Towards the Millennium Development Goals? Faith and Performance Management Practices in two NGOs

This paper explores whether the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for sustainable development impact upon the performance management practices of two non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in Ghana. The paper analyses interview data from one NGO that attempts to meet the needs of children and another that attempts to achieve food security, two key MDGs. By interpreting the two cases through the lenses of Bourdieu’s theory of “the logic of practice” (Bourdieu, 1990), the paper finds that MDGs exist as part of the multiple and competing logics that these NGOs seek to accomplish as they work towards multiple objectives and performance dimensions. Dynamic tensions pervade the development field, and in practice the NGOs mobilize performance management techniques leveraged upon different types of capital (social, cultural, economic and faith capital) to achieve their multiple objectives, including the MDGs. The paper’s novelty lies in the analysis of how organizational level activities seek to integrate global level goals within the struggles and interactions taking place in the development field of faith-based NGOs.