development management—values and partnerships

POLICY ARENA

DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT—VALUESAND PARTNERSHIPS

ALAN THOMAS*

Swansea University, Swansea, UK

Abstract: Values and multi-organization partnerships are two crucial aspects of the contested

field of development management. Their management crucially involves questions of

authority, accountability, agency and validity. This Policy Arena includes two pairs of papers,

one addressing the management of values and partnerships respectively in the context of

NGOs and the second pair doing the same with respect to development management more

broadly. They show that partnerships and values have in common that they cannot be managed

by the imposition of a rationally defined programme of action but require indirect approaches

such as steering, negotiation and looking for common ground. Copyright# 2007 John Wiley

& Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: development management; values; partnerships; authority; accountability;

agency; validity; steering

1 INTRODUCTION

This Policy Arena brings together two crucial aspects or dimensions of development

management: multi-organization partnerships and values. It derives from two meetings of

the Development Management Study Group of the Development Studies Association

(DSA). The first was a colloquium held at the Institute for Development Policy and

Management, University of Manchester, in June 2006, and the second was a parallel

session at the DSA Annual Conference at Reading University in November 2006.

Many authors, such as Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff (2005), characterise development

management as a distinct sub-field of management or public administration which is

applied in developing countries, and indeed the papers in this Policy Arena all use

Journal of International Development

J. Int. Dev. 19, 383–388 (2007)

Published online in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jid.1370

*Correspondence to: Alan Thomas, 8 Western Close, Mumbles, Swansea, SA3 4HF, UK.E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

examples of development set in such countries. I would take a broader view, taking the term

‘development’ to apply to processes of societal transformation anywhere. However, for the

Brinkerhoffs as well as for me, development management is aimed at social goals or

‘institutional agendas’ external to any one organisation, involves intervention or influence

rather than direct use of resources to meet goals, is process rather than only task oriented,

and involves values and clashes between goals.

There are also strong critiques of development management. For example, Cooke (2004)

sees it as ‘complicit’ in what he sees as the ‘project’ of global neo-liberal modernisation.

Thus even where ideals such as participation and empowerment are used within

development management, Cooke argues they are co-opted as means of control by

powerful agencies that undertake interventions which are claimed to be pro-poor while in

fact cementing international power relationships that maintain huge inequalities. Such

arguments build on the view of development administration as de-politicising (Ferguson,

1994). More specifically, it is suggested that the imposition of Western management

practices produces a ‘standardisation’ which can threaten the specific identity and purpose

of local organisations and movements (Wallace et al., 1997; Bornstein, 2003).

Thus development management is a contested field with inherent ambiguities. In

previous papers (Thomas, 1996, 1999) I asked ‘What is development management?’ and

‘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’ (Thomas, 1996). However, there are a number of

somewhat different answers to my questions, and depending on which answer is pursued,

there are different insights to be gained on how to approach partnerships and the

management of values in development.

In the 1996 paper, I argued that ‘the nature of the task determines the appropriate version

of management’ (ibid), and found that the answer to my question depended on what view I

took of development. 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. This view of what is meant by development management

was dubbed ‘management in development’. It implies no specific differences from

conventional management except for the context. Conventional management has its own

ways of treating partnerships and includes the idea of ‘management by values’ as a new

approach. Although these are not mainstream topics within management thinking or

practice, we may ask what can be learnt from them that could be applied to management in

developing countries or within 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)

This is ‘management of development’. It has similarities with the framework developed

by Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff (2005) for development management, which has four

‘facets’: development management as ‘means to institutional agendas’, as ‘toolkit’, as

‘process’, and as ‘values’. Both the idea of multi-organisation partnership (the ‘efforts at

Copyright # 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 19, 383–388 (2007)

DOI: 10.1002/jid

384 A. Thomas

progress’ being managed are ‘on the part of one of a number of agencies’) and the focus on

values are central, defining aspects of development management in this sense. With respect

to values, the point is that development management aims at social goals external to any

single organisation, which are subject to value-based conflicts. In other words, different

organisations (or even parts of the same organisation) are likely to be working for

development in the same field but differ not only about what should be done but over what

exactly is meant by this ‘development’ they are all working towards, and these may be

differences of values involving deeply-held beliefs. The Brinkerhoffs agree, with their

fourth facet recognising the political content of management and how this is heightened in

a development context. Tools aimed at more effective implementation or building capacity

are never neutral and in fact carry values. They suggest that development management can

acknowledge this by bringing out clashes between goals and making it clear who is and is

not taking part in decisions, and by making clear its own normative stance, for example, in

favour of empowerment and learning. ‘Development management should enhance the

capacity of development actors to effectively pursue their own development: it should be

people-centred’ (Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff, 2005).

In my 1999 paper I emphasised a third approach to defining development management in

which it would signify a particular style of management rather thanmerelymanagement of a

particular kind of activity or task. This corresponded to a third approach to defining

development itself, in which development is neither historical process nor a set of deliberate

intervention tasks but a particular kind of orientation, an orientation towards progressive

change. Ideally this development orientation would pervade management at all levels,

guiding all the activities of development organisations, not just specific development

interventions (Thomas, 1999). I call this ‘management for development’. Here development

values can play an important role in both motivation and organisational compliance.

It is interesting to note that Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff acknowledge my distinction

between management of development and management for development, likening it to the

difference put forward by Bennis and Goldsmith (1997) between ‘doing things right’ and

‘doing the right thing’. The Brinkerhoffs use their four-facet framework, especially the

difficulty in reconciling the first facet with the others, to illuminate some very basic

contradictions about ‘what is the right thing to do’ (Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff, 2005),

particularly questions about the power of international agencies to impose their ideas of

‘the right thing to do’ over local or national self-determination. I would argue, however,

that development management in this sense involves contestation not just over what is the

right thing to do but over what should be the guiding values or principles of development

itself. One of the strongest elements of management for development is that it promotes

development values, which implies aiming to change values—even though, as noted, there

may be very basic disagreement about what the values of development are, or should be.

This is true both when development managers act as internal change agents and when they

promote development externally, for example within multi-organisation partnerships.

If we combine insights obtained from each of the three views of what is meant by

development management, we can derive a number of problems or issues about how to

approach partnerships and the management of values, which we can discuss under the

headings of authority, accountability, agency and validity.

First, where does the authority to promote value change, or to decide on the contribution

of each of a number of organisations in a partnership, come from?Within one organisation,

a simple hierarchical view of authority might appear to answer this question. But things are

usually not so simple. A particular ideal view of development may have been adopted as a


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Development Management—Values and Partnerships 385

policy commitment on paper, but the corresponding values are not generally embedded

throughout a bilateral aid agency, a government ministry or local authority, or even a

typical development NGO or community organisation. And exactly what are the values

which should underlie development in a particular organisation or partnership? This is

certainly unlikely to be agreed, since the principles of development are, as we have seen, a

matter for contestation at the most general level, and likely always to continue so.

Second, accountability. How can one demonstrate the discharge of one’s duties without

reference to specific tasks completed or performance measurements? And how can one

claim that a successful outcome is the result of one’s efforts or be held to account for failing

to achieve results when those outputs are also affected by what one’s partners have done or

failed to do. To say that the spread of values and a certain style of management is as

important as implementing specific development tasks is all very well, but this view

certainly makes the exercise of accountability more complicated.

In terms of agency, I have portrayed development management largely in terms of

promoting change. However, there is also a considerable element of learning to cope with

change. Development is a much broader, longer-term process than that encompassed by the

activities of specific managers. Development in the sense of an ‘orientation towards

progressive change’ does not imply successful new projects are being implemented

frequently, although some feeling of forward movement is necessary to maintain

commitment and motivation. This again is a source of tension.

Lastly, how can values themselves be validated? Consider the following example.

Development management occurs in (contested) contexts where the private sector may be

regarded as the driver of growth and also increasingly be expected to participate in

programmes and strategies for poverty reduction. As we have seen, it is about intervention in

favour of development goals, and/or about promoting development values. Both of these

may conflict with goals of private profit and values associated with the private sector such as

commercialism and individualism. Thus the management of partnerships for development

may in fact involve the management of conflict. While a creative and open approach to

conflict resolution may provide a kind of test of one’s values, this still leaves unresolved the

question: ‘If values are contested, how do we know ours are the valid ones?’

Of the four papers in this Policy Arena, the first two focus specifically on non-

governmental organisations (NGOs). While the idea of development management applies

to the management of activities in any organisational sector aimed at or oriented towards

development, NGOs working in or for development (development NGOs) are perhaps the

clearest examples of development organisations, and as such the ideas of development

management should certainly be applicable to them.

Harrison explores one particular form of multi-organisation partnership, that between

NGOs, specifically between international development NGOs (Harrison uses the label

‘INGOs’) and local NGOs in developing countries. As noted already, partnership is itself

one of the values often cited as of being central to development management. The way in

which partnerships are managed can indicate strongly the particular ideals toward which

development managers are striving. Harrison argues that there is a general, and misplaced,

acceptance of subsidiarity as a guiding principle for a partnership between an INGO and a

local NGO, interpreted to mean that the local NGO should ideally take over as much of the

work of the partnership as possible. However, he uses a case study from India to show how

it can remain appropriate for each partner to undertake a range of tasks driven more by

questions of their relative capacities and the specific needs of the situation than by the

application of a single principle. More generally, he argues that contestation over such


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386 A. Thomas

questions, and more generally about how partnership is to be interpreted and implemented

in a particular case, is to be welcomed, and in fact such contestation is an essential and

positive aspect of any concept such as partnership which is a useful, value-based,

component of development thinking.

Mowles looks at how values are used as a management tool within development NGOs,

He concludes that, far from being distinctive in their value basis, these organisations have

much in common with private sector corporations. Both private and INGO managers seek

‘the good’ through values, but they are also under similar pressures deriving from

marketisation and globalisation. He compares a case study of management consultancy in a

private corporation with one of a similar process in an INGO. From this, he shows how

management in these two contexts has in common the use or misuse of values for coercion

and enforcing conformity. Both sets of managers transform values perhaps inappropriately

into organisational norms or rules and tend to ignore the fact that values as a form of

‘voluntary compulsion’ cannot be subject to direction but can only change as a result of

negotiation and contestation.

The second pair of papers look at aspects of managing partnerships and values within

development more broadly. Apart from NGOs the other typical development organisation

is a governmental development agency. This category includes both bilateral and

multilateral aid agencies and the ministries and other internal agencies of Southern

governments focused on aspects of their own countries’ development. However,

development management, as noted above, includes both management within

organisations which are specifically development organisations, both governmental and

non-governmental, and management of or for development in any organisational context.

The paper by Chettiparamb proposes one way of looking at managing differences in

values and conflicting interests within multi-organisational partnerships that involve state

and local government agencies together with private individuals, local businesses and

others. She uses Jessop’s ‘Strategic Relational Approach’ (SRA), which is based on the

duality of agency and structure in a similar way to Giddens’ structuration theory, but is

suggested as superior, at least in its application to specific cases. The paper applies SRA to

a particular case of partnership to facilitate road widening in Kochi, the major city of the

Indian state of Kerala. This involved three public authorities together with property owners,

local co-operative societies and others, and included the creation of specific local

institutional structures (people’s committees, etc.) which took certain forms as a result of

particular structural constraints. Chettiparamb suggests that SRA has the potential to guide

implementation and intervention without determining it, by informing a process of

‘steering . . . society towards goals that it would not adopt if left to itself’.

Finally, McCourt discusses the management of values in public sector development

organisations, using the example of the Sri Lankan civil service. He looks at the contradiction

between the content of particular values such as participation, empowerment, and so on, and

the idea of usingmanagement power to promote such values. He uses as an example the value

of impartiality in the context of a historically persistent patronage system, with a case study

of how such a value can become embedded as an organisational norm through a combination

of political legitimacy at the highest level with the operation of a classical bureaucracy.

All the papers lead towards the general conclusion that partnerships and values have one

thing in common, namely that they cannot be directed or imposed. They are two aspects of

development management where influencing, steering, negotiation, looking for common

ground, and so on, are of more importance that trying to force agreement for the

implementation of a rationally defined programme of action.


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Development Management—Values and Partnerships 387

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge, with thanks, the role of Paul Barry of IDPM, co-convenor of

the Study Group with me, in organising the colloquium and helping to initiate both the

parallel session at Reading and the Policy Arena itself.

REFERENCES

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Bornstein L. 2003. Management standards and development practice in the South African aid chain.

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Brinkerhoff D, Brinkerhoff J. 2005. International Development Management: Definitions, Debates

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Globalization, Governance and Public Administration. Marcel Dekker: New York.

Cooke B. 2004. The Managing of the (Third) World. Organization 11(5): 603–629.

Ferguson J. 1994. The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic

Power in Lesotho. University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis.

Thomas A. 1996. What is Development Management? Journal of International Development 8(1):

95–110.

Thomas A. 1999. What makes good development management? Development in Practice 9(1–2):

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Wallace T, Crowther S, Shepherd A. 1997. Standardising development: Influences on UK NGOs’

Policies and Procedures. WorldView Publishing; Oxford in association with Development

Administration Group, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham.


DOI: 10.1002/jid

388 A. Thomas

development management—values and partnerships

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