Alerts as Coordination Mechanisms

In this study, we explore how clinical decision support features can be designed to aid teams in caring for patients during time-critical medical emergencies. We interviewed 12 clinicians with experience in leading pediatric trauma resuscitations to elicit design requirements for decision support alerts and how these alerts should be designed for teams with shared leadership. Based on the interview data, we identified three types of decision support alerts: reminders to perform tasks, alerts to changes in patient status, and suggestions for interventions. We also found that clinicians perceived alerts in this setting as coordination mechanisms and that some alert preferences were associated with leader experience levels. From these findings, we contribute three perspectives on how alerts can aid coordination and discuss implications for designing decision support alerts for shared leadership in time-critical medical processes.

NGO Coordination and the Changing Aid Environment in Cambodia: Challenges and Opportunities

<p>Cambodia is one of the poorest and most aid-dependent countries in Southeast Asia. Historically NGOs have operated in Cambodia since the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. Since the Paris Peace Accord Agreement, signed by the Cambodian leaders in 1991, the number of NGOs has grown rapidly and played a pivotal role in delivering public services and advocacy. In an effort to improve efficiencies and effectiveness aid delivery mechanisms have become extraordinarily complex and cumbersome. They require all parties to have strong coordination efforts within their individual groups and amongst broader stakeholders. This thesis analyses the effectiveness of NGO coordination in Cambodia. It is based on recently completed in-country research involving participant observation and a series of semi-structured interviews. The paper explores NGO coordination and how the NGO community engages in the aid coordination processes led by the Cambodian government. The findings indicate that the NGO coordination efforts have encountered a series of challenges. These include cultural, political and institutional challenges and poor NGO coordination between the national and provincial levels. They have resulted in a) the absence of a collective voice, b) slow progress on NGO self-regulation, c) the fragmentation and duplication of NGO projects, d) a poor working relationship with the government e) little understanding of aid effectiveness and f) poor engagement in the aid coordination mechanisms. Thus, the NGO coordination efforts are relatively loose although progress has been made since the 1990s. Consequently, Cambodia's NGO sector remains immature and weak. There are, however, some opportunities for improvement through creating an environment that enables policy dialogue with the government.</p>

NGO Coordination and the Changing Aid Environment in Cambodia: Challenges and Opportunities

<p>Cambodia is one of the poorest and most aid-dependent countries in Southeast Asia. Historically NGOs have operated in Cambodia since the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. Since the Paris Peace Accord Agreement, signed by the Cambodian leaders in 1991, the number of NGOs has grown rapidly and played a pivotal role in delivering public services and advocacy. In an effort to improve efficiencies and effectiveness aid delivery mechanisms have become extraordinarily complex and cumbersome. They require all parties to have strong coordination efforts within their individual groups and amongst broader stakeholders. This thesis analyses the effectiveness of NGO coordination in Cambodia. It is based on recently completed in-country research involving participant observation and a series of semi-structured interviews. The paper explores NGO coordination and how the NGO community engages in the aid coordination processes led by the Cambodian government. The findings indicate that the NGO coordination efforts have encountered a series of challenges. These include cultural, political and institutional challenges and poor NGO coordination between the national and provincial levels. They have resulted in a) the absence of a collective voice, b) slow progress on NGO self-regulation, c) the fragmentation and duplication of NGO projects, d) a poor working relationship with the government e) little understanding of aid effectiveness and f) poor engagement in the aid coordination mechanisms. Thus, the NGO coordination efforts are relatively loose although progress has been made since the 1990s. Consequently, Cambodia's NGO sector remains immature and weak. There are, however, some opportunities for improvement through creating an environment that enables policy dialogue with the government.</p>

Effective Aid Coordination: A Case Study of Lao People's Democratic Republic

<p>The purpose of this research is to find what is "effective aid coordination" particularly drawing from the case study of Lao People's Democratic Republic and lessons from Vietnam and Timor Leste. The study proposes that a solution to the problem of poor delivery of ODA is that the development industry must improve its ODA spending systems and incorporate aid budgets into the national budget and development plans. It is vital to encourage national governments to lead their own development agenda and support development according to local priorities. The results suggest that it is not just a matter of coordinating aid effectively, but the aid industry needs the right capacity and people to be involved. Capacity building is much needed within the recipient national offices as well as many of the international donor agencies. This would allow the local government to take the lead and prioritise the commitments signed in the Paris Declaration, the Vientiane Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals. It is recommended by many practitioners that the number of agencies working in decision making processes in the aid effectiveness agenda in Laos should be limited to reduce transaction costs and promote clear communication within the development community. However different environments such as Timor Leste, suggests that civil society should be involved more and that donor agencies should not take the lead in aid delivery.</p>

