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Organizational transparency is also of concern, with heavy reliance across sector on word of month for transferring meeting information, which leaves organizations open to mismanagement as this information can be unreliable. More transparent means of information dissemination, such as reading meeting minutes aloud, are much less prominent, and particularly low in the water and sanitation sector.
How do organizational processes impact their performance of function ? Table 18 presents ordered probit results on the extant of association between an organization’s processes and its performance of functions. Broadly, findings indicate that the relative impact of organizational processes on performance depends on sector and type of organization.
Members’ awareness of rules shows a positive relationship with a number of functions in the women’ s development sector and the water supply and sanitation sector. But it has negations with several functions in watershed, including staffing, community-based action, conflict resolution, and information sharing.
Representatiues’ awareness of rules is generally positively associated with performance in women’ s development and watershed, but it has an overall negative relationship with performance in water supply and sanitation. Organization members in this sector report little belief in accountability practices or rules, whereas in the other sectors the accountability rules, while still not properly functioning, were used more frequently.17
Oral transmission of information associates with poor performance in financing and staffing for the women’ s development sector, but it has no significant association with performance in the water supply and sanitation sector and a positive relationship with performance in watershed. For women’ s groups, s groups, because many SHG members are illiterate, oral transmission of business transacions is important. Given the susceptibility of this form of information sharing to misinterpretation, better use should be made of mechanisms, such as reading minutes, which reinforce information about financing and staffing.
At the same time, however, currently the only significant finding in relation to reading in the water supply and sanitation sector, in which there is a positive association with conflict resolution. There are no negative associations with this practice. This suggests that while such an activity has no statistical association with organizational performance, in the interests of due process it is worth continuing.
In the women’ s development sector, the greater the auailability of minutes by request the poorer an organization performs its financing and, interestingly, its information –sharing and dissemination role. In the watershed sector, the availability of minutes on request is more likely to be found in organizations that perform community-based and capacity
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Sources: Local organization officials and household questionnaires.
Functions: 1 = financing;2 = staffing; 3 = provisioning; 4 = community-based; 5 = capacity building; 6 = coordination of activities; 7 = M&E; 8 = conflict resolution; 9 = information sharing/dissemination.
+ Significant positive association at 95 percent.
++ Significant positive association at 99 percent.
- Significant positive association at 95 percent.
- Significant positive association at 99 percent.
• No significant association.
*Insufficient data. Relatively few local organizations undertook activities falling under the general function area of staffing. In the case of the drinking water and sanitation projects, in which this problem was particularly acute, this function has not been included in the analysis.
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Building functions poorly. In the water supply and sanitation sector, there are no significant associations. These findings suggest that, at the current level of evolution of organizations in most sectors, availability of minutes is not critical. However, as organizations move forward into independent and perhaps more sophisticated action, other research demonstrates that thin transparency mechanism will become increasingly important.
Note
17. In the water and sanitation sector, only 17 percent of households in Karnataka and 5 percent in Uttaranchal had complained about poorly functioning water resources. In the watershed development sector more than 60 percent of organizations had functioning complaint systems. In Karnataka, all complaints were dealt with. In Uttaranchal, one-fifth were not. Figures and effectiveness varied by intervention in women’s development and empowerment but, on average, more than half of all organizations had functioning complaint systems and only about 15 percent of complaints were not attended ( Alsop 2004, volume 3, parts 2,4,6 ).