Conflicts of objectives and task allocation in aid agencies

Aid agencies differ from other organisations in the public and private sectors of society in a number of important ways, but most strikingly in that the people for whose benefit they are supposed to work are not the same as those from whom their revenues are obtained. Some people (taxpayers or private donors as the case may be) pay money directly or indirectly to the agency so that other people may benefit. This simple fact may seem unremarkable, but in reality it creates a strikingly difficult set of problems in institutional design.