PUBLIC DEVELOPMENT 314

CLASSTEST: THEME 2
2019
 THEME 1:

Reading: Thomas (1996). What is development management?

Development can be seen in two rather different ways:
1. as an historical process of social change in which societies are transformed over long
periods; and
2. as consisting of deliberate efforts aimed at progress on the part of various agencies,
including governments, all kinds of organizations and social movements - (Thomas,
1992: p. 7).
“To manage is to . . . plan, to organize, to command, to co-ordinate and to control.” -Fayol
(1949)
‘To manage’ is simply to create the conditions under which the work will be done, and done
well. Management is therefore about enabling (or empowering) effective action (Paton, 1991:
pp. 35-36; emphasis in original).

Development Management
Development as: as: Management as:

Historical change Management of any type of task ‘Command and control’ or

process in the context of development ‘enabling’, depending on task

If ‘consensus’ or intervention in
Management of development
interests of powerful
Deliberate efforts at efforts; i.e. management of
then as above; if in
progress intervention, with
interests of powerless,
conflicts of goals
‘enabling’

First view, of development as historical change process:

 There would seem to be little distinctive or special about development management.
 A simple combination of development studies with management would suffice-
though one should note that to combine a study of development and management at
all is rather unusual.
 Management would provide concepts and theories about how goals can be achieved
in organizations, plus skills and strategies for achieving them.
 Development studies would give the examples and knowledge of specific
development contexts in which these management skills are to be applied, plus
additional concepts and theories for understanding and analysing the development
context.

Second view, of development as deliberate efforts at progress:

 That certain special elements particular to development management become
apparent. However, the first view should not be dismissed. Indeed, even when
considering the management of such deliberate efforts at progress, this should be
within the context of development as a long-term historical process.

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  So, in a full programme of study on development management, one would expect to
find modules on development studies and conventional management separately, with
applications of management concepts, skills and strategies in a development context,
as well as modules dealing with the distinctive points arising from the second view.
 Characterized development management as the management of deliberate efforts at
progress on the part of one of a number of agencies, the management of intervention
in the process of social change in the context of conflicts of goals, values and
interests.

The above discussion identified four distinctive features of development tasks, namely:
1. External social goals rather than internal organizational ones;
2. Influencing or intervening in social processes rather than using resources to meet
goals directly;
3. Goals subject to value-based conflicts;
4. And the importance of process, the appreciation of which was suggested as a
starting point.

Concepts (Lees deur):

The idea of development policy as process-involving public action on the part of a number
of agencies. This is opposed to the view of policy as prescription for actions to be
undertaken by the state alone (see Wuyts et al. 1992). It is a basic starting-point for
development management as a distinct subject area.

Recognition of the variety of development contexts and institutions and the number of
different types of agency involved, including local and national state agencies, NGOs and
intergovernmental agencies. Staudt (1991) is one of the few authors on the management of
development who explicitly addresses this question. She notes, for example, that
‘[dlevelopment management is inherently political, and [requires] the diagnosis of political
contexts and organizational politics more than techniques’ (p. 3). There are various
techniques for analyzing situations where a multiplicity of agencies is involved, ranging from
simple stakeholder analysis to more complex network or influence diagramming. However,
on this point as with the previous one, appreciation is probably more important than specific
skills.

Project design, management and appraisal. This is to be seen not in terms of applying
strict control and rationalistic techniques but as an adaptive and flexible means of
intervention. Rondinelli (1993) goes some way towards this with his suggestion that
development projects should be regarded not as blueprints to be put into practice but as
experiments designed to promote what he calls ‘a process of adaptive administration’ (p.
158). One might go further and consider how projects, particularly those involving the
resources of more than one agency, derive from the policy process and then feed back into it.

Negotiation and brokering. Finding ways of working with or alongside other agencies is
crucial. If possible, one should move from thinking from a position within one agency about
its ‘external environment’ and how to deal with it (as with the concept of ‘resource
dependency’ as the basis of interorganizational linkages-Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978), to
conceptualizing a whole development arena as an inter-organizational domain, with a variety
of actors who each has a part to play. A practical aspect here is the mobilization of
resources through negotiating exchanges or bringing together those with complementary
needs. A different possibility is the use of shared values as the basis for working together,
which could imply the need for techniques of conceptual mapping or other means for the
management of values on an interorganizational basis.

