The Chameleonic Governance of NGOs in Cambodia: A Story of Learning

Non-government organisations (NGOs) in Cambodia operate in an environment of strategic ambiguity and are exposed to multiple threats, creating challenges for their effective governance. For Cambodian NGOs, ambiguity arises from several sources. Cambodia’s national government, notionally democratic but also kleptocratic, neo-patrimonial and dynastic, is often hostile to NGOs and inconsistent in applying the rule of law. Fickle international donors impose, among other compliance related obligations, expectations for a corporate style of NGO governance consisting of a so-called independent board representing organisational stakeholders. Local stakeholders, following notions of guanxi (social networks and relationships), harbour expectations for loyalty and mutual benefit, tending the khsae (strings) that connect people to their colleagues, families and communities. These varied expectations, and the responses of some in the non-government sector, support a case for the reimagination of received governance prescriptions and the adoption of more reflexive models. Such reimagination sensibly situates governance as both a contested normative phenomenon and a dialogic process of continual learning.

This research reflects collectively and critically on the self-determination of governance practice for and by Cambodian NGOs, grounded in a thorough examination of the context for understanding and shaping governance practices used by Cambodian NGOs. In so doing, the research explores local interpretations, understandings, and practices of governance, with a view to developing more situated, culturally relevant, and useful theories and descriptions of governance practices in Cambodia. Preparatory work for the research indicated that governance practices in Cambodia are not fixed, but fluid, changing and adaptive. Accordingly, the research needed to focus on processes of learning and adaptation as much as on practices.

The research was undertaken as a cooperative inquiry consistent with a participatory worldview that explicitly values emergent and developmental forms of research. Cooperative inquiry is a type of participatory, action-based research premised on learning that is at once personal, collective, transformational, looped, reflexive and often requires unlearning and relearning. It supports the professional development of co-researchers and contributes to the quality of governance practice, not merely studies and describes it.

Seven Cambodian NGO leaders joined the cooperative inquiry group, and, with me, completed at least six rounds of planning, personal action and collective reflection. The research processes allowed co-researchers to develop, gradually and together, a shared understanding of governance practices in Cambodia. Recurring themes of the cooperative inquiry process include concern for capacity, imbalanced relationships of power, and a requirement for adaptation and flexibility. Analysis explored how dominant corporate constructions of governance are understood and applied by Cambodian NGO leaders; the lived experience of NGO governance for Cambodian NGO leaders; and, the localised and contextualised constructions of NGO governance that emerge, or are generated and/or described by Cambodian NGO leaders.

Co-researchers describe a mode of governance, which I have dubbed chameleonic. Chameleonic governance is both outcome and process. As an outcome, chameleonic governance is here positioned as a learned behaviour and an appropriate response to strategic ambiguity. The complexities of working in competing cultural and value systems require considerable dexterity – indeed, chameleonic behaviours – on the part of Cambodian NGO actors. Processually, chameleonic governance shifts according to its context and is situated as a dialogic process of continual learning. Dialogic and relational interpretations of NGO governance, informed by complexity and contingency theories, were developed through and situated in collaborative processes.

Using a scrappy, but grounded means of ‘just doing it’, co-researchers seek to explore and establish what may work for them, through continual attentiveness to their environment. They are constantly listening, learning and readying themselves for response. This involves clarifying and reclarifying roles and responsibilities, managing complex power relations and hierarchies, prioritising mutuality, and expanding capacity. Co-researchers mull together about how best to present a ‘face’ or narrative that is judged likely to be acceptable to the most powerful stakeholders, recognising that who is most powerful is subject to change in any given moment. Blending in, hiding, or even obfuscating, if need be, are viable options, in the interests of survival and adaptation to the requirements of powerful actors. The lived experience of co-researchers reveals that NGO governance is generally the responsibility of the director, ideally with support from a board. A key contributor to the effectiveness of NGO governance mechanisms is the director’s magnanimous schemata: The director should be humble enough to work in partnership with others, seek advice and learn, and be satisfied with his or her lot in life, such that he/she does not prioritise personal enrichment. The concept of chameleonic governance advanced here offers a useful narrative for understanding the shifting system behaviour, limited predictability and practices of emergence which, like for other complex adaptive systems, characterise Cambodian NGO governance.

This thesis brings together disciplinary insights from Cambodian studies, NGO governance and action research for the first time, contributing new knowledge to each of these fields of inquiry. I advance substantive knowledge about NGO governance in Cambodia by carefully describing how governance is understood and interpreted, in context and in situ, normatively, and through lived experience. I deepen understanding of how neo-patrimonialism manifests in the case of NGO governance and leave a legacy of individuals in Cambodia familiar with and able to advocate for participatory approaches to research. I answer the call from NGO governance theorists to produce more action research, more multi-theoretical and contingency-based research, and more research focussed on the majority world. I eschew rationalist approaches, adopting a situated and dialogic approach both to governance itself and to the research designed to understand it more fully. Finally, I bring an essential learning dimension to understandings of governance as a dialogic process. Supporting praxis, the mode of chameleonic governance is presented in a form conducive to providing some explanatory power in relation to how decisions are made and authority is exercised.

Importantly, this research inspired personal and organisational transformations. The personal learning experiences of co-researchers, including me, contributed to transformational changes in attitude and behaviour. This practical knowledge consummates other types of knowledge(s) produced by the research.