Let’s Master the Future | Managing the shift in the International Development scenario: managerial capabilities to tackle disruption

The session will explore how managerial perspectives and capabilities can help international organizations navigate the current crisis in the development system and contribute to shaping a new deal for international development.

Starting from selected organizational functions and managerial challenges, the discussion will then take a broader, horizontal view of the transformations affecting multilateral cooperation. Particular attention will be given to the contraction of grant-based development assistance, the renewed reliance on loans and repayable finance, and the pressures this may create for countries already facing constrained fiscal space, rising public debt and competing expenditure priorities, including defence.

The focus will be on how organizations can manage through this transition: how they can adapt priorities, capabilities and operating models while preserving their development mandate, and how managerial choices made today may help shape a more sustainable and effective international development architecture for the future.

Through a conversational approach, the session will connect organizational practice with the wider systemic shifts underway, moving from the challenge of navigating disruption to the question of what a new deal for international development could look like.