The World Bank has many strengths when embedding knowledge in its financing. It has a strong reputation as a provider of development knowledge that builds on its deep relationships with clients and cross-sectoral expertise. The World Bank is active in many countries’ policy processes and can back up its policy advice with financing. It is a Knowledge Bank with a long-term commitment to producing, disseminating, and applying knowledge through its established partnerships. It has teams and managers who go above and beyond World Bank requirements to pursue knowledge by creating their own learning spaces and knowledge ecosystems, sometimes opening these up for clients as well.

The World Bank uses both a linear model and a multidimensional ecosystem to learn in and from its financing. Organizational learning is a multifaceted process that benefits from both the sharing of explicit knowledge and the transfer of tacit knowledge. Explicit lesson learning, such as that provided by ICRs, country programs’ learning reviews, IEG reports, and impact evaluations, offers a structured and scalable way to document and share knowledge from projects. The transfer of tacit knowledge—through job rotations, discussions, and other means—emphasizes interpersonal interactions and experiential insights. Both types of learning enrich the organization’s collective knowledge base.

Learning opportunities vary across lending instruments and project phases. In the linear model, World Bank financing instruments have formal policies, procedures, and guidance, as well as budget norms, that create defined spaces, moments, and incentives for knowledge and learning in the design phase but lead to less attention during the implementation phase. PforR operations are somewhat of an exception in having explicit incentives and mechanisms for learning. The PforR’s annual DLI verification process creates a formal, mandated, periodic, data-supported space for knowledge sharing and learning between the World Bank and clients. This learning opportunity is supported by data on PforR’s progress toward the DLIs, which tend to be aligned with important project outcomes. By contrast, DPF and IPF have fewer built-in formal learning opportunities, so they often rely on tacit knowledge and highly motivated TTLs to generate learning. ICRs provide formal learning opportunities, but these are underused because the culture and incentives treat the ICRs as a compliance function. In the World Bank’s broader knowledge ecosystem, business units run their own systems for learning outside of the linear, project-driven model. However, these systems do not have minimum standards or requirements and few formal mechanisms or incentives so vary in quality and scope.

The World Bank’s reliance on tacit knowledge is valuable but risky. In line with previous evaluations, this evaluation finds that World Bank staff and managers are far more likely to rely on informal networks to share lessons. In part, this is because adult learners value social learning and tend to trust their peers to select the relevant advice among daunting volumes of codified knowledge. Learning from an exchange of tacit knowledge is simpler and requires only identifying the right person to talk to. However, despite their prevalence, the World Bank has not invested much in bringing methods and support for the transfer of tacit knowledge.

Areas for Management Attention

This evaluation shows that the World Bank’s current approach to learning in lending has imbalances, relies on tacit knowledge and informal learning, and rests on fragmented support (table 4.1):

• First, the linear model leads to three major imbalances. The model creates a focus on producing reports but often neglects applying these reports’ findings to operations and country-level processes. Moreover, the project cycle steers management’s attention to the design phase, leading to less attention to knowledge and learning during the implementation phase. The model reinforces the World Bank’s emphasis on generating global sectoral knowledge and the tendency to approach country knowledge through informal exchanges of tacit knowledge.
• Second, the World Bank’s lesson learning often relies on informal lessons and tacit experiences in prior or parallel operations. However, this approach is not always reliable because it depends on chance discoveries and shortchanges smaller countries and new engagement areas that typically lack prior or parallel operations to learn from. This is part of a larger issue of a culture that greatly values informal knowledge exchanges but organizes them with little methods and support.
• Third, the World Bank’s knowledge ecosystems are fragmented, disconnected, and underresourced. This lack of consistency and minimum standards leads to inefficiencies in the knowledge flows and challenges in knowledge reuse. For example, proper classification of knowledge with clear labels and contexts helps artificial intelligence models understand patterns and relationships, leading to more effective learning and adaptation.

The costs from these three characteristics are not measured. Little is therefore known about their contributions to inefficient work processes, inconsistent project quality, and missed outcomes. This evaluation does not attempt to assess such costs, but the evidence leaves little room for doubting that these imbalances and knowledge weaknesses adversely affect project performance.1

Source: Independent Evaluation Group.

Note: ICR = Implementation Completion and Results Report; ICRR = Implementation Completion and Results Report Review.

