 Despite the potential benefits and despite the support received from powerful
institutions such as international donors, many R&D institutions have been slow to
adopt participatory research (PR) approaches. Proponents of PR who call for change often
overlook the profound changes an organization must make in the way it works to
successfully adopt PR approaches. Essentially, it must become a learning institution that
will assimilate and respond to information from end users about their needs and demands.
The complexity of these changes is often a barrier to the successful adoption of PR
approaches. At present, very little is
known about the process of change that is necessary for the successful adoption of PR
approaches. The IPRA team has been working with other organizations to increase our
understanding of this complex issue. So far, it has worked with two very different
institutions, a national agricultural research corporation and a watershed based
consortium of government and non-government organizations, to examine the process of
institutionalization, to date and to learn lessons from this experience to develop
strategies for the future.
The IPRA team has now turned its attention to its own institution
and has just started working with the Systemwide Program on Participatory Research and
Gender Analysis (PRGA) to
undertake an institutional analysis of CIAT to explore the potential obstacles and
possibilities for the institutionalization of PR approaches in CIAT. The analytical
methodology developed in previous studies has been adapted, based on the knowledge we have
gathered so far on the institutionalization of PR and from studies carried out elsewhere,
to be applied to CIAT.
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