Capacity Building

Sanyal 10.1177/0899764005282480

Capacity Building Through Partnership: Intermediary Nongovernmental Organizations as Local and Global Actors
Paromita Sanyal Harvard University
Partnership and capacity building have become popular strategies among intermediary nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Partnership is viewed as a cure for centrally managed bureaucratic NGOs and capacity building as a measure for strengthening local NGOs. This article examines the case of an intermediary NGO that followed a unique strategy combining capacity building through partnership. Through this, it reveals the trade-offs involved in the choice of an appropriate governance structure. It was found that although the decentralized network form of governance proved to be a powerful innovation, it presented a paradox. Especially in this case where the goal was transmission of specific values and perspectives about sustainable development, such a strategy posed a complex set of trade-offs. Drawing from the experience of this organization, the author suggests that a plural form organization may provide maximum governance efficiency for intermediary NGOs like the one examined here. These insights may also apply to social movement organizations. Keywords: capacity building; intermediary nongovermental organizations; partnership model; governance; centralization; decentralization

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)1 have established their presence as important civil society actors. However, one important reason for their inability to bring sustainable impact has been their failure to make the right linkages between their work at the grassroots level and the larger sociopolitical systems and institutional structures in which they are embedded (Edwards & Hulme, 1992). In other words, the problem has been one of negotiating between local imperatives and global structures. The problem has become acute in the context of a globalized world, where lobbying global institutions is as important as delivering services locally to have a sustainable impact on development efforts.
Note: I would like to thank Peter V. Marsden, L. David Brown, and Kenneth Andrews for their insightful comments. All remaining errors are mine.
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 1, March 2006 66-82 DOI: 10.1177/0899764005282480 2006 Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action

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Over the past two decades, a new type of NGO that aims to create linkages between local issues and global institutions has emerged. These NGOs have been variously termed as intermediary NGOs (Carroll, 1992), bridging organizations (Brown, 1991), and support organizations (Brown & Kalegaonkar, 2002). They have in common two features that distinguish them from conventional NGOs. First, they are located at the center of several constituencieslocal groups, national bodies, and international institutions. Second, their activities include innovative programs like organizational capacity building, training and staff development, research and advocacy, collection and dissemination of information, networking, all of which are not considered to be traditional NGO activities.2 These features enable such organizations to establish the bridging ties between civil society groups and organizations and the institutional structures at the national and global level. Thus compared to conventional service providing NGOs, they have greater potential for making sustainable and large-scale impacts. As far as their political orientation goes, support organizations may be largely apolitical adopting political stands on an issue basis while lobbying governments and international organizations. These organizations often become suppliers of information and active participants in various social movements and transnational advocacy networks (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Thus, these organizations are at the same time local actors and global actors depending on the nature of their issue involvement at a particular point in time. The unconventional nature of their functions and their structural location makes the issue of governance a problematic one for such organizations. This article is an in-depth study of the governance related issues of a leading intermediary NGO, the Society for Participatory Research In Asia (PRIA, India). This organization had a unique decentralized network form of governance. On the one hand, it collaborated with international organizations in generating and disseminating knowledge about various development issues. On the other hand, it collaborated with a network of regional NGOs in imparting training to local NGOs on various organizational skills. Drawing on the case of PRIA, this article reveals the unusual paradox that confronted the organization and explores some of the related governance challenges. SITUATING GOVERNANCE One pertinent question that needs to be answered is whether intermediary NGOs3 are truly a new type of organization, and if aspects of their governance warrant special attention. The only other type of organization that resembles these is halfway houses4 described by Morris (1984) in the context of their role in the emergence of the American Civil Rights Movement. Intermediary NGOs are similar to such halfway houses with respect to their repertoire of functions but radically different in their structural position in the organization environment. They are similar to the extent that both types of organizations