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Economic and social policy analysis. Here the need is for an appreciation of the important
elements of a particular economy or policy area without specialising in economics, social
policy, or any other single discipline. Such an appreciation needs to integrate micro with
macro and public with private. It could work through sets of key questions to ask of given
types of situation, together with a
Research and appraisal. It is particularly important to be able to undertake the quick but
rigorous appraisal of specific situations and the likely impact of proposed interventions on
the basis of incomplete information. Relevant methods include rapid rural appraisal,
environmental impact assessment, systems-based methodologies and others.

Appreciation of political strategy. Clark (1991) distinguished between collaborative,

competitive and oppositional strategies; Batsleer and Randall (1991) discuss the factors
involved in choosing a strategy involving particular types of negotiated relations between a
variety of agencies. Not having control as a single agency means that such strategic choices
are critical.

Institutional development and capacity building. This area arose in the above discussion
through a consideration of ‘sustainability’. To be sure that development is able to continue
into the future mean building up human institutions that sustain their values and their
capacities. An important question here (which links with that of strategic choice in 7 above) is
how to ‘scale up’ from successful project management to broader intervention: whether to
aim to do this through collaboration, advocacy, or organizational growth. Edwards and
Hulme (1992)5 set out this problem from an NGO viewpoint, but it is of more general
relevance. This is also the place to bring in consideration of democratization as a process of
development of institutions throughout a society and even internationally.

The particular case of extreme social upheaval (including war) - managing in such
circumstances involves a mixture of very practical decisions with assisting the building-up of
social institutions that may allow for development later.

Finally, ethical and philosophical questions-on when any agency has the right to
intervene on some other’s behalf, the basis of representation, what are legitimate means to
development ends, and so on.

In addition, there is specific importance to be given to the case where management

development implies managing an intervention on behalf of the poor and powerless against
other powerful interests. Here, as pointed out above, management has necessarily to be
seen as enabling and empowering. This can occur at various levels including local and
national. Thus the following list, shorter but no less important, has to be added to the above
list of conceptual and skill areas specifically relevant to development management:

Empowerment and participation, including more or less radical methods for working with
communities and particular groups of the poor and powerless. Many of these methods derive
from Freire’s (1972) ideas of conscientisation; different versions have been pioneered by a
variety of development theorists and activists (e.g. Chambers, 1983; Fals-Borda and
Rahman, 1991). There are now whole families of methods under headings such as
Participatory Rural Appraisal and Participative Action Research which are quite different
from the participatory methods that may be included within the general understanding of
‘management’. (Even though the idea of ‘participative action research’, for example, is
current both in Western organizational studies and in work on the empowerment of rural
communities, these are effectively two traditions separated by their approach to power-only
in the second case is the ‘action’ meant to be against existing power structures. See Brown,
1993).

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National capacities and globalization. Some of the above areas, such as the appreciation
of the variety of development institutions including local, national, nongovernmental and
intergovernmental, the need for skills in negotiation and brokering, economic and social
policy analysis, and institutional development and capacity building, come together in the
scenario of national institutions struggling to maintain developmentalist policies in the face of
conditionalities imposed by intergovernmental agencies such as the World Bank. Structural
adjustment and similar internationally sanctioned policies that constrain development are
crucial arenas for integrating a number of conceptual and skill areas in order to build up a
political appreciation of what is needed for development management.

Development management should be seen as including three types of material:

1. Development studies; and conventional management theory in a development
context.
2. New areas arising from viewing development management as the management of
intervention aimed at ‘progress’ in a context of conflicts over goals and values.
3. Radical participative management methods aimed at enabling and empowering,
arising from the cases where development management may be viewed as the
management of interventions on behalf of the relatively powerless.

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 Reading: Thomas (1999). What makes good development
management?
I was looking for a counter to 'the idea that management principles are universal, so that
whatever the context management can be taught using the same learning materials'.
Arguing that 'the nature of the task determines the appropriate version of management’.

If development is viewed as a long-term historical change process, then development

management may be taken to mean the management of any type of task in the context of
development. If, however, development is seen in terms of deliberate efforts at progress,
then development management would be characterised as:

 The management of deliberate efforts at progress on the part of one of a number of

agencies, the management of intervention in the process of social change in the
context of conflicts of goals, values and interests. (Thomas 1996: 106)

Now appears to me that my 1996 paper was limited in that it did not address this question
directly. In that paper I attempted to unite the 'command and control' and 'empowerment and
enabling' views of management into 'the simple idea of management as getting the work
done by the best means available' (ibid.: 100).
This in turn led me to define development management in terms of what is needed to carry
out development tasks successfully.

