Exploring the Evolution of Governance and Accountability in Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) After the Arab Spring: the Case of Jordan

The Arab Spring engendered a fresh or new institutional environment which affects both institutions and organisations in Arab countries including Jordan. It creates new institutional logics which conflict with the old/existing/traditional logics from before the Arab Spring. The focus of this study is one of the main consequences of the Arab Spring, the creation of thousands of new NGOs with hundreds of projects. The prime aim of the current study is to explore the changes in governance and accountability of NGOs in Jordan beyond the Arab Spring, in the context of uncovering change in institutional logics around the NGO sector. This study employs a qualitative case study using interview and content analysis methods. It analyses contradictory institutional logics in five institutions that influence NGOs in Jordan (state, market, social, political and cultural institutions) to highlight the changes and shifts within each one, using Se and Creed’s (2002) framework of institutional changes. It then presents the organisational changes/transformations/ evolutions in NGO governance and accountability as responses to the contradictory institutional logics, using Laughlin’s (1991) framework for theorising organisational changes in relation to institutional disturbances.
This study contributes to the literature by providing a better understanding of institutional changes in developing countries and how NGO governance and accountability responds to them. Governance and accountability studies in Jordan and other Arab countries have been limited to certain listed companies and have neglected other sectors such as NGOs. Furthermore, research into governance and accountability in Jordan narrowly covers momentous events impacting such phenomena, in particular the Arab Spring, and the institutional and organisational changes engendered have scarcely been given attention in this regard. This study shows that new institutional logics created in the five institutions that influenced NGOs in Jordan after the Arab Spring changed the NGO role, mission, governance and accountability. It shows that the NGO role and mission transformed after the Arab Spring towards being more participative, embracing advocacy, relating more to development and having a national scope rather than only being charities with a more local mission, as seen before the Arab Spring. This has led to more sophisticated NGO governance, accountability, accounting, and internal control systems that are more beneficiaries oriented. The findings of this research on the Arab Spring and its effects on Jordan have implications for the governance codes and frameworks in Jordan’s existing NGO sector. This research is considered the first of its kind in Jordan in term of exploring NGO sector from institutional and organisational perspectives.