T&M4D

The AIM newsletter had an interesting announcement, introducing a new research programme for technology and management for development. Based at Oxford University, the programme connects two fields that are of great importance to KM4D – technology and management – and explores the theoretical implications for development. This is a nice initiative, first, because it is introducing development into mainstream management discourse. Second, because it explores the technology implications for management in development. As such it looks beyond the ICT4D discourse which sometimes has a tendency to focus too much on the technology side, and, like KM4D, often neglects important managerial aspects: what knowledge is critical to the organization´s mission and objectives, how should organizational processes be arranged to maximize the flow of this knowledge, and (only then) which technologies can be called upon to support this. With such a holistic view, we can start thinking about ‘more effective development’.

The new ‘T&M4D’ programme is very new so the website is still in development, but it does contain a number of interesting working papers.