JICA Research Institute Repository / リポジトリ
Not a member yet
485 research outputs found
Sort by
Lenses on ‘Japaneseness’ in the Development Cooperation Charter of 2015: Soft power, human resources development, education and training
Get PDFThe Working Paper provides a critical analysis of the 2015 Development Assistance Charter, paying particular attention to its case for Japan’s comparative advantage and uniqueness in its development cooperation policies and practice. The term ‘Japaneseness’ is used as a shorthand for this ‘Japan brand ODA’. The paper’s focus is especially on the softer side of Japanese aid, notably its long history of concern with human resources development, knowledge creation, and self-help. These priorities are all explicitly linked to and illustrated from the Charter, but it is noted that the Charter’s approach is not merely business as usual, but that there should be a more ‘proactive’ dimension to Japanese aid. In addition, given the centrality of human resources development in Japanese cooperation and in the Charter, there is an analysis of the influence of the Charter in the MOFA Learning strategy and JICA Position paper of 2015. For comparative purposes, there is a light illustration of parallels and differences in the aid policies of Britain and of China.research repor
Motivation and incentive preferences of community health officers in Ghana: an economic behavioral experiment approach
Get PDFBackground: Health worker shortage in rural areas is one of the biggest problems of the health sector in Ghana
and many developing countries. This may be due to fewer incentives and support systems available to attract and
retain health workers at the rural level. This study explored the willingness of community health officers (CHOs) to
accept and hold rural and community job postings in Ghana.
Methods: A discrete choice experiment was used to estimate the motivation and incentive preferences of CHOs in
Ghana. All CHOs working in three Health and Demographic Surveillance System sites in Ghana, 200 in total, were
interviewed between December 2012 and January 2013. Respondents were asked to choose from choice sets of
job preferences. Four mixed logit models were used for the estimation. The first model considered (a) only the
main effect. The other models included interaction terms for (b) gender, (c) number of children under 5 in the
household, and (d) years worked at the same community. Moreover, a choice probability simulation was performed.
Results: Mixed logit analyses of the data project a shorter time frame before study leave as the most important
motivation for most CHOs (β 2.03; 95 % CI 1.69 to 2.36). This is also confirmed by the largest simulated choice
probability (29.1 %). The interaction effect of the number of children was significant for education allowance for
children (β 0.58; 95 % CI 0.24 to 0.93), salary increase (β 0.35; 95 % CI 0.03 to 0.67), and housing provision (β 0.16;
95 % CI −0.02 to 0.60). Male CHOs had a high affinity for early opportunity to go on study leave (β 0.78; 95 % CI −0.
06 to 1.62). CHOs who had worked at the same place for a long time greatly valued salary increase (β 0.28; 95 % CI
0.09 to 0.47).
Conclusions: To reduce health worker shortage in rural settings, policymakers could provide “needs-specific”
motivational packages. They should include career development opportunities such as shorter period of work
before study leave and financial policy in the form of salary increase to recruit and retain them.journal articl
The Motivation of Participants in Successful Development Aid Projects: A Self-Determination Theory Analysis of Reasons for Participating
Get PDFThe aim of this study was to reveal the reasons that extension officers and farmers give for participating in successful capacity development projects, and to categorize these reasons into motivation types defined by self-determination theory, drawing from the “why questions” approach of Chandler & Connell (1987). Field officers and farmers from two successful projects, — namely, the Life Improvement Approach in Japan and the Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion approach in Kenya — participated in semi-structured interviews regarding the reasons they participated in their projects’ activities. The concordance rate of the independent ratings of the reasons by the two authors was high, verifying the reliability of the coding procedure. A large proportion of the reasons were coded as identified/integrated regulation, the most autonomous type of motivation, supporting the hypothesis that participants of successful aid projects would primarily be autonomously motivated. Other implications of the interview transcripts are also discussed.research repor
