What Motivates Cooperation in the Aid Industry?

Abstract: It has been argued that harmonization leads to a more effective delivery of aid to recipient countries, and ultimately to the target population and thus cooperation in general would be an adequate means to achieve this goal. However, the implementation of the Paris Agenda has so far progressed slowly. Vietnam is often reported as a case where cooperation between donors is working fine. By making use of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework developed by Elinor Ostrom, the question was answered what incentives cooperation among donor organizations in the case of Vietnam motivate? In order to explore relevant incentives for cooperation, qualitative interviews and a survey were conducted. It is the first study conducted in Vietnam about incentives for cooperation and the first study among development organizations that also includes intrinsic incentives, such as the personality of decision makers. Results encourage further research on four incentive clusters: trust and personality, an open and equal communication process to define expatiations before starting cooperation relationships, creating opportunities for knowledge exchange and guidelines and reporting mechanisms that support cooperation.