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The roots of this book go back to 1993, when we began to write our first book about improving the performance of research institutions in developing countries (Lusthaus et al., 1995). Development agencies have found it difficult to make adequate and useful investments aimed at improving the performance of research centers. Since we were working on this issue, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) asked us to share our experience in written form with the wider development community. Almost 10 years later, we have a much wider set of experiences under our belts, and at the same time institutions and organizations matter now more than ever. There continues to be a need to invest in organizations in the developing world in systematic ways that can significantly improve performance over both the short and medium terms. As we began to discuss the development of this text, we asked Fred Carden and George Plinio Montalván to join our team and add their experience and insight.

In this book, we take the organization as the basic unit of analysis, considering it to be a social unit that has an impact on our day-to-day lives. Culture and language play a crucial role in understanding the functioning of organizations around the world. In our dialogue with developing countries, we have come to realize the various levels of complexity involved in carrying out organizational assessments in these countries. To overcome this complexity, organizations must develop a common framework and concepts whenever they engage in organizational assessments. We have found that the framework and concepts in this book help to make such assessments successful.

Organizational Assessment: A Framework for Improving Performance puts forth a framework for analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of an organization in relation to its performance. The text introduces a heuristic framework that has guided our work for the past decade or so. In general, the framework posits that organizational performance is a function of its enabling environment, capacity and organizational motivation. It goes into a great deal of detail in trying to capture the ideas and concepts that underpin each of the four broad organizational ideas (performance, environment, capacity and motivation). In this framework, organizational performance is seen as a result of the organization’s work.

Unlike our first edition, published by the IDRC in 1995, this book adopts a more generic approach toward organizations and is not primarily focused on research centers and nongovernmental organizations. Over the past decade, we have been privi-

leged to work with a wide variety of government ministries and agencies, not-for-profit organizations, international organizations and financial institutions, and private sector firms. Thus, we have expanded the experiences for which the framework has been used, changed some of our analytical constructs, and revised our concepts in order for the framework to be more applicable to a wide range of organizational types.

This book is written for organizational practitioners. By this we mean organizational leaders and consultants who are interested in better understanding the present state of organizations and how to choose areas for investment that can improve organizational performance. At a very basic level, we are interested in working with colleagues who see improving organizational performance as an important piece of the puzzle that defines development effectiveness. We see organizational performance as an area that has been neglected by the development community. In this context, we want to open a dialog with those organizational practioners who feel that systematic analysis can be used to support the process of organizational learning and change. Beyond the general assessment framework, the book provides methodological tools and support for those interested in using it as a template for carrying out organizational assessments.

All organizations—whether for-profit or not-for-profit, government or civil society, or privately or publicly owned—engage in some form (formal, informal) of organizational assessment. What is not agreed upon are the frameworks, methods and processes that have proven to be successful in informing stakeholders about the status of the organization. Is the organization performing well? Why or why not? This book is designed to add to the theory and practice of organizational assessment.

During the years that we have worked on this project, we have benefited greatly from the many colleagues, clients and friends who have discussed various ideas with us and critiqued our work. It is a long list that starts with our own organizations and extends well beyond them to the literally hundreds of organizations with which we have worked or had contact over the past decade. All of them have contributed in one way or another to this book. Unfortunately, they are too numerous to mention.

We would also like to acknowledge the contribution made by Diane Eyre, who did the initial editing. Valerie Chalhoub, Tracy Wallis, Mark Pestinger and Maroushka Kanywani deserve special mention for putting in the finishing touches. Finally, we would like to thank our families for their unfailing support.

Charles Lusthaus,
for the authors

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