In order to react adequately to the complex, fast-changing and politicised environments in which development projects operate, donors have started adopting more adaptive project management approaches. Projects dealing with civil society actors in particular are said to benefit from adaptive management. As adaptive management largely depends on locally led and politically smart programming, it is presented as one avenue for addressing long-standing problems of civil society organisations, such as donor dependency, lack of legitimacy and accountability issues. However, the evidence base concerning the effects of adaptive management is scarce and rather anecdotal and an overarching definition of adaptive management has not been established. In order to work towards an academic research agenda for adaptive management, the article systematically reviews twenty-one case studies to generate insights into what donors and implementers consider as adaptive practices, their perceived effects, obstacles and derived recommendations. The article thus contributes to identifying which actors are driving the adaptive agenda, which practices are considered as adaptive, what we can learn from first pilot interventions and which research gaps can be derived from this analysis.

中文翻译：

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民间社会部门的适应性项目管理：迈向学术研究议程

为了对发展项目运作的复杂、快速变化和政治化环境做出充分反应，捐助者已开始采用更具适应性的项目管理方法。据说，特别是涉及民间社会行为者的项目受益于适应性管理。由于适应性管理在很大程度上依赖于地方主导和政治上明智的规划，因此它被视为解决民间社会组织长期存在的问题的一种途径，例如依赖捐助者、缺乏合法性和问责制问题。然而，关于适应性管理效果的证据基础很少，而且相当传闻，适应性管理的总体定义尚未建立。为了制定适应性管理的学术研究议程，本文系统地回顾了 21 个案例研究，以深入了解捐助者和实施者认为的适应性做法、它们的感知效果、障碍和衍生建议。因此，本文有助于确定哪些行为者正在推动适应性议程，哪些实践被认为是适应性的，我们可以从首次试点干预中学到什么，以及可以从该分析中得出哪些研究空白。