ILO

Back to index

Market systems development for Decent Work: the Lab – Phase II - Final evaluation

eval_number:

3210

eval_url:

https://webapps.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/eval/3210

lessons_learned:

themes:

theme:

Organizational learning

category:

Organizational issues

---

comments:

The ILO

challenges:

Tracing the Lab’s success stories shows that working with existing and changing incentives by building relationships, supporting the adoption and adaptation of the approach needed to foster independent ownership and investment, and facilitating the organic spread of the approach takes time.

success:

In the case of mainstreaming MSD in the ILO, incentives are most likely to change slowly in response to donor pressure and demonstrable success from the application of the approach in multiple projects. The Lab cannot control these changes, but it can contribute to them and build on them when they occur. Technical assistance does not change incentives, but it can leverage and accelerate changes in incentives that are also influenced by other factors. For example, Lab 2 has shown that presenting MSD in ways that are complementary to ILO ways of working, avoiding words like ‘market’ where they are likely to trigger defensiveness, identifying the units and departments that the approach is likely to be most immediately useful to, building a deep understanding of existing incentives in these units and departments and working with them, building a close working relationship with the ILO’s funders most interested in systemic approaches, proving a high level of technical support to any ILO projects that do take a market systems approach and widely disseminating success stories can all contribute to gradually changing perceptions and growing interest in applying the approach.

context:

One of the Lab’s objectives is to embed their methods and knowledge within the ILO before their funding comes to an end. However, the way the ILO is structured, its informal norms, staffing projects and many other factors that affect incentives to adopt the Lab’s methods and knowledge are beyond the Lab’s influence.

description:

Usually incentives change in response to a complex set of factors beyond any one project’s control. The project cannot directly change incentives, but by being opportunistic – leveraging existing incentives and capitalising on positive changes – it may be able to able to accelerate changes and promote its agenda. However, this will not happen quickly. Changing incentives is ambitious and takes time. It is usually far more complex and ambitious than changing capacities. Projects whose outcomes rely on changing incentives should be planned and resourced accordingly.

administrative_issues:

N/A

url:

https://webapps.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/lessons/231988

---

location:

country:

Inter-Regional

region:

Inter-Regional

---

eval_title:

Market systems development for Decent Work: the Lab – Phase II - Final evaluation