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are preoccupied with building the capacities of individuals and organizations to enable them to improve their performance. They are both valuable to their causes (movements and development agenda, respectively) because they can provide additional resources to strengthen their indigenous base. Halfway houses strengthen the indigenous base of movements and help to create the internal organization that movements need to sustain collective action over long periods of time. They do this by training people in organizing tactics and educating them about past movements. Likewise, intermediary NGOs like PRIA strive to strengthen the internal organization of local NGOs and community-based groups so that they can sustain their efforts to facilitate development over long periods of time. They do this by providing training in organization development issues. However, when it comes to their structural position in the organizational environment, intermediary NGOs are more advantageously located than halfway houses. Rather than being relatively isolated from mainstream society, these NGOs are at the center stage of development discourses. It is possible to say that they fill the crucial structural gap created by the separation between local NGOs and global funding agencies. Intermediary NGOs like PRIA target local and global actors to achieve their purpose. And in doing this, they face a structural dilemma that halfway houses did not face because they targeted only individual actors. In that sense, they are similar to communitybased mediating structures studied by Couto (1999) who noted that in these cases successful advocacy came from the capacity of the organization to pursue community organizing and community development simultaneously, at least to some degree. I argue that the source of this dilemma has to be traced to the choice of appropriate organizational structures in sustaining collective action toward achievement of the end goals, which in this case are development and the inculcation of a perspective about it. I argue that this is akin to the problem that social movement organizations confront in the creation of appropriate mobilizing structures (McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1996).5 Within the social movements literature, resource mobilization theory (McCarthy & Zald, 1977) and the political process model (Tilly, 1978) addresses the creation of mobilizing structures. In social movement organizations, the problem of mobilizing structures has typically presented itself as a dilemma between centralization and decentralization. Among those who study it there is a divide between those who argue that centralized bureaucratic organizations are comparatively more effective in mobilizing resources and sustaining collective action (Gamson, 1975; McCarthy & Zald, 1977) than decentralized informal organizations sharing an overarching ideology (Gerlach & Hine, 1970). However, while centralized structures facilitate technical expertise and coordination that are essential for successful mobilization and institutional change, they are less effective in engaging grassroots participation. On the contrary, decentralized organizations are effective in engaging grassroots participation but find it

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more difficult to ensure strategic effectiveness in mobilizing them (Zald & Garner, 1966). In addition, it has been noted (Zald & Denton, 1987) that decentralization provides greater opportunity and flexibility to innovate and experiment in response to local situations, while centralization provides greater facilities and control for implementation. One of the central problems that is implicitly present throughout yet conspicuously absent in the existing treatment of governance issues in the social movement literature is the question of efficiency (or the lack of it): efficiency of governance structures in achieving ultimate social change goals. A profitable way of highlighting efficiency concerns is to view this discussion of governance problem in light of the transaction-cost economizing perspective. For this we have to consider PRIA and its partner organizations as the nonmarket equivalent of a strategic network, that is, interorganizational relations [that] take on a more perduring nature than that of the narrowly defined instrumentalities of procuring necessary inputs and disposing of products, . . . [but include] seeking unfair advantages and subverting the market mechanism (Williamson, 1981, p. 570). And in cases like this where knowledge and shared values are more important than skills, continuity of interorganizational relationships has added value. In PRIAs case the assets of interest were those that facilitated a continued supply of services (partners acting as channels for dissemination of training to other civil society organizations and groups). According to the transaction-cost approach, in such cases the main issue is identifying governance structures that are appropriate for uncertainty and asset specificity, particularly human asset specificity (which arises from learning by doing; Williamson, 1987, p. 555). For PRIA and its network, such human asset specificity lay in the partner organizations (specifically its leaders) subscribing to PRIAs normative standards and values. Applied to the noncommercial context transaction-cost analysis provides us with a valuable insight. This is the knowledge that for nonprofit enterprises the governance implications of transaction-cost analysis are always incompletely realized because transaction-cost economizing entails the sacrifice of other valued objectives (of which power is often one; Williamson, 1981). The study of the trade-offs of such valued objectives has been deemed important by scholars in the field (Williamson, 1981).6 From this vantage point, this case study may be viewed as an analysis of the trade-offs involved in following a decentralized partnership network as a form of governance. METHOD Because this study entailed the examination of a complex organizational process, a case study method was thought to be the most appropriate. This method provided an ideal way of incorporating the NGOs contextual conditions and allowed for a detailed examination of the organization and its

