Refining improving institutional decision-making as a cause area: results from a scoping survey

Abstract

The improving institutional decision-making (IIDM) working group (now the Effective Institutions Project) ran a survey asking members of the EA community which topics they thought were in scope of “improving institutional decision-making” (IIDM) as a cause area. 74 individuals participated.The survey results will help target the Effective Institutions Project’s priorities and work products going forward. For example, the list of in-scope topics will form the guardrails for developing a directory of introductory resources to IIDM.Five out of the nine overarching fields we asked about were rated as ‘fully in scope’ by the median respondent. Leading amongst them was ‘whole-institution governance, leadership and culture’, with 77% of respondents rating it as fully in scope. Of the remaining fields, two were rated as ‘mostly in scope’ and two as ‘somewhat in scope’.‘Determining goals and strategies to achieve them’ (e.g. ethics and global prioritisation research), had the smallest proportion of respondents rating it as at least somewhat in scope, although the number who did so was still a majority (62%).The respondents were demographically similar to the EA community as a whole but were more likely to work in government and policy and less likely to work in software engineering and machine learning / AI.