We can define development management as management undertaken with a development

orientation, rather than management in the context of the development process or the
management of development interventions or tasks. I will dub this third view of what is meant
by development management: management for development, to add to the previous two:
management in development and management of development

I do suggest that a task-oriented approach has limitations. It does not help us to recognise
the special characteristics of good development management, and it does not really provide
the best counter to the notion that management principles are universal

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I had argued that 'there is something specific about those tasks which may be called
development tasks' (ibid.: 101). I identified four distinctive features of development tasks
(ibid.: 106):
 external social goals rather than internal organisational ones;
 influencing or intervening in social processes rather than using resources to meet
goals directly;
 goals subject to value-based conflicts; and
 the importance of process.

A task-oriented approach to development is reflected in the ubiquity of logical framework

planning and its variants, in which development interventions are planned on the basis of
devising a logic by which tasks or activities will lead to desired outcomes and thence to the
achievement of set goals.
The tasks tend to be evaluated by indicators which show simply how fully they have been
carried out, while the achievement of outcomes and goals is evaluated by measuring pre-
determined indicators specific to them; and if tasks are completed without achieving the
goals this is attributed to deficiencies in the assumptions made about the logical connections
between them (Gasper 1996).

Several limitations to an entirely task-oriented approach:

1. The concentration on defining what is required and then getting the tasks completed
by the best means available appears to downplay the possibility that the way a task
is performed may affect the outcomes and hence the achievement of goals.

This instrumental aspect of management needs to be complemented with a realisation of

the importance of the expressive aspect of management, in which values and ideas are
promoted as part of how an organisation (and its members and managers) defines itself (and
themselves), not just as one way of getting things done.

2. Not only does it downplay the importance of how a task is done as opposed to just
getting it done anyhow; it ignores the importance of acting consistently with the
organisation's own values in order to reinforce those values and thus the
organisation's culture and sense of its own worth.
3. There is a third limitation, which has similarities with the first two but goes beyond
them. It relates to the two aspects of public action (Wuyts et al. 1992; Thomas 1997).
 Public action means not only acting to meet public need but promoting values
which define what is regarded as public need and how it is regarded.
 Development management surely also includes promoting values, in
particular what is to be regarded as development, in this way. Again,
conventional management also includes promoting values.
 However, while business management promotes the values of business, I
would argue that good development management should promote the values
of development.

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LECTURE SLIDES: 3 & 4
What is Development Management?

 Development management is said to be an applied discipline and is located within

the parent field of public administration.
 From its initial focus on institution building of central level bureaucracies for economic
and project planning, development management has gradually expanded to
encompass bureaucratic reorientation and restructuring, the integration of politics
and culture into management improvement, participatory and performance-based
service delivery and program management, community and NGO capacity building,
and policy reform and implementation
 Although it stemmed from the introduction of pure management principles to the
running of international development activities, the necessity to introduce a radical
system that will remedy stagnation in the public service systems of developing
countries, especially in Africa and Asia has broadened
Key Questions:
1. Is DM development administration with business language and hence ideas from
industry and the private, market, sector generally?
2. Is DM complicit in neo-liberal World Bank interventions in the Third World?
3. Is DM a First World discourse about how the Third World should be managed?
4. What is the relationship between development administration/development
management and colonial administration?

Development Management
Characterize development management as the following: (Thomas)
1. Management in the context of development as a long-term historical process
Management IN development –management in the context of the development process
2. Management of deliberate efforts at progress by means of intervention in the social
change process on the part of a variety of agencies
Management OF development –management of development efforts
3. Management FOR development –management with a development orientation
Orientation towards progressive change

Management in the context of development as a long-term historical process

Management IN development –management in the context of the development process
1. If it means anything, it simply means managing in a development context
Thus in this sense –management in a development context –will have connotations of
management in (or for) less developed regions, or, historically of colonial administration (or,
in SA, until recently, the administration of the Bantustans)

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 2. Such development contexts can all too readily be assumed to have certain typical
characteristics (corruption) and the specific idea of ‘underdevelopment’ can be
assumed to apply to those being managed and to imply their cultural inferiority
Management of deliberate efforts at progress by means of intervention in the social change
process on the part of a variety of agencies
Management OF development –management of development efforts
1. Deliberate efforts aimed at progress would themselves be activities required to be
managed
In sum, the disagreements and debates between different versions of ‘progress’, and, and
hence over what is meant by ‘development’, and the variety of interests involved, ensure that
there is no clear agreement about the goals of such management (will return to this)

Management FOR development –management with a development orientation

Implies a style of management in which any and every activity in such a way as to enhance
development.
More than –getting the work done by the best available means –needs to be complemented
with the realization of the importance of the expressive aspect of management, in which
values and ideas are promoted as part of how an organization (its members and managers)
defines itself (and themselves) –not just as a way of getting things done. In this scenario,
development management must include managing values within and between organisations;
building capacity; organizational learning
The style applies to activities which are designed in to a deliberate development intervention
and to other activities. Thus for planned development tasks it implies considering the way
they are done, not just getting results. Indeed, in many circumstances, to empower is more
important in its own right than getting a particular job done.