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strategy. I entered the organization as a disinterested observer and drew on several different documentary sources of information and conducted interviews with key personnel in the organization and its partners.7 Overall, by using different sources of information I was able to minimize the possibility of biases and inconsistencies. One drawback of using a case study method is that it makes generalizations impossible. However, with that qualification, it is possible to argue for the worth of case studies because they give us rich analysis of actual processes rather than predicting the probability of future events. In that sense, the scope of case studies is limited but is well suited to its purpose. PRIA: THE PARADOX PRIA was established in 1982 with the purpose of performing support functions. Its main goals were capacity building to strengthen NGOs and community-based organizations and creating a shared perspective on development issues. It viewed external donor-funded large-scale service delivery projects as insufficient in themselves in bringing lasting solutions to poverty and development-related problems. Thus all its work was based on the premise that local NGOs and community-based organizations needed to be strengthened by various organizational inputs and made more credible and efficient. PRIAs strategic location enabled it right from the start to develop ties with several important international organizations. PRIA collaborated with these organizations in conducting surveys and workshops on various issues like patterns of land ownership and dispossession, for example. PRIA also took up organization development and capacity building of local NGOs. Six years after its inception, PRIA carried out an evaluation of its role as a support organization. The organization realized that though it had defined itself as a national level organization, it had limited presence in most regions of the country. Following this PRIA decided to develop partnerships with other existing NGOs in different regions. However, there were few NGOs that shared PRIAs perspective on development. Most of the smaller NGOs competed with each other to gain contracts of government and foreign-funded development projects. Thus PRIA decided to encourage some of its long-time associates to establish organizations that would then act as its partners. Through this strategy PRIA hoped to encourage local institution building. Eventually the structure evolved into a network of collaborating regional support organizations spread out over different regions of the country. This model was instrumental in increasing the organizations capacity to launch a wide range of programs. Figure 1 represents the network model. This model was in operation for almost a decade and allowed for a division of labor. Over the next few years, PRIA in collaboration with international and national organizations continued to conduct studies on various developmentrelated topics like land degradation and water management, peoples knowledge

Capacity Building
National Government: Planning Commission South Asian Regional NGO Forum Asia South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education International Forum for Capacity Building Donors & funding agencies: CORDAID, DFID etc. UNICEF ILO, Intnl Council for Adult Education World Bank: NGO Working Group

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PRIA

CYSD
(1981, Orissa)

Unnati
(1990, Gujarat)

SSK
(1990, Uttar Pradesh)

Sahayi
(1990, Kerala)

CENCORED (1992, Bihar)

Samarthan
(1995,Madhya Pradesh)

Local fieldbased NGOs & voluntary organizations

Community based organizations

Trade Unions workers groups

Local selfgovernance institutions

Womens Self-help groups

Lower caste groups and tribals.

Village Local SelfGovernance Resource Centers

Figure 1. Society for Participatory Research In Asias Decentralized Network Form of Governance Note: Solid lines indicate direct relationships between PRIAand international and national organizations, and dotted lines indicate indirect relations between PRIA and local organizations mediated by regional support organizations. Dates in the boxes are the establishment dates of the respective organizations. NGO = nongovernmental organization; CORDAID = Catholic Organization for Relief and Development AID; DFID = Department of International Development; ILO = International Labor Organization; CYSD = Center for Youth and Social Development; SSK = Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra.

systems, forest resources, and displacement because of mineral mining. Information from the studies was used to lobby the government and to influence other organizations. The regional support organizations, on their part, would directly implement the training programs at the local level among communitybased organizations like womens microcredit groups, trade unions, and local