Recommendations

The procedures and guidance shape the incentives for integrating learning and knowledge generation into lending activities. The explicit expectations and incentives for learning from operations are limited to the lending process requirements, which staff generally follow, and managers pay attention to. However, many expectations and knowledge practices, such as how and when knowledge should be used and when and how clients are engaged, are implicit and implemented unevenly. Furthermore, the supervision budgets do not align with the mandates for knowledge, particularly in low-capacity countries and multicountry MPA programs. This indicates that adjusting the existing tools, procedures, and budgeting norms could encourage more consistent knowledge and learning in financing.

Recommendation 1. Make better use of the learning opportunities that are already embedded in the lending processes. Operations Policy and Country Services should revise the procedures and guidance for lending to incentivize more consistent learning throughout the lending cycle. Specifically, Operations Policy and Country Services should set clear expectations to the type of knowledge and learning, the moments and processes for learning activities, and the level of client engagement required from project teams. Box 4.1 offers some examples of what such process tweaks could entail. At the same time, managers at all levels should create spaces for knowledge and learning, including via quality enhancement reviews and informal and early meetings with peer reviewers. Managers should also role model attention to knowledge and learning and openness to discussing failures.

The knowledge ecosystems are fragmented and do not fully leverage learning from informal exchanges of tacit knowledge. The World Bank currently lacks the ability to set central knowledge management standards regarding what types of knowledge should be codified, at what moments, using what methods and processes. It also lacks the ability and staff to bring methods and support to enhance knowledge exchanges. As a result, units run their own knowledge and learning practices with no central support or standards, few staff with professional credentials in knowledge management or adult learning, and uneven quality. For example, many units sponsor activities to share tacit and explicit country and technical knowledge, including quality enhancement reviews, help desks, learning weeks, communities of practice, off-the-record exchanges with peer reviewers, and safe space clinics. These activities tend to provide valuable knowledge and networking opportunities and enable candid exchanges that complement the formal project milestone meetings, but they are too often ad hoc. Informal opportunities for knowledge sharing should be organized more systematically, with the help of more guidance and knowledge management support while not losing sight of the value of tacit knowledge and informal exchanges.

Recommendation 2. The Knowledge and Learning Department should ensure core knowledge management capacity and set World Bank–wide standards and processes for knowledge capture, storage, sharing, and access. The World Bank should rationalize the core capacity to organize key learning events with instructional designers and knowledge management professionals. The essential knowledge management capacities, standards, and processes should have oversight by senior management. Implementing this recommendation could entail:

• Setting standards for how knowledge is tagged, classified, stored, and shared across units.
• Supporting the GPs in adopting these standards, for example, by insisting that knowledge from key events such as Knowledge Weeks, client workshops, and long-term learning engagements is tagged, classified, stored, and shared across units.
• Professionalizing and enhancing the capacities of knowledge management staff. Supporting career management for knowledge management staff.
• Working with the GPs and Regions to better leverage professional knowledge management staff and thereby relieve TTLs.
• Working with the GPs and Regions to bring enhanced methods and support to knowledge sharing activities, including enhanced attention to instructional design.
• Bringing methods and support to enhance informal knowledge exchanges. Investing also in communities of practice and technical help desks.
• Periodically surveying staff’s need for, and satisfaction with, knowledge management.

Progress on implementing these recommendations could be monitored in the following manner:

• Recommendation 1—via monitoring of the number of new learning opportunities created along the project life cycle, what mechanisms and incentives support these opportunities, and how teams and managers use them.
• Recommendation 2—via staff surveys that periodically assess how staff perceive the World Bank’s learning environment and better evaluation of staff and client-facing learning events; by encouraging project documents and program documents to mention the ways in which communities of practice and other activities to unpack tacit knowledge helped the team solve problems, identify knowledge sources, or motivate design modifications; and via routine key performance indicators for the Knowledge and Learning Department.

The evaluation identified several areas for future research. The relevance, quality, and influence of ASA are important for the World Bank’s ability to provide timely knowledge to clients but fell outside of the evaluation’s scope. Clients’ learning and capacity development outcomes were also out of scope. Both are important components of the Knowledge Compact. Furthermore, the evaluation provides only partial analysis of culture and incentives around knowledge and learning, the weaknesses and effectiveness of using tacit knowledge, and ways to promote learning from mistakes and failures. Future research and evaluations could consider covering these topics.