hybridity, our case has highlighted how an emerging
form of knowledge about how projects should be prioritized and operationalized is seeking to
gain credence and legitimacy in the e-development sector. Clearly, the reforms that have
taken place in the public sector have changed the ways in which governments conceive of
how projects should be funded and managed (Saint-Martin, 1998). Public sector reforms have
themselves been undertaken with significant input from private sector consulting organizations.
Why would governments not believe that private sector consulting companies may have
useful knowledge and expertise to help transform e-development initiatives? A management
discourse that has its origins in the private sector is, we think, a significant feature in the
formation of current e-development preoccupations. It shapes the ways in which we conceive
of e-development, the types of management technology and IT developed and introduced, the
projects undertaken and their duration (Heeks, 2002; Velden, 2002). When added to the
expanded conception of social capital as including upstream citizens, this becomes potentially
even more problematic (Fine, 2002). Hybridity in relation to power represents a melding of
interests within and between those different organizations involved in e-development, aligning
themselves with the center of the network and the discourses are involved in the making of
e-development.
8. Conclusion
This paper has provided an account of the hybridization of the e-development network as it is
going through a period of transition. We have argued that the authorizing environment comprises
new forms of value centered, in particular, upon the upstream donors and upstream preoccupa-
tions with social capital. This marks an expansion of the remit of evaluation from the perspective
of those involved in the specific development context. In relation to existing ICT4D research, our
analysis adds to Walsham and Sahay’s (2006) call for there to be more work at broader levels of
analysis (Silva & Hirschheim, 2007). Specifically, we have suggested that of contemporary
importance is understanding the ways in which donor and private sector actors are aligning
themselves and through this are shaping the nature of the ICT4D as both a practical domain
and also as an area of academic research (Silva, 2002; Walsham, 2005). Perhaps more specifi-
cally, we have attempted to respond to Silva and Westrup (2009) who have called for research
that is not just restricted to contributions of technologies to development, but also research that
opens up for critical analysis what they refer to as those relationships that are typically placed in
the black box of context (Avgerou, 2008). Our paper has also reconfirmed and updated the
importance of Madon’s (2000) insights in terms of the shifting priorities of donors. This opens
up new sites for research, first with regard to the internal practices of NGOs, and, second, to
further studies of e-development projects. In addition, developing an in-depth account of the
ways in which NGO’s and private sector IT consulting organizations are forming alliances
and partnerships is also likely to be crucial in furnishing our understandings of issues such as
scalability and sustainability (Sahay & Walsham, 2006). In relation to the ICT4D literature
that has considered the theme of impact assessment, this paper highlights how impact assessment
is a political construction. This contrasts significantly with much of the impact assessment
literature to date that has tended to view it as being able to be classified as an objective
measure where inputs and outputs can be compared and assessed (Duncombe, 2009; Heeks,
Lee, Jang, & Ko, 2008; Heeks & Molla, 2009). There has been much less literature that has
critically evaluated these types of initiatives (Duncombe, 2009; Heeks, 2002). Our research
thus provides a response to Heek’s (2002) observation that international development is
influenced greatly by donors. For as Heeks argues NGOs and other development agencies
tend to mimic the views of donors to be in the best position to secure further funding
(Duncombe, 2009).
One of the central features of contemporary development practice is that NGOs and other
development agencies must respond to a wider range of measures of performance. Research
into how public value is deployed in conjunction with the range of activities with which
NGOs are associated, would illuminate how different forms of value are enacted as concurrent,
separate or coherent in NGOs. The context of NGO work is characterized, according to the
concept of public value, by multiple strategic and practical demands, where the different inter-
ests of a range of stakeholders and the social capital of recipients and donors of development
resources are legitimate goals for the organization. Public value provides an analytical template
for further research that offers the possibility to sharpen conceptual insights into the formation
of emergent realities of development intervention broadly and the ICT4D intervention specifi-
cally and offers new empirical sites for detailed studies of development in practice over time
and in different contexts.
We have suggested that e-development can be usefully described as a hybridized practice. As
the impure melding and intersection of techniques of performance calculation from the public
and private sector, preoccupations with impacts on upstream donors’ social capital and a
belief in technologically led development, our research has documented the emergence of a par-
ticular form of hybridity in which performance measurement and impacts on a wide range of
actors becomes an important feature. Much of the critical debate in development studies and
in the ICT4D literature focuses on the conditionalities set by donors and problems associated
with the top – down interventions. This paper has added a concern with the diverse circulation
and melding of practices between actor networks and organizational contexts. From this, we
can also suggest that in-depth description, tracing and deciphering of hybridized practices
challenges specific fields such as development studies, information systems and the study of
management generally. Omega’s attempts at constructing new forms of value and a technique
for managing performance in the development sector provides an exemplar of current attempts
e-development for policy-makers, development organizations and communities across the
developing world. Future research questions that would be useful to pursue would include
how do NGOs navigate through the demands of value management? What are the connections
and dilemmas between donors, consultants and communities in the deployment of value
management practices? Clearly, our insights into the emergence of a new hybrid for the
management of development needs elaboration in further studies to provide further insights
into what we think is a significant reconfiguration of what is understood by the development
management.
Acknowledgements
We thank the anonymous reviewers and also Robert Moosbrugger for assistance with this
research. We also thank Omega for generous research access.
Notes on contributors
Martin Brigham is a Lecturer in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster
University Management School, Lancaster University, UK. His current research interests focus on the
role of partnerships in non-governmental and third sector organizations, and how accountability is observed
in relation to environmental and social sustainability. He has a long-standing interest in the technological
mediation of workplace practices.
Niall Hayes is a Reader at the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University
Management School, Lancaster University, UK. His research interests relate to the social and organiz-
ational implications arising from the introduction and use of information systems in organizations. His
specific research domains are fourfold: knowledge management, electronic government, plagiarism
detection systems and development and information and communication technology.
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ISSN: 0268-1102 (Print) 1554-0170 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/titd20

Hybridity, consulting and e-development in

Martin Brigham & Niall Hayes

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Hybridity, consulting and e-development in the making: inscribing new

Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University Management School,

# 2013 Commonwealth Secretariat

2. E-development: situating a changing context

2.1 Donors, NGOs and e-development

2.2 Partnership and development

3. Theoretical framework: ANT and hybridity

5.1 Background: Omega’s DG

5.2 Omega’s DG’s problematization of impact assessment

5.3 From new public management to public value: the VMM

6. Discussion: translating e-development

6.1 Establishing development trajectories

6.2 Inscribing new forms of value into development

6.3 Gaining legitimacy and changing forms of consulting

7. Hybridity and e-development

Figure 1. e-Development as a hybrid practice.

7.1 Knowledge and hybridity

7.2 Technologies of control and hybridity

7.3 Power and hybridity

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