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NGOs. The premise underlining this strategy was that commitment to PRIAs perspective would bind together the vast network of organizations. In 1993, PRIA launched a national-level survey and several training programs on local self-governance issues in collaboration with its partner organizations. This followed the governments enacting a bill decentralizing local governance at the village level and marked an important period in the history of the organization. It opened an opportunity for the organization to do capacity-building work to strengthen local governance at the village level.8 The organization mobilized youth groups and womens groups and formed village reform committees and village local self-governance information and resource centers. Around this time, PRIAs international connections also multiplied, and it became involved in international networking and alliance building. PRIA developed linkages with multilateral institutions like the World Bank, International Labor Organization (ILO), Asian Development Bank, and with agencies like U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Oxfam. Along with other southern NGOs in 1998, it facilitated the formation of the International Forum for Capacity Building. As a member of the NGO working group on the World Bank, PRIA was involved in starting a core group of NGOs and other civil society organizations to critically engage with multilateral development banks. By 1997, PRIA had linkages with The Commonwealth Foundation, United Nations Development Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), and the Department For International Development (DFID) of the U.K. government. These international linkages had an important impact on the organization. It helped situate it in a critical place in the network of organizations ranging from multilateral institutions and northern funding agencies to local NGOs and grassroots groups. PRIA had the opportunity of acting as a conduit between funding agencies in the North and beneficiaries in the South. However, despite the advantages and leverage that this model provided, it eventually led to an increasing distance between PRIA and the local community-based organizations. With limited financial and human resources, expanding international linkages meant that PRIA had been delegating most of its popular training programs to the regional support organizations. This had led to a weakening of the influence that PRIA desired to have on smaller local-level organizations. The organizational environment of the local NGOs provided them with more immediate incentives (like foreign-funded service delivery projects) that detracted from long-term organization capacity-building goals. Thus perspective building at the grassroots was much more limited than PRIA had hoped for. This paradox led PRIA to direct involvement at the local level. In a recent change of strategy, PRIA planned to cut back on its activities at the international and Asian level. It started to phase out some existing partnerships with

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Incorporating Centralization
National Government: Planning Commission Asia South Pacific Bureau For Adult Education International Forum for Capacity Building Donors & funding agencies: CORDAID, DFID etc. UNICEF, ILO, International Council for Adult

PRIA Field Units RSOs

Local NGOs & Voluntary Organizations

Community based Organizations

Trade Unions & worker s groups

Village Local selfgovernance institutions

Women s Microfinance groups

Groups of Scheduled Caste & Tribes

Village Local SelfGovernance Resource

Figure 2.Society for Participatory Research In Asias Plural Form of Governance Note: CORDAID = Catholic Organization for Relief and Development AID; DFID = Department of International Development; ILO = International Labor Organization; RSO = regional support organizations; NGO = nongovernmental organization.

small local NGOs. Instead of seeking organizations that would collaborate with it in the new places of intervention, PRIA decided to open centrally managed field units where its staff would directly address all organization development needs of local NGOs and groups and focus extensively on themes of local self-governance and peoples participation in the process. This, it hoped, would help reinforce its values and perspectives at the field level. This marked a shift from an exclusively decentralized mode of operation to combining a centralized strategy for direct field engagement. In the late 1990s, PRIA started by opening its first field unit on an experimental basis. Currently it has launched field units in seven more states and has a total of 20 field units operating all over the country. Figure 2 below represents PRIAs new structure of governance that incorporates elements of centralization into its existing decentralized structure of governance. Under the new strategy PRIA field units alone operate in four states marked by relatively weak civil society, PRIA field units operate in conjunction with regional support organizations in three states, and the regional support organizations exclusively operate in five states.9