Good development management is a combination of all three approaches

Authentic development management is the progressive management for development
The clearest example of good development management will be those that use the
enabling and empowering mode of engagement to achieve development goals for the
relatively powerless

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CONTINUITY
 Continuity between development administration and development management is not
disputed
Development Management Then:
1. Was based on the notion of big government as the beneficent instrument of an
expanding economy; and an increasingly jut society -development administration was
synonymous with public admin, which is synonymous with bureaucracy
2. Had an elitist basis –enlightened minority such as planners and politicians would be
committed to transforming their societies into replicas of the modern nation state
3. [Used] foreign aid as the mechanism by which the missing tools of public
administration would be transferred from the West to developing countries
4. [Early on] recognized culture –particularly in developing countries -as an impediment
to the smooth functioning of Western tools and dominant Weberian bureaucracy –
development management had to overcome such cultural practices which were seen
as the sources of bureaucratic dysfunctions
Development Management Now:
1. DM as a means to foreign assistance agendas –DM as is a means to enhancing the
effectiveness of projects and programmesdetermined and designed by donor
agencies
2. DM as a toolkit –promotes the application of a range of management and analytical
tools adapted from a variety of disciplines, including strategic management, public
policy, psychology, anthropology and political science and these tools merge with
policy and program analytics with action
3. DM as values –DM is infused with politics + DM takes a normative stance on
empowermentand supporting groups, particularly the poor and marginalized.to take
an active role in determining and fulfilling their own needs
4. DM as a process –operating at three levels: individual, organizational and sector
level (1) –participation
Tensions between the four facts
But there are clear differences between early incarnations of development management and
the contemporary versions of development management
1. DM incorporates more of conventional management –which Thomas accepts at face
value as being about getting the job done by the best means possible
2. Emphasis on the use of participatory management approaches (e.g. process
consultation and organization development) and its associated language of
empowerment
3. Remit of development management is extended beyond the public sector into the
remit of private sector and civil society (NGOs)
4. What development means and how it should be carried out are contested –goals of
development are for social change and that these are strongly subject to value based
conflicts, derived from different conceptions of ‘progress’ and development and
differences of interests. This has radical implications for the powerless and poor

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  DM –is a practical application of modernization theory and is complicit in neo-liberal
World Bank interventions in the Third World
 DM is still very much about the attempt to achieve modernity, albeit the neoliberal
modernity –as that succeeding its statist version
 At the level of practice, management’s participatory processes, and those associated
with organizational change (more generally) have via DM become implicated in the
management of change at the most macro levels possible, that is in the global
neoliberal transformation of nation states –read further Cooke (2004) about CDFs
and PRSPs
 For DM –its explicit and actioned desire to intervene on the side of the poor and the
oppressed has not precluded its sustaining, through co-optation or choice,
supposedly pro-poor interventions that have the opposite effect (user fees). Claims
for pro-poor interventions which is claimed distinguishes DM mask interventions that
have the opposite effect. Moreover, the commitment to participation and
empowerment has not stopped but facilitated this
 So participation and empowerment at the micro level (‘community’ –however it
comes to be defined) can sustain through co-optation and undermining resistance,
macro-level inequalities and exploitation. Indeed, none of the mainstream writers on
DM recognize managerial orthodoxy’s capacity to appropriate radical ideas –like
participation and empowerment

(Dis)continuity….the colonial
 Apparently, the empowerment of the powerless, the poor, and the marginalized in
societies as a whole goes beyond mainstream management versions of
empowerment and distinguishes development management from conventional
management.
 It claims to increase the power of those in the Third World (not least, it is implied, in
relation to those in the First), development management is apparently enabled to
distance itself from parallels with colonial administration
 At the level of basic principles, participation and empowerment and all, development
management and colonial have more in common that is different.

Continuity….the colonial
 Recognition in the literature is a recognition that both CA and DM are fundamentally
about First World interventions in the operations of Third World societies –like the
modernization process initiated and implemented by outside forces
 Thus –while DM may now be multi-sectoraland focus on more than government –
unlike CA -its primary concern has always been to shape the operations of
‘developing’ nation states. Blurring of focus is symbolized by the increased use of the
term ‘governance’ agenda –palatable to the World bank –partly government but
partly not –‘structures and mechanisms that are used to manage public affairs
according to accepted [Western] rules and procedures’
 The location of development management serves to conceal fundamental truth of its
different status as a First World discourse about, and structuring relationship with the
Third World –a label assigned –weak dysfunctional states
 DA before it is still synonymous with, or a subset of discipline of public administration,
or sometimes nowadays, Public Sector Management. However, this discipline,
development management aside, is otherwise a First World discourse of First World
states.

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  In the case of development management as a means to foreign assistance agendas
–what this conceals is the primacy of the ‘foreign development agenda’ s facet, and
participation and empowerment’s status as subservient to these agendas
 Participation and empowerment in practice always takes place within First World
boundaries which proscribes generally empowering options like the CDF and PRSP
we spoke of earlier

Continuity….the colonial…governance
 DM’s concern with governance in which the continuity between colonial
administration and development management has is strongest manifestation
 Governance agenda’s concerns with how Third World nations are ruled and attempts
to control how this happens –need to train and build capacity, the rule of law,
absence of corruption, the role of education in progress, flexible labourmarkets, fair
revenue collection, and espoused support for the rural poor –How is this different
from the ‘almost metaphysical obligation to rule’ of colonisers–consisted of …
moral obligations to the subject races … such matters as the training of native rulers;
the delegation to them of the responsibility as they are fit to exercise; the constitution
of Courts of Justice free from corruption and accessible to all;the adoption of a
system of education which will assist progress without the creation of false ideals; the
institution of free labour,and a just system of taxation; the protection of the peasantry
from oppression and the preservation of their rights (Britishcolonial administrator)

 ‘We hold these countries because it is the genius of our race to colonise, to trade,
and to govern’ –So coloniserswere agents of progressive change –concern for
development did not arise from any desire to establish a foundation for independence
 Later on, during the Cold War, development administration would wage an unarmed
managerial struggle against communism in the underdeveloped nations by
engineering the transformation to capitalist modernity. National development was an
aspect of US counterinsurgency -which was to be achieved through administrative
development.
When a country is being subverted, it is not being outfought, it is being out-administered.
Subversion is literally administration with a minus sign’

Continuity….the colonial…democratization
 DM redefinition of the role of the state -less direct service provision, creation and
maintenance of a level playing field for economic activity, and empowerment of non-
state actors
 ‘Democratic governance creates a broad institutional framework that enables market-
led economic growth to occur’ –this is a deliberate conflation of the of democracy and
the market.
 What we have is a neo-liberal variant of democratic governance –‘market democracy
that DM promotes, ‘serving as essentially an exercise in restabilization through
improved circulation of elites to lend legitimacy to economic deregulation’

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Continuity….the colonial…participation
 Application of participation in development processes per se has colonial roots. One
name is prominent John Collier: Commissioner for the US Bureau of Indian Affairs –
applied participatory methodologies
 Principle that guided his work at the BIA paralleled contemporary development
management
… working with established and regenerating new communities with democratic control over
land use; sustaining cultural, civil and religious liberties … support which passes
responsibility to tribes in organization, education, the provision of cooperative credit and the
conservation of natural resources

 Collier’s advocacy of participatory approaches, and espousal of self government was

inspired by the British model of indirect rule –decentralized despotism –obligation first,
exploitation second
 This managerialism is about a totalizing/totalitarian means of management control
witnessed in Thatcher assaults on the public sector in the UK

Conclusion
 Management as a neutral and technical means to-an-end set of activities and
knowledge conceals its status as a product of broader social relations (at every level
from the global to the personal power relations, and in particular, its role in sustaining
these
 Managerialism has been good at assimilating ideas from radical paradigms. A
directly relevant example is the construction of managerialist approaches to
participation from the assimilated work of political leftists (including John Collier,
ironically)
 Appropriation by the managerialist orthodoxy of radical ideas is labeled ‘colonization’
within mainstream management
 Claims made by development management for the empowerment of the poor,
participation, and for poverty elimination are not an example of the radical prevailing
over the orthodox, but of this metaphorical colonization. The strongest and saddest
irony is that this metaphorical process both maintains, and is maintained by, a literal
perpetuation of colonization processes on the part of development management.
 However, relatively recent development of ‘progressive’ conceptions of management
which do recognize intra-organizational political processes, so called micro-politics;
and then state that ‘received wisdom is now beginning to assimilate the
understanding that managerial behavior is now mediated by organizational, societal
cultures and contexts …

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