TCD Centre for Global Health Research Project on the Discrepancies in Aid and Development Workers’ Salaries Highlighted as High Impact Research
Posted on: 27 August 2010
A research project on the discrepancies in the payment of development aid workers and local workers co-led by Professor Malcolm MacLachlan of Trinity’s Centre for Global Health and School of Psychology has been featured as a case study in high impact research by its UK funders, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). The project, ‘Are Development Discrepancies Undermining Performance?’ (ADDUP), is jointly led by Professor Malcolm MacLachlan and Professor Stuart Carr, Poverty Research Group, Massey University, New Zealand.
Combining a multi-disciplinary team of psychologists, economists, sociologists and management scientists, the researchers examined the effects of salary discrepancies between expatriate and local workers in low and middle-income countries where in some cases expatriates got paid up to 10 times as much as similarly qualified local personnel. Project ADDUP has clearly demonstrated that such differences are experienced as being unjust, de-motivating and undermining of local workers’ value and identity, across different countries and different sectors. The research was conducted in Malawi, Uganda, China, India, Papa New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, across the health, education and business sectors.
Professor MacLachlan said: “These findings call into question the ability of conventional aid funding models to build genuine partnership and contribute to capacity building. If at least part of the intended consequence of aid is to address inequality, then using a process of aid delivery that actually promotes inequality, is likely to be unhelpful.”
The ‘Are Development Discrepancies Undermining Performance?’ project has been cited as a case study in high impact research by its UK funders the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in their quarterly newsletter ‘Society Now’ and on the research council’s website.
Key outputs from the research project include the establishment of a Global Task Force on Humanitarian Work Psychology. The findings from the project have also inspired a new book, ‘The Aid Triangle: recognising the human dynamics of dominance, justice and identity’ by M. MacLachlan, S.C. Carr and E. McAuliffe( London: Zed Books) and a special issue of the International Union of Psychological Science’s flagship peer-reviewed journal the International Journal of Psychology will feature the findings in an issue titled, ‘Working Together to Reduce Poverty: Speaking Truth to Power about Expatriate-Local Pay’ (Edited by S.C Carr, I. McWha, M.MacLachlan and A. Furnham).
Project ADDUP was among the first tranche of untied aid funding given by ESRC/DFID, where researchers from anywhere in the world, rather than solely UK-based researchers could apply to lead research projects.
The ongoing collaboration between the Centre for Global Health in Trinity and the Poverty Research Group at Massey University is continuing through a further project also funded by the UK’s Department of International Development – UK Aid.