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PRIAs exclusively decentralized network form of governance undoubtedly presented a set of advantages. They were the following: 1. Local responsiveness: The standardized development interventions implemented by multilateral agencies were widely criticized for not responding to local needs and conditions. This model, in contrast, allowed a high degree of flexibility of structure and function. The regional organizations were able to scan local environments more thoroughly and respond to local needs more efficiently by developing region specific programs. For instance, although Center for Youth and Social Development (CYSD) started with the objectives of promoting nonformal education and developmentrelated training, later environmental concerns became a high priority because forest and natural resources were important means of livelihood for the indigenous population who composed 27% of the population in that region. CYSD subsequently started farm sector programs and nonfarmsector income generation activities. Similarly, Center for Communication and Rural Education (CENCORED), which started with the purpose of meeting the communications and information needs of local organizations of that area, later started nonformal education programs in response to low levels of literacy in the area. In response to religious tension between different communities in their region of operation, Unnati developed programs addressing the issue of communal harmony. It also took up the issues of the rights of people of low castes and set in motion a campaign for their rights in response to the exclusion and oppression of lower castes in the region. Such flexibility was an important advantage for a country of great size and diversity. 2. Increased legitimacy: Establishing legitimacy at the grassroots level and developing rapport with communities is a challenge for NGOs that are located outside the communities in which they work. In working at the grassroots level, they enter a factional and competitive environment often marked by lack of trust for outsiders. Grassroots groups, local political parties, and NGOs are cautious of new NGOs.10 In this scenario, the decentralized network strategy provided a crucial advantage. The regional support organizations had well-established presences in the communities, and PRIA was able to employ their identities and reputations in entering and working with those communities. In addition, the multiplier nature of PRIAs strategy meant that its regional partners facilitated the creation of local institutions, encouraged local leadership, and took initiatives in fostering a sense of local ownership among community members. This helped them to gain more legitimacy than would have been otherwise possible. 3. Delegating functions: The network strategy allowed PRIA to delegate the task of implementing the successful programs to its regional partners. This gave PRIA the opportunity to invest more resources and energy into

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developing new and innovative programs and in building linkages with international NGOs and donors. This also allowed for easy accommodation of regional differences within the same program, including the diversity of languages and contextual needs of the different regions. 4. Linkages with international organizations: Within a short period of time, PRIA developed linkages with several international organizations. Working closely with these organizations provided an opportunity for influencing the mind-set of donors who were inclined to see NGOs as part of a global aid chain. Because PRIA was actively engaged in conducting studies and gathering information, it was able to formulate its own programs and come up with new ideas and innovations. Having ties with multiple international NGOs and donors allowed PRIA to leverage its contacts in getting funds for these programs. It was able to shop around for donors instead of having to tailor its programs according to the agenda of the donors. In this way, it was able to link its work at the grassroots with development planning. Despite the effectiveness of this governance strategy, the organization soon realized the problems associated in following an exclusively decentralized strategy. They were the following: 1. Lack of appropriate collaborators: Most local NGOs had limited financial and human resources and were not organizationally equipped to act as appropriate partners. This required PRIA to help them build their organizational capacities through a lengthy period of handholding. A principal concern of small NGOs was financial sustainability, and often they would expect financial support in exchange for collaborating with PRIA. This, in some cases, led to a divergence in expectation about the collaboration, and the local partners had to be given financial and other kinds of support to undertake joint programs. Most of them turned out to be incapable of independently running programs. In addition, limited resources of local organizations meant that terminating direct support to them and hoping that they would spin off independent endeavors remained difficult to achieve. Also the places where civil societies were weak and, hence, more in need of interventions were the ones where it was most difficult to find appropriate partners. This created impediments to PRIAs work because the decentralized strategy was contingent on finding committed partner organizations. 2. Difficult to transmit values: One of PRIAs main goals was to transmit its unique perspective to other NGOs through its regional partners. However, this did not have the full impact because erosion of values along the channels of collaboration meant that program success was not necessarily followed by inculcation of the preferred perspective. There was no mechanism to monitor whether the local organizations adhered to the overarching values. Thus, partnerships often remained target-specific collaborations and