Effective Aid Coordination: A Case Study of Lao People's Democratic Republic

<p>The purpose of this research is to find what is "effective aid coordination" particularly drawing from the case study of Lao People's Democratic Republic and lessons from Vietnam and Timor Leste. The study proposes that a solution to the problem of poor delivery of ODA is that the development industry must improve its ODA spending systems and incorporate aid budgets into the national budget and development plans. It is vital to encourage national governments to lead their own development agenda and support development according to local priorities. The results suggest that it is not just a matter of coordinating aid effectively, but the aid industry needs the right capacity and people to be involved. Capacity building is much needed within the recipient national offices as well as many of the international donor agencies. This would allow the local government to take the lead and prioritise the commitments signed in the Paris Declaration, the Vientiane Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals. It is recommended by many practitioners that the number of agencies working in decision making processes in the aid effectiveness agenda in Laos should be limited to reduce transaction costs and promote clear communication within the development community. However different environments such as Timor Leste, suggests that civil society should be involved more and that donor agencies should not take the lead in aid delivery.</p>

Analysis of Aid Absorption in Burkina Faso: Could Donors’ Coordination Play an Effective Role?

This study assesses absorption level of aid in Burkina Faso and analyzes the factors that determine this level. The analysis postulates that the level in absorbing aid is low and assumes that this level is determined by the multiplicity of donors and by mechanisms used to coordinate aid. To test this assumption, the study uses secondary data collected from 10 sectors of public administration over the period 2000-2019. Aid allocated to these sectors represented at least 75% of total aid received by the country during this period. The assessment indicate that about 58.46% of aid allocated to these sectors was effectively spent. Factors determining this absorption level were estimated using a Tobit model. The results conclude that the limiting factors lie both in donors’ behavior and in aid coordination mechanisms. Thus, better donors’ coordination could be an effective mechanism to improve aid absorption in these sectors.

Aid is a blunt tool for promoting democracy

Significance The move reflects the conventional wisdom that aid can influence the behaviour of recipient countries, promoting democratic values. However, such goals are undermined by multiple factors, including the domestic politics of the recipients and the donors. Impacts Post-pandemic aid cuts risk reducing public services in aid-dependent countries over the coming years. Aid withdrawal, without wider coordination, will prove ineffective in altering the behaviour of incumbent leaders. Aid coordination will become harder, especially on democratic issues, as non-traditional donors with different priorities increase funding. Donors such as China will link aid for COVID-19 vaccines to geostrategic goals in aid-dependent countries such as Cambodia.

Expression Unleashed

Human expression is diverse and multi-faceted, ranging from ordinary language use to painting, from exaggerated displays of affection to micro-movements that aid coordination. Here we present and defend the claim that this expressive diversity is united by an interrelated suite of cognitive capacities, the evolved function of which is the expression and recognition of informative intentions. We describe how evolutionary dynamics normally leash communication to narrow domains of statistical mutual benefit, and how they are unleashed in humans. The relevant cognitive capacities are cognitive adaptations to living in a partner choice social ecology; and they are, correspondingly, part of the ordinarily developing human cognitive phenotype, emerging early and reliably in ontogeny. In other words, we identify distinctive features of our species’ social ecology that can explain how and why humans evolved the cognitive capacities that, in turn, lead to massive diversity in means and modes of expression. We make relevant cross-species comparisons, describe how the relevant cognitive capacities can evolve in a gradual manner, and survey how unleashed expression facilitates not only the evolution of languages, but novel behaviour in other domains too, focusing on the examples of joint action, punishment, and the arts. We aim to help reorient cognitive pragmatics, as a phenomenon that is not a supplement to linguistic communication and on the periphery of language science, but rather the foundation of many of the most of the most distinctive features of human behaviour and societies.

Effect of volatility of development aid on volatility of foreign direct investment inflows

Purpose This paper aims to examine the effect of development aid volatility on foreign direct investment (FDI) volatility in aid recipient countries. Design/methodology/approach The empirical analysis has relied on a sample of 117 countries over the period 1981–2016 and used the two-step system generalized methods of moments (GMM) approach. Findings The findings indicate that development aid volatility exerts a positive and significant effect on FDI volatility, with the magnitude of this positive effect rising as countries’ real per capita income increases. Furthermore, development aid volatility is non-linearly related to FDI volatility, as additional rises in the degree of development aid volatility further amplify FDI volatility. Research limitations/implications These outcomes highlight that volatility of development aid inflows enhances the volatility of FDI inflows. Thus, the enhancement of the aid coordination system between donor-countries and recipient-countries would not only help mitigate the volatility of aid – which reduces the macroeconomic effectiveness of aid – but also stabilizes FDI inflows to developing countries. Practical implications A limitation of the present paper is its reliance on aggregate FDI inflows to perform the analysis. Availability of data on greenfield FDI inflows and cross-border mergers and acquisitions FDI inflows over a long-time-period would provide an opportunity to conduct an in-depth analysis of the volatility of development aid on FDI inflows volatility. Furthermore, it could be interesting to investigate in the future (if data is available) the extent to which aid coordination systems between donor-countries and recipient-countries versus recipient-countries’ domestic factors contribute to explaining the dynamics of FDI inflows volatility in recipient-countries of these two types of capital flows. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this topic has not been addressed in the literature.