Management of humanitarian INGOs in Jordan : how country directors view relationship with the headquarters

Abstract

This thesis seeks to understand how country directors in humanitarian international non-governmental organizations view the management of their country offices, in relation to the headquarters. For this purpose, I conducted interviews with country directors in nine such organizations in Jordan, to understand their perspectives on the relationship. I used Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory approach; I did preliminary research on the topic but did not apply any existing framework or literature in my questions, instead I allowed the interviewees to point me towards the direction of the areas with which they were most concerned. I started the analysis from the first interview using different grounded theory methods. After finalizing the data analysis, the answer to the main question of “how country directors perceive relationship between headquarters and country offices” resulted in four areas of concern: 1. The importance of the autonomy of the country office from the headquarters, 2. The relationship between country offices and donors as regulated by headquarters, 3. The effects of the hiring practices regarding local and expat staff, and 4. The accountability measures of country offices towards headquarters, donors, staff, and beneficiaries. This topic is relevant today because of sexual abuse scandals in prominent INGOs in recent years, the spillover of the #metoo movement into the aid sector, the shifting dynamics of the North-South relations in INGOs, as donations from non-western countries are rising, and headquarters of large INGOs moving to the South