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did not lead to the creation of an epistemic community of NGOs as PRIA had desired. Without PRIAs direct presence, local organizations were susceptible to being easily co-opted into what Fowler (1997) described as the pathologies of aid funded project oriented development work. 3. Creates distance from the field: Because most of the grassroots-level work was done by the regional support organizations, the distance between PRIA and the local village level organizations grew. This sharpened the rural urban divide that threatened to weaken the legitimacy of the organizations claim of representing the interests of rural people and their organizations. PRIA, as a professional city-based organization, had the advantage of national and international visibility; however, it did not have the advantage of an image easily suggestive of rural India, which was the coterie it claimed to represent. Distance also adversely affected the process of organizational learning because staff members lacked firsthand ground-level working experience. 4. Overreliance on donor-led institutional environment: With the decentralized model of collaboration, PRIA had to contend with changing demands of local partners following erratic changes in donor priorities. Donor pressure was felt more intensely also because the organization had an advocacy-oriented goal. Donors were often interested in making the decentralized network a channel through which they could distribute funds to local NGOs with less investment of their own resources. The decentralized model was, therefore, prone to weakening with the risk of partners at all levels being coopted into the donors short-run project perspective. PRIA negotiated this problem by accepting grants only from select few donors, like CORDAID (an organization of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands, its principal funding organization), the Ford Foundation, and the Swedish International Development Agency with which it had been associated for a long time. Nevertheless demand for support functions changed on the whim of northern donors. There was a predictable periodicity, with which these changes occurred in conjunction with changes in funding resources. Talking about support functions, one of the staff members likened it to changing fashions, like the length of the skirt or the width of the trouser, every two three years it changes. These fashions, the person pointed out, were mostly set by donors and like all other fashions they are set in the north, Paris club, Washington club and Brussels club. Such an institutional environment placed enormous pressure on the smaller local NGOs who were easily swayed by funding opportunities. They were tempted to accept big donor-driven projects irrespective of organization goals, in exchange for foreign funds in a resource-scarce environment. PRIA was far removed from such local contexts, and this made it difficult for it to counteract the pressures that their smaller partners faced. Thus the decentralized form of governance made PRIA overly reliant on an institutional environment heavily influenced by opportunistic behavior and not conducive to pursuing long-term goals. Often the principal

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strategy to keep local partners aligned to the overarching perspective was moral persuasion. And this was only rarely effective on its own without any material or financial incentives. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION Within the NGO sector there has been a growing realization of the importance of intermediary NGOs and their role in strengthening civil society organizations. In that context, it is relevant to understand the governance-related issues of such organizations, of which PRIA is one type. Table 1 presents in summary form the trade-offs that PRIA confronted in following each of the strategies in meeting the challenges. The organizations strategy of capacity building through a decentralized network form of governance proved inadequate because it relied far more on voluntary compliance of partner organizations than could be realistically expected in a resource-scarce environment where smaller NGOs were often more concerned about organization survival rather than about development issues. What is worth noting in this case is that the organization moved in the opposite direction from conventional organization growth expectations. Edwards and Hulme (1992) noted that such a movement in the opposite direction (from decentralized to centralized) might be forced by the donor community that is predisposed toward operational and organizational expansion. However, in the case of PRIA no such overt pressure was present. On the contrary, the major donor of PRIA actively supported the decentralized capacitybuilding strategy with the hope that this would enable its funds to be more effectively used. One way we can conceptualize this change of strategy is to draw a noncommercial parallel of vertical integration in a commercial setting. Emerson (1962) emphasized that one actors power over another is rooted in the latters dependency on resources controlled by the former. Such dependence of one actor on another is directly proportional to the importance that the dependent organization places on the goals mediated by the organization in power. And it is inversely proportional to the availability of these goals to the dependent organization from sources outside this relationship. The locus of power changes when we conceptualize power as a function of specific needs and resources following Emerson (Scott, 1987). Applied to this case, it is difficult to identify the locus of power and dependency in PRIAs relationships of collaboration. On one hand, PRIA wielded power over its partners to the extent that partners did not have access to valued resources through means other than collaborating with PRIA. On the other hand, the partners had a considerable degree of latent power to the extent that PRIA was dependent on their collaboration to reach out to a particular community of organizations and people. The resources possessed by local NGOs were their local legitimacy, situated knowledge, and connections with other organizations. Conversely, the extent

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Table 1. Governance Trade-Offs Centralized Capacity Building + Direct control over field units and local organizations + - Slow in responding to different local needs + - Limited time and resources to invest in building linkages with other organizations + - Limited areas of operation + Strong field presence + Less dependent on external environment + - Difficult to establish for nonlocal NGOs because it does not foster a sense of local ownership + - Persuasion is a weak monitoring mechanism + Quick response to local demands and relative flexibility + Delegation of standardized programs allows time and resources for building linkages with a large number of organizations + Large area of operation + - Creates distance from the field + - Overreliance on external environment that is highly susceptible to influence from donors and governments + Easier to establish since local partners have histories and identities in the regions Decentralized Capacity Building

