International organizations and trees for people: A sociological analysis of the World Bank, FAO, CARE International, and their work and performance in community forestr

A comparative case study approach is used to investigate the behavior and performance of three international organizations and their work in community forestry. It is argued that organizational carriers themselves have important effects on the nature and quality of community forestry programs. Consequently, better understanding the strengths and weaknesses of organizations may lead to the development of more effective programs.;Data on traditional and community forestry projects were collected for the years ending fiscal year 1986 from the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and CARE International to determine their speed of movement into, commitment towards, program appropriateness of, and performance in community forestry. It was hypothesized that these dependent variables would be influenced by the differing character, technology, structure, and environments of the three organizations. Primary and secondary data sources were utilized. Published and unpublished office records, documents, and archival materials were augmented by published literature on the organizations and community forestry. Over sixty in-depth interviews were held with organizational officials and independent observers.;The World Bank's and FAO's commitment to community forestry was low and moderate respectively, the opposite expected, while CARE International's was high. The appropriateness of the Bank's community forestry program was lower then expected with about 57% of its loans allocated to only one country, India. FAO and CARE were moderate and high respectively as expected. With important exceptions for each organization, the performance of World Bank tended to be much lower than expected, FAO more variable, and CARE high.;The study's results are used to support and expand a number of organizational theories and concepts including, Contingency Theory, Thompson's Technology Types, Resource Dependency Theory, Technical and Institutional Environments, and Organizational Networks. A number of policy implications and future research topics are presented. In particular, program performance can be increased when organizations with complementary strengths work more closely together. The research contributes to the literature of three fields of study: Organizational sociology, international organizations, and natural resource and environmental management in developing countries. The study starts to bridge the theoretical and empirical gap that exists between the study of international organizations and organizational sociology.