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The Poverty Research Group is a multidisciplinary team
focused on the application of Industrial and Organizational Psychology,
and related disciplines in and out of psychology, to poverty reduction.
Key foci in our research include aid organization fund-raising and
development education; teamwork and partnership for disaster relief
and capacity development; and the nexus between migration and development,
e.g., via job selection biases against skilled immigrants. As these
examples suggest, poverty - like wealth - can be transitory just
as much as enduring. The Poverty Research Group thereby
collaborates with leading researchers and senior policy-advisors,
to help ‘make a difference’ in human development and
social justice.
The Poverty Research Group has established links with
UNESCO (through the International Association of Universities);
with the OECD Development Centre located in Paris; and with the
Centre for Global Health at Trinity College, Dublin.
The Poverty Research Group is currently the host of an
internationally funded research project examining the impact of
salary disparities in aid organisations on worker performance.
Projects and Activities
- Project Add-Up
- Aid salary discrepancies and development workers’ performance.
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- Project INCUBATE
- INternational Collaborations between Universities By Aligning
Their Expertise
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- Policy Briefs
- Various policy briefs developed from our research activities
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- Global Special Issues
- Psychology and Poverty Reduction
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- Declaration of a call
for a Global Taskforce
- on Organisational Psychology For Development
Aid salary discrepancies and development workers’
performance.
This three-year research project commenced
in March 2007 and is led and jointly co-ordinated by Professor Stuart
Carr (Poverty Research Group, Massey University) and Professor Mac
MacLachlan (Centre for Global Health, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland).
According to the Paris Declaration best practice in aid work means
pay should be aligned and harmonised across worker
groups (World Bank, 2005). Although pay may not be a primary motive
for development workers, discrepancies in pay nonetheless have the
potential to influence perceptions of organisational justice, which
can in turn affect work performance. Moreover, because injustice
is a motivation for much aid itself, perceptions of unfairness in
aid work may inherently undermine its necessary constituents, especially
cooperation and capacity building.
This project explores the effects of aid salary discrepancies
in the health, education and business sectors of six countries:
the landlocked economies of Malawi and Uganda; the transition economies
of India and China; and the island economies of the Solomon Islands
and Papua New Guinea. Bringing together an international
team of psychologists, sociologists, management experts, educationalists,
and economists from 10 different countries this project focuses
on the human dynamics of aid salary discrepancies and their significance
for capacity building in low-income countries.
- The ADD-UP Project is funded by the Joint DFID-ESRC
Scheme for Research on International Poverty Reduction.
The Department for International
Development (DFID) and the
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) formed a strategic
partnership in August 2005 to provide a new joint funding
scheme. The scheme aims to enhance the quality and impact
of social science research addressing the key international
development goal of reducing poverty amongst the poorest countries
and peoples of the world. The scheme fosters high-quality
basic research that enhances understanding, develops thinking
and facilitates policy on this most difficult and fundamental
issue.
For further information about The Poverty Research Group
and the ADD-UP Project please follow the links below or
from the left menu bar above, or contact
us.
Project INCUBATE
(INternational Collaborations
between Universities By Aligning Their Expertise)
Many great ideas for relevant and responsive research projects
simply don’t
see the light of day for lack of time, opportunity, or resources to conduct them.
This risk is especially salient for research aligned
with poverty reduction.
Project Incubate is designed to share ideas for research
on poverty reduction between the Poverty Research Group and
a far wider global community of research practice.
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Each project idea is coded either green, orange
or red, meaning free-to-air, underway but seeking advice and
input, or subject to confidentiality (for now).
Graduate thesis students, scholars, policy-makers and citizens
from all walks of life are invited to scan and contribute to
the ongoing list of ideas to decide if the idea is of any use. |
Please contact P.R.Incubate@gmail.com withsuggestions.
Policy Briefs
- Public service remuneration: keeping
workers motivated
Poverty Research Group, January 2012
What is the evidence of the impact of increasing salaries on improving
the performance of public servants, including teachers, nurses and
mid-level occupations, in low- and middle-income countries: Is it
time to give pay a chance?
- Discrepancies
in aid and development workers' salaries
Impact case study - ESRC, 2010
Project ADDUP (Are Development Discrepancies Undermining
Performance) tested the impact of the discrepancy between pay
scales of local and expatriate workers on local workers' motivation
in the health, education and business sectors of six countries.
- Interdisciplinary
research for development: a policy paper
Workshop, Global Development Network,
2008
The process and challenges of
undertaking interdisciplinary research
were explored in a Global Development
Network (GDN) workshop which used
two established and distinctive
research areas - HIV/AIDS and direct
budget support – as illustrative
case studies
- The
Human Dynamics of Aid Policy.
Malcolm MacLachlan and Stuart C. Carr (06/2005). OECD
Development Centre Policy Insights No.10.
Retrieved
from http://www.oecd.org/document/42/0,3343,en_2649_33731_39045802_1_1_1_1,00.html
International development assistance from richer to poorer (developing) economies
accounts for major flows of capital, human resources and technical assistance.
While the net direction of these flows remains a topic of hot debate, there have
been several barriers identified to the efficient use of aid within developing
countries, many of which revolve around difficulties with achieving good governance
in recipient countries.
GLOBAL SPECIAL ISSUE
PSYCHOLOGY AND POVERTY REDUCTION
In 2000, the United Nations collectively signed up to the Millennium
Development Goals. These goals focus on the reduction of poverty
by the year 2015. They encompass a range of integral human freedoms,
from the right to health and education, to gender equity, a clean
environment, and fair trade. They are inherently inter-disciplinary.
Inter-disciplinarity in turn creates an opportunity for disciplines
and professions to-date relatively silent on poverty, to step up
and make a contribution. Psychology is one such discipline and profession.
This “global special issue” is a unique opportunity
for accelerated input from an entire field. We bring not one but
a whole series of peer-reviewed journals to the theme, each journal
with its own, complementary focus on the MDGs in general, and poverty
reduction in particular. The journals represent psychology from
low-income, transition and OECD economies. Their outputs are coordinated
in a temporal sense. Each journal will release its contribution
in mid 2010. Each journal will publish either a special section
of papers, or an entire issue of the journal, on the poverty reduction
theme.
These are the peer-reviewed journals participating in the initiative:
In the months to come, each journal will be making its own individual
call for contributions, according to its own policies and procedures.
Development and policy development agencies, such as the UN and
the OECD, will be notified about the global special issue. It is
expected that the special issue will make a significant contribution
to the work of those agencies, and the people they serve.
DECLARATION OF CALL
FOR A
GLOBAL TASKFORCE ON ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
FOR DEVELOPMENT
Poverty reduction and international development cooperation present
enormous challenges and opportunities to those who seek to improve
people's lives through work psychology. A major international response
is required to address these challenges. The international community
of work/industrial/organisational psychologists wish to work in
partnership with others who have similar interests to develop a
global initiative which can be a powerful mechanism to identify
how, where and when psychology can contribute to poverty alleviation,
particularly as it affects the lives of those in low income countries.
We call for the establishment of a global initiative to bring
the potential benefits work/industrial/organisational psychology
to bear on the reduction of human poverty. These areas of psychology
should play a key role in the consultation, design, delivery and
evaluation of international aid; in the partnerships on which capacity
development depends; and in the provision of essential human services
to health, education and industry. While some important work has
already been done in these areas the potential contribution of work/industrial/organisational
psychology is greatly underdeveloped. A Global Taskforce is needed
to identify how to step up the scale, impact and funding of such
activities, and to do so in an integrated fashion. The Global Taskforce
should have broad representation from low, middle and high-income
countries, and ensure that efforts to address poverty do not reproduce
the injustices that often give rise to it. The Task Force should
be non-aligned to interests arsing from national or professional
society affiliations, and should use the human rights values espoused
by the UN as its touchstone.
Millions of people the world over are working in organizations
that have a positive influence on poverty reduction. We call for
a Global Taskforce that will help to align work psychology initiatives
for poverty reduction and to harmonise them with efforts towards
realising the MDGs.
We ask the UN to mandate a Global Task Force on Organisational
Psychology for Development. |
