**7. Conclusions**

At present, there is little available scientific evidence on the effectiveness of aid-based institutional development cooperation projects, particularly on how changes introduced by the projects are sustained within the beneficiary/host organizations in the Global South. Additionally, there is a dearth of knowledge about the underlying psychological factors that influence stakeholders to support or not support the project interventions (Khan et al. 2017). Our goal in this study was, therefore, to point out the salience of the project's internal stakeholders in the sustenance of the project-initiated changes. We concurrently examined the micro-aspects of stakeholder beliefs with the macro-aspects of organizational characteristics and intervention characteristics. In so doing, we have underscored the practicable actions that can be employed in the institutionalization processes for changes generated by development cooperation projects and pointed out how the organizational and project characteristics influence these actions. From a theoretical perspective, the findings reiterate theories of institutionalization that place individual behavior at the center of change implementation and institutionalization. Our study also contributes to the debates on project sustainability in international development by employing the lens of organizational change institutionalization models to shed light on how projects with organizational development objectives could be sustained.

The results can assist scholars and practitioners in North–South institutional development cooperation projects, funders, planners, project teams, and organizational leaders in beneficiary organizations in the South to focus on the psychological aspects of stakeholders (beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors) in the development of strategies and actions for sustaining project outcomes beyond the project life cycle. To this end, we suggest that actions to sustain the project's generated changes (outcomes) need to be integrated into the entire project life cycle, in ways that enhance supportive behaviors among stakeholders and, at the same time, are sensitive to likely negative, emergent, and unintended attitudes that are detrimental to the institutionalization processes of desirable project-related behaviors.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, A.R.M., J.W. and M.D.; methodology, A.R.M. and J.W.; software, A.R.M. and C.K.; validation, J.W. and M.D.; formal analysis, A.R.M. and C.K.; investigation, A.R.M.; data curation, A.R.M. and C.K.; writing—original draft preparation, A.R.M.; writing—review and editing, A.R.M., J.W., C.K. and M.D.; supervision, J.W. and M.D.; project administration, A.R.M.; funding acquisition, J.W. and M.D. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by VLIR-UOS (funding agency) for DGD (Belgian Government), grant number UG2019IUC027A103.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** We are grateful to VLIR-OUS for the scholarship that allowed us to conduct this research, the journal editors, and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of the manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

## **Appendix A. Own Compilation from Survey Data**

**Table A1.** Loadings.


**Table A1.** *Cont.*

