Independent Evaluation

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Development results are sustained improvements in the lives of people in developing countries. In 2004, ADB committed to manage for these.

Managing for development results is the process of change that an organization adopts to align its values, culture, policies, strategies, and practices behind sets of well designed and defined results that describe performance. It applies tools to improve decision making for strategic planning, risk management, progress reporting, and outcome evaluation.

ADB's commitment drew from its Enhanced Poverty Reduction Strategy (2004) and Long-Term Strategic Framework (2001–2015), and the agreement of the International Roundtable on Better Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing for Development Results (2002) that multilateral development banks must introduce results-orientated initiatives.

In 2007, the Operations Evaluation Department in ADB assessed ADB's compliance with known requirements for managing for development results and its progress in adopting the process. It focused on ADB's results orientation, aiming to assess implementation and related outcomes in 2009.

Investigations of compliance with known requirements focused on senior leadership support; staff skills and training; organizational culture; management practices and incentives; capacity and resources; managing the change; and business systems and processes.

Staff view senior management as a key enabler. They believed that its support has not always been translated into practice or visibly sustained. Or it may have become diluted in the implementation process. Others opined that ADB's culture still emphasizes loan approvals, disbursements, and lending targets.

Staff identified management practices and incentives as an area in which improvements are still required. They also recommended that ADB continue to refine its business systems and processes, and remove outdated processes as they are superseded.

Many staff are uncertain about the nature of ADB's wider results agenda and how managing for development results interfaces with their work. They sought more guidance as to what it is, and how it relates to their duties. But, most believe they know the results they need to achieve, and that they have the knowledge and skills to be results oriented.

Investigations of progress in adopting managing for development results judged that ADB compares with other multilateral development banks along the continuum of awareness, exploration, transition, full implementation, and continuous learning.

ADB has modified policies and introduced tools to support managing for development results, introduced new training courses, and undertaken preliminary work to support the development of a new corporate management information system. Still, managerial decisions within ADB are not routinely informed by relevant outcome data.

Notwithstanding, ADB is strengthening its capacity to manage for development results through results-based country partnership strategies; results-based approaches at the project level; and improvement of results monitoring and reporting in operations. It is formulating learning and development programs and issuing practice notes, guidelines, and other publications on managing for development results.

Since 2000, the quality of design and monitoring frameworks prepared for project and program loans and for advisory and regional technical assistance has improved a lot (even if the quality of the frameworks for loans is considerably better than that for technical assistance).

The study recommended that ADB increase its effort to manage for development results significantly if changing established practice is required to achieve full implementation in a shorter time.