How do non-governmental humanitarian aid organizations initiate, terminate and extend their project activities? Liesbet Heyse opens up the black box of NGO operations, providing an empirical account of organizational decision making amongst this increasingly important group of actors.

Liesbet Heyse is Assistant Professor at the School of Business, Public Administration and Technology at Twente University, The Netherlands. In addition, she holds a research position in the Department of Sociology/ICS at Groningen University, The Netherlands, where she participates in the Network of Humanitarian Action (NOHA). Liesbet Heyse's research focus is on the performance and operation of non-governmental humanitarian organizations.

Chapter 1 Choosing the Lesser Evil: Selecting Humanitarian Aid Projects; Part I NGO Decision Making in Theory; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 Opening the Black Box of Internal NGO Dynamics: An Organizational Decision-Making Perspective; Chapter 4 Towards the Reality of Humanitarian Aid Provision: Three Sketches of NGO Behavior; Part 2 MSF Holland Decision Making in Practice; Chapter 5 Traces of the Administrative Organization: MSF's Organizational Features; Chapter 6 Consequentiality in Aid Provision: MSF's Dominant Decision-Making Pattern; Chapter 7 Disagreement, Commitment, and Constraints: MSF's Secondary Decision-Making Patterns; Chapter 8 From Consequential to Garbage Can Decision-Making: Two Examples of MSF Aid Provision to Africa; Part III ACT Netherlands' Decision-Making in Practice; Chapter 9 The Opposite of the Administrative Organization: ACT Netherlands' Organizational Features; Chapter 10 Working With 'The Family': ACT's Dominant Decision-Making Pattern; Chapter 11 Working Outside 'The Family': ACT's Secondary Decision-making Patterns; Part IV Comparison and Conclusion; Chapter 12 Decison-Making Dynamics in MSF and ACT: Comparison and Discussion of Research Results; Chapter 13 A Look Beyond the Horizon: Identifying Steps towards Theoretical Generalization;