Indigenous management and the management of indigenous knowledge

Current development efforts focus on building institutional capacity through the encouragement of local self-reliance. These are aimed at empowering the hitherto excluded and at encouraging individual entrepreneurial activity. Different understandings of the purposes of development converge on the assumption that if progress is to be achieved it cannot be imposed from the outside and has to be built on small locally-based initiatives. It is now commonplace to hear that there are many paths to development, each built on a different cultural base and using different tools, techniques and organizations. The assumptions underlying the view that it would be sufficient to transfer western technology and expertise no longer hold. It is not the ‘native’ who is backward, nor is it a failure to incorporate the ‘human factor’ which is at fault, but the essential inappropriateness of the western package that was on offer.