The organizational challenge of international agricultural research: The fifty-year odyssey of the CGIAR.

• The CGIAR is facing a serious organizational challenge in translating international agricultural research into impact. • The challenge is magnified by trying to achieve economies of scale and scope while recognizing the location specificity of technology. • This balancing act was brought to the fore with the expansion into natural resource management in the 1990′s. • There have been successive organizational reforms with only partial success. • Workable reform requires approaches aligned around high impact programs, strong alliances among Centers, and upgrading the quality of science. Over its 50-year history, CGIAR has with increasing frequency revisited the question of how best to organize its research to address growing complexity of agricultural, food, and ecological systems, a multiplying set of development goals, changes in global science, increasing diversity of funding, and evolving capacities of partner organizations. We review this evolution over four periods noting inevitable trade-offs and tensions in a system of autonomous centers and sovereign donors, in developing common research strategies, appropriate lines of management, and aligning resources around agreed priorities. As a result, organizational changes have not met expectations and funding has continued to fragment around short-term payoffs at the expense of producing global public goods over the long term. The paper concludes with suggestions for building on the lessons of organizational reform to improve the collective action performance of funders and centers to drive and sustain needed changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]