Challenge

Transmission of values

Responding to local needs

Ties with other organizations

Program coverage

Field presence

Institutional environment

Legitimacy

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to which local NGOs were dependent on PRIA was determined by the importance they gave to PRIAs perspective on development. This resulted in complete reliance on nonmaterial incentive of becoming part of a moral community where opportunism would be sacrificed in favor of trustworthy behavior, and understanding would lead to compliance to normative standards. The conventional solution to such problems in the commercial world as noted by scholars of organizations (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978) has been increasing coordination, that is, increasing mutual control over each others activities through various bridging strategies (Scott, 1987, p. 186). The one particularly instructive in understanding this case is vertical integration through merger. Organizations engaged in related functions but at different stages in the production process merge, backward or forward with one another. It takes place between organizations that are exchange partners and are symbiotically related (Scott, 1987). In the case of PRIA, we can understand it as the noncommercial parallel of a forward integration to reduce transaction costs arising from dependence on a small number of distributors to disseminate its ideas and trainings to local organizations and civil society groups. What PRIA engaged in may be called preemptive forward integration because PRIA opened field units to preempt the cost involved in finding suitable partners and to avoid the cost of getting involved with weak partners. Thus, in the end PRIA retained its basic network form by preserving its links with its original regional partners but did not seek other partners. Recently there has been a lot of sociological interest in the network form of governance especially in commercial settings. Such network forms are characterized by a distinct ethic or value-orientation on the part of exchange partners (Podolny & Page, 1998), and norms of reciprocity (Powell, 1990). Sociologists, by virtue of their focus on trust as a defining element of the network form, have neglected to examine the dysfunctions of such forms (Podolny & Page, 1998). This case gives us some valuable insights into the dysfunctions of the network form in the noncommercial setting. In the following section, I compare the decentralized network form to the franchise organization model because it provides some illuminating contrasts of the trade-offs of values involved. The model of collaboration that PRIA had developed was one where the regional support organizations, in some ways, operated like franchisees in a chain operation (Bradach, 1998). These structural similarities led to some similar efficiencies, namely, local responsiveness and local learning and innovations. Persuasion played a crucial role in the franchise arrangement and the decentralized strategy. In the first case, the structure of the corporate field organization, the career path of franchise consultants, the desire of franchises to add units, and the nature of interactions all help the chain operator to influence the franchisees in a noncoercive way. However, underlying such noncoercive means is the threat of forfeiting the trademark from franchises. Thus, franchises, in the event of noncompliance to norms, are in danger of losing the automatic reputation and the shared visual and operational identity associated with the trademark (Bradach, 1998). The difference between

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the two is that in the case of PRIA, like intermediary NGOs, there are no trademarks, that is, symbols of reputation that can be awarded or withdrawn as the case might demand. Hence, there is the lack of a means by which PRIA, like intermediary NGOs (with geographically dispersed partner organizations, at various levels of competence), can exercise an implicit threat of forfeiting the associated reputation benefits. In addition, none of the other factors (like career advancement or adding units) that helped extend the noncoercive influence in the for-profit franchise case are available in the NGO setting. On the contrary, there are powerful factors like donor pressure that weaken the influence of intermediary NGOs on their local partners as happened in the case of PRIA. This may lead to a lack of overall control and more opportunities for partner NGOs to deviate from the professed values. Thus, the main governance problem of capacity building through a decentralized structure is the sacrifice of a certain degree of power (or control) for the realization of other valued objectives (like institution building, local innovation, flexibility, and legitimacy in the case of PRIA). In light of this, I suggest that intermediary NGOs like PRIA (those more favorably endowed with resources) may adopt the plural form of organization. In this, franchise-like collaborating NGOs and company unit-like field units would operate simultaneously (Bradach, 1998; Bradach & Eccles, 1989). The advantage of simultaneously using both structures is not merely the defensive advantage of preventing opportunistic behavior by having firsthand information, greater control, and the ability to terminate the relationship that have been reported in studies in the for-profit context (Porter, 1980; Walker & Weber, 1984). For intermediary NGOs, like PRIA, this is only a part of the larger set of advantages including embeddedness in the grassroots, multiplier effect through partners, local learning and innovation, and transmission of values and perspectives. NGOs like PRIA should critically evaluate their institutional environments and goals before adopting a decentralization structure to perform capacitybuilding functions because it leaves the organization open to more external influences and contingencies than any other strategy. It is not a magic bullet that automatically catalyzes institution building. Without a degree of central control, channels of collaboration may degenerate into channels for siphoning off funds and leakage of values. It may also result in multiplying institutions and partners where they already exist, such that interventions are not driven by need, rather by the availability of collaborating organizations. With the kind of institutional environment that most intermediary NGOs in developing countries find themselves in, it seems reasonable to speculate, in the light of this case, that the strategy of capacity building through decentralization is best combined with mechanisms that allow for more direct influence and control. Because the trends of transformation in social movement organizations have been similar to those in NGOs I argue that the insights about trade-offs also apply to social movement organizations, with the necessary qualifications that should accompany all generalizations based on case studies. The

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current study, I hope, provides a foundation for the conceptual linkage between governance-related issues of intermediary NGOs and social movement organizations. Notes
1. The term NGO (nongovernmental organizations) is used within the development literature to refer to what are called nonprofit organizations within the sociological literature. In specific, the term NGO refers to nonprofit making nongovernmental organizations that are involved in development work in the Third World countries. The term is popularly used to refer to, broadly, the following three kinds of organizations: (a) international NGOs like Oxfam and Save The Children, (2) intermediary NGOs in the South that support grassroots organizations with technical and financial help and engage in advocacy, and (c) local community-based organizations that are engaged in service provision at the grassroots level. Wherever necessary, I specified the particular type of NGO being referred to. 2. Intermediary NGOs in South Asia, South and East Africa, to further define their organizational identity conducted collective deliberations through which they identified three distinct forms of function that they performed: (a) support to grassroots organizationscapacity-building inputs to strengthen the organizations; (b) educational supportworking with governments and northern donor agencies in creating an enabling environment where the voices of southern NGOs are taken into account; and (c) sectoral supportenabling partnerships across different sectors of civil society. Types of support provided ranged from information sharing and dissemination, research and evaluation, technical assistance, training, organizational capacity building, networking, providing linkages with donors, and policy influence and advocacy. These were stated during the Civicus: World Alliance for Citizen Participation founding conference in 1995 at Mexico City and in a planning meeting in Zimbabwe. Source: Society for Participatory Research In Asia. (1999, May 11-13). The challenges for capacity building: Support organizations in South Asia (Report of the Third Workshop of South Asian Support Organizations, Dhaka: Bangladesh). 3. To be true to the spirit of a case study, I should specify that whenever I have used the term intermediary NGO I used it to refer to other PRIA-like intermediary NGOs. Thus, it should not be considered as an unqualified generalization. 4. For example, the Highlander Folk School, the Fellowship For Reconciliation (FOR), and the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF). These are set in contrast to self-proclaimed movement organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and local movement centers like the Montgomery Improvement Association, Inter Civic Council of Tallahassee and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. 5. Those collective vehicles, informal as well as formal through which people mobilize and engage in collective action (McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1996, p. 3). 6. Williamson deems the study of such trade-offs as important agenda for future research. 7. I had no previous connection with the organization. I had no relationship whatsoever with any of the governing board members or staff members. 8. In 1993, in India, the local self-governance act was passed under the 73rd Amendment of the Constitution, following which some powers of governance were decentralized to newly constituted village-level peoples committees, called panchayats that has been referred to as village local self-governance committees. 9. PRIA field units exclusively operate in Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, and Jharkhand. Field units operate in conjunction with regional support NGOs in Rajasthan, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh. The regional support organizations operate exclusively in Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Madhay Pradesh, Gujarat, and Kerala. 10. Particularly, there is a lot of suspicion about missionary proselytizing under the guise of NGO activity.

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Paromita Sanyal is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University. Her research interest lies in the organizational issues surrounding nonprofit organizations and gender and development issues. She is currently conducting research on microfinance programs in developing countries and examining the impact of womens participation in such groups on their agency and social capital.