Engendering organizational change: the BRAC case
Rao, A.; Kelleher, D.
IDS Bulletin 26(3): 69-78
1995
ISSN/ISBN: 0265-5012 Document Number: 531278
The paper analyses the first phase of an ongoing structural intervention which works at the nexus of gender relations, organizational change, and quality improvement, with a large rural development NGO in South Asia, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. Identifying this new issue, and acquiring and deploying knowledge around it within the organization, has involved definition and continuous reiteration of basic premises concerning gender, individual learning and systems development; an organization-wide knowledge building exercise facilitated by a series of structured diagnostic processes; negotiating premises and visions, transferring ownership, and contributing to BRAC's ongoing organizational exercises in strategic sagacity. The paper reflects on these processes and discusses some critical dilemmas: expanding parameters versus boundary maintenance, the prerequisites for innovation versus institutional bargaining, and change options versus change realities, that is, distinguishing between what is theoretically desirable and what is possible in programme terms, at what costs and with what effect in a sociopolitical environment wherein demand for changing gender relations is weak, fundamentalist forces are increasingly dominant, and where existing structural realities ensure that the process of women's empowerment is both non-additive and non-linear.