Disrupting System Dynamics: A Framework for Understanding Systemic Changes
- Partner: Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO)
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: October 2016
This paper builds on a literature review on evaluating systems conducted under the Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) project, which found issues with the existing frameworks and indicators used for measuring systemic change. It presents a framework that outlines a pathway for systemic change, and presents a complementary set of indicator areas, or ‘domains’, that signal systemic changes.
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Case Studies on Facilitating Systemic Change in Feed the Future: A Synthesis of Cases from Ghana, Senegal, Zambia and Rwanda
- Partner: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
- Publication Type: Case Study
- Date: October 2016
Feed the Future (FtF) is facilitating changes in core agricultural systems that contributes to more sustainable and scalable development objectives. This report summarizes the findings from research into four FtF projects, selected as illustrations of observable systemic change.
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Testing Tools for Assessing Systemic Change: Synthesis Paper
- Partner: Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO)
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: September 2016
Building on the work of the Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) activity on measuring indications of systemic change, this paper summarizes the results of a multi-year research effort to understand the potential of a set of tools – Standard Measurement Tools, Outcome Harvesting, SenseMaker, and Social Network Analysis – to measure systemic change and provides practical guidance for practitioners.
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The Utility of Market Analyses: Key Findings from a Landscape Review
- Partner: Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO)
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: September 2016
This report provides a review of market analyses and in-depth interviews with key staff from projects seeking to apply a market systems development (MSD) approach. The purpose of this paper is to improve the practices of projects wanting to understand where and how to intervene to facilitate market systems development that creates inclusive benefits for target populations.
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The Theory Behind the Approach: Women’s Economic Empowerment in Inclusive Market Systems Development
- Partner: The SEEP Network and UN Women
- Publication Type: Webinar
- Date: August 4, 2016
This webinar examines the implications for women's economic empowerment in inclusive market development based on a paper released by USAID's Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) project, presented by the report's authors. An expert commentator from the International Labour Organization (ILO) discussed potential implications, followed by an ample question and answer session.
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Practical Tools for Measuring System Health
- Partner: Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO)
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: August 2016
This brief paper describes an effort to build a set of basic and easily used tools for monitoring system dynamics, or system health. The term, “system dynamics,” refers to the way actors, or agents, within a system act and relate to one another. It includes flows between agents as well as the norms that govern the way groups of agents in a system make seemingly independent decisions.
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Getting There from Here: Knowledge, Leadership, Culture, and Rules Toward Adaptive Management in Market Systems Programmes
- Partner: BEAM Exchange
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: July 2016
This study examines the incentives and constraints to adaptive programming across the donor-implementer relationship – and how the behaviour that results influences market systems programming. Based on research and interviews with over 60 experts across a range of donor and implementer organisations, four ‘baskets’ of issues emerged: knowledge, leadership, culture, and procurement and contract features.
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The Social Norms Factor: How Gendered Social Norms Influence How We Empower Women in Market Systems Development
- Partner: BEAM Exchange
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: July 2016
This paper explores how social norms influence women’s economic empowerment in market systems development, and what practical lessons might be learned. It documents how gendered social norms are currently understood in academic research, then attempts to present the current state of practice for market systems programmes via two in-depth cases, and seven mini-cases.
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Scaling Impact: Cambodia MSME Ex-Post Assessment
- Partner: Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: 2016
Over the course of the Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) activity, MSA discovered that there had been very analysis of the durability of the results created by market systems development initiatives following their completion. Consequently, MSA conducted this ex-post assessment of the USAID/Cambodia Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) project's work in the swine sector five years following its closure. MSME promoted the use by the private sector of an embedded training model, in which companies would provide technical information on input selection and application at no direct charge to swine farmers in order to increase input sales. MSA’s research found that the embedded training model has endured and indeed expanded since the end of the project, being used to varying extents by the majority of the firms in the sector, indicating that it has become an industry norm.
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Testing Tools for Assessing Systemic Change: Outcome Harvesting – The ALCP Project in the Georgian Dairy Industry
- Partner: Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO), United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
- Publication Type: Report
- Date: 2016
This paper summarizes MSA’s test of the outcome harvesting approach as a tool to measure systemic change. In May and June 2016, MSA applied outcome harvesting to the Alliances Lesser Caucasus Programme (ALCP)’s work in the dairy industry in Georgia. In so doing, MSA adapted the tool to be sensitive to identifying systemic change outcomes. Instead of focusing on systemic changes within the market system, this application innovatively looked at systemic changes in the geographic areas where ALCP operated and hence identified a much broader set of systemic changes.
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