What do Private Companies Prioritise When Implementing International Development Projects? Evidence from Four Central and Eastern European Donors

Abstract

As donors channel more of their development assistance through private companies, a discussion is growing on what this shift means for international development. This paper focuses on four Central European donors, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, who have recently implemented new incentives to promote the greater engagement of the private sector in their international development programmes. The paper uses new survey data of project managers at organisations implementing aid projects funded by these four donors to explore how private actors differ in their approaches to aid implementation. The analysis reveals that the type of implementing organisation does not affect their focus on internal project goals (budget, schedule, and scope), but project managers at private firms consider long-term impact and economic sustainability of the project less important. These findings support claims that for-profit organisations exercise a short-term approach to satisfy funders, but lack a deeper focus on long-term development.

Keywords:

• international development
• marketisation of aid
• private companies
• development projects
• project goals
• Poisson regression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Economics and Business in Prague under grant number F2/15/2022.

Notes on contributors

Gabriela Dufková

Gabriela Dufková is a PhD student at the University of Economics and Business in Prague, the Czech Republic, in the programme International Economic Relations. She was a visiting student at Aston University, Birmingham, UK, during her Erasmus + exchange in 2022. Her research focuses on the efficiency of international development (ID) projects and on the adoption of project management methodologies on ID projects funded by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Specifically, her research mainly evaluates how the application of project management tools can improve the project success during the implementation and post-implementation phases and how the adoption of these tools is influenced by the sector of the implementing organisation. The expected graduation year is 2024.

Balázs Szent-Iványi

Balázs Szent-Iványi is a Reader in Politics and International Relations at Aston University, Birmingham, UK, and also holds an Associate Professor position at Corvinus University Budapest, Hungary. His research focuses on the political economy of foreign aid, with an emphasis on how foreign aid policy decisions are made in donor countries and the EU. His latest monograph, European Civil Society and International Development Aid, is out with Routledge in 2022.