The study examines the importance of competitive advantage and change in a dynamic environment. The purpose of the study is to explore how AAI could remain relevant and competitive in the market and examines how regularly changing its approaches to programme delivery could be used to meet needs of the community. The study also focused on the impact of AAI’s pace of change and how the pace impacted on the organization’s effectiveness and quality of programmed delivery. AAI relied on its past successful programmes to address the need of communities in many new countries. However, previously successful programmes did not prove popular when rolled in new markets. AAI programmes are suffering substantial withdrawals from beneficiaries. Beneficiaries are withdrawing from AAI programmes, complaining that the programme delivery approaches were not competitive and innovative. Many new organizations being formed are competing not just for beneficiary markets, but for financial resources (funding), skills and new ideas of delivering programmes. Traditional government type donors are being overtaken by a new crop of donors that is in favour of funding competitive and innovative organizations. Traditional aid organizations are losing market share to smaller agencies. The organizational structure of AAI appears not to support effective and efficient delivery of programmes. With no senior manager at the helm of the department, coordinating activities, sustaining competitive advantage and managing change within the programme department remained a challenge for the organization. A frastruated staff compliments exacerbated the situation. Employee turnover at the key and tactical levels resulted in the department operating without adequate staff and key personnel. This made coordination and cooperation amongst units very difficult. Various programme units operated in silos and mixed messages were sent to community resulting in the community being unhappy with AAI. Community felt that AAI did not consult with them when deciding on how to meet their needs. Community members felt that AAI was taking unilateral decisions and did not care about their feedback and the quality of the programmes delivered. This study further examines how AAI has suffered due to its inability to respond to the needs of community and its failure to adapt to the changing business environment. It reveals how innovation and adaptability is critical for retaining competitive advantage. It reveals how capabilities once built can be eroded by competition through copying. It concludes by revealing the importance of dynamic capabilities in sustaining competitive advantage as well as the need to change in response to the market. / Graduate School of Business Leadership / (M.B.A.)

Several theorists have argued that organisations can increase performance through formalised cooperation with other important organisations (Baum & Oliver 1991). This notion of “institutional linkages” is appealing as it uses linkages as a proxy for legitimacy awarded to organisations for adherence to exogenous expectations. However, this operationalization also has its limitations. For what is the role of institutional linkages in groups of organisations where a majority of them – or all – are linked? Baum & Oliver (1991) provide meagre advice for what is to expect beyond the point of organisations being legitimate (linked) or not. But if organisations that hold (at least) one institutional linkage perform better than unlinked organisations, should not organisations that have multiple linkages also perform better than those who have but a single one? Intuitively, this seems reasonable. But considering that institutional linkages are associated with costs in terms of additional administration, audit and fees, it is not obvious that organisations desire ‘as many linkages as possible’. Using data for 339 aid organisations in Sweden, this study suggests developing the theoretical concept of institutional linkages, arguing that the number of institutional linkages serves as a prediction of organisational performance. Although further inquiry is needed to determine whether this effect persists as the number of linkages continues to increase, the findings suggest that organisations will strive towards having more institutional linkages than competing organisations.

The study examines the importance of competitive advantage and change in a dynamic environment. The purpose of the study is to explore how AAI could remain relevant and competitive in the market and examines how regularly changing its approaches to programme delivery could be used to meet needs of the community. The study also focused on the impact of AAI’s pace of change and how the pace impacted on the organization’s effectiveness and quality of programmed delivery. AAI relied on its past successful programmes to address the need of communities in many new countries. However, previously successful programmes did not prove popular when rolled in new markets. AAI programmes are suffering substantial withdrawals from beneficiaries. Beneficiaries are withdrawing from AAI programmes, complaining that the programme delivery approaches were not competitive and innovative. Many new organizations being formed are competing not just for beneficiary markets, but for financial resources (funding), skills and new ideas of delivering programmes. Traditional government type donors are being overtaken by a new crop of donors that is in favour of funding competitive and innovative organizations. Traditional aid organizations are losing market share to smaller agencies. The organizational structure of AAI appears not to support effective and efficient delivery of programmes. With no senior manager at the helm of the department, coordinating activities, sustaining competitive advantage and managing change within the programme department remained a challenge for the organization. A frastruated staff compliments exacerbated the situation. Employee turnover at the key and tactical levels resulted in the department operating without adequate staff and key personnel. This made coordination and cooperation amongst units very difficult. Various programme units operated in silos and mixed messages were sent to community resulting in the community being unhappy with AAI. Community felt that AAI did not consult with them when deciding on how to meet their needs. Community members felt that AAI was taking unilateral decisions and did not care about their feedback and the quality of the programmes delivered. This study further examines how AAI has suffered due to its inability to respond to the needs of community and its failure to adapt to the changing business environment. It reveals how innovation and adaptability is critical for retaining competitive advantage. It reveals how capabilities once built can be eroded by competition through copying. It concludes by revealing the importance of dynamic capabilities in sustaining competitive advantage as well as the need to change in response to the market. / Graduate School of Business Leadership / (M.B.A.)

This study aims to investigate how aid organisations with different means of financing respond to corruption allegations, and how the perceived risk of reputational loss affects that response.  The method used to answer the research question was a collective case study where three different aid organisations, Oxfam GB, UNDP and SIDA, which all have different funding mechanisms, were compared in their response to corruption allegations - before and after the public gained knowledge of those allegations. The analysis shows that there is a difference in the response to corruption allegations between the cases, namely that Oxfam GB and UNDP developed their response to a large extent when the public learnt of the allegations, SIDA on the other hand did not change their response at all. However, donor pressure seems to be more important for this induced change rather than the perceived risk of reputational loss.

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