As international agencies' assistance strategies become more complex, their methods of planning and administration become less effective. Neither the rationalistic techniques of planning and management they adopted during the 1960s and 1970s to control development activities nor the structural adjustment models they used during the 1980s and 1990s to reform economic policies, encouraged the flexibility, experimentation and social learning that are crucial to implementing successfully complex and uncertain development activities. Urgent reorientation of development programmes and continuous testing and verification is required if development activity is to cope effectively with the uncertainty and complexity of the development process. An adaptive approach is needed, an approach which relies on strategic planning, administrative procedures that facilitate innovation, responsiveness and experimentation, and on decision-making processes that join learning with action.
Following practical testing and reformulation of ideas presented in the first edition, this up-dated text offers new examples and extended coverage of participatory and strategic management, from individual development projects to economic reform policies such as structural adjustment and privatization.