Development on My Terms: Development Consultants and Knowledge for Development

Abstract

SummaryConsultants are an integral component of development aid. Their involvement is based on an assumption of the transferability of knowledge to clients and beneficiaries.However this role, its efficacy and the concept of knowledge transfer have all been questioned. While research has shown interest in northern development consultants in recent years, detailed processes and practices of southern consultants' engagement with knowledge production are less analysed. Drawing on debates about knowledge, power and managing development interventions, and on extensive fieldwork exploring a Bolivian consultancy company's assignments for northern development agencies, we analyse the 'knowledge engagements' between clients, consