Handbook on development policy and management edited by COLIN KIRKPATRICK, RON CLARKE and CHARLES POLIDANO. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002, pp. 480)

✍ Scribed by John Hailey

• Book ID: 102350628
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 29 KB
• Volume: 15
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1009

✦ Synopsis

The editors of this handbook describe it as 'a reference source' which covers a range of key topics for students, practitioners, and others involved in international development or concerned with the improvement of the human condition. In many ways it meets the needs of its intended readership admirably. It is the sort of book one would expect to find in all university and college libraries, or on the reading list of any introduction to development issues course.

The Handbook is made up of a wide-ranging collection of 43 different chapters grouped together in two over-arching themes. One theme focuses on issues in Development Policy, the other on issues in Development Management. The contributors have been chosen because of their reputation or historical insight into their topic area. Each chapter focuses on a particular issue, includes a review of key elements and characteristics, some background on theory and practice, and an analysis of current thinking and new developments in the field. Each chapter concludes with a guide to further reading and a useful list of key texts.

The section on Development Policy is the stronger of the two thematic areas. It incorporates contributions on economic, social, and environmental policy, and it is helpful to have the juxtaposition of these three areas of analysis in such close proximity. In particular, these chapters provide useful analysis of how these issues have developed over time and how current debates derive from, or contradict, discussions that dominated the thinking of a previous generation of policy makers and researchers. This is well exemplified in Richard Jolly's brief history of development policy, Chris Colcough's review of education and public policy, or Ruth Pearson's commentary on gender and development. Similarly the detailed reviews of current thinking on adjustment, agriculture, trade, industry, privatisation or approaches to environmental policy and assessment add depth and detail to aid our understanding of developments in these areas.

Part 2 of the Handbook focuses on issues related to Development Management, its implementation and practice. It includes sections on the Political Context, Public Sector Management, Managing Outside the State, and Project Management. Unfortunately this section suffers from a limited and potentially myopic view of what is meant by the term 'development management'. Virtually all the commentaries offered are written from the perspective of management as public administration, the implementation of public policy and its relation with the political process. There are useful contributions on such issues as aid, democratization, poverty reduction, administrative reform, new public management and even agencification. However, there is nothing concerned with the different dimensions of management, the role of those in managerial positions, or the dynamics of management practice in an international context. As a result the view of management espoused in this volume appears narrow and sectoral. It certainly does not reflect the main body of management literature, any of the current research on capacity building, or even the debates as to alternative perspectives on development management.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the introduction to this section or any of the contributions to explore or explain how this view of 'management' relates to the wider body of research or thinking on management practices, the characteristics of managers, the impact of culture on management styles and processes, issues related to strategizing, organisation behaviour, change and organisation development. There is one brief chapter on generic issues in Human Resource Management by Willie McCourt, and two chapters on Project Management that reflect some of these wider issues but they hardly do justice the quantity and quality of research in the area.

This failure to address some of these broader management issues is obviously an issue of concern for a volume that purports to be a 'broad reference source on a range of key topics'. But it also reflects a wider issue for those concerned with the way development studies have developed as an academic discipline in recent years. At one level it is highly inter-disciplinary and has incorporated theory and research from a range of disciplines-from geography to politics. But at the same time this inter-disciplinarity is highly selective to certain elements of the social sciences, and has failed to integrate leading edge research from such areas as management, organisation studies, finance and accountancy, etc. This myopia by many development academics to a key area of social science research does not bode well for the development of the inter-disciplinary nature of the subject area. It