Contribution, causality, context, and contingency when evaluating inclusive business programmes

An introductory article highlighting the approaches and methods used to assess systemic change and provide learning for adaptive management. 

It acknowledges the limits to attributing outcomes to programmes alone and proposes a way to generalise about effectiveness where outcomes are highly contingent on a specific contextual embedding. 

The article explores:

• the synergy of the iterative reflections on the theory of change
• the analytical approach of realist evaluation
• the conceptualisation of changes in firms’ practices as emerging from behaviour systems where the motivations, opportunities, and capabilities of firms are not equally distributed

This article is from the IDS Bulletin Vol. 53 No. 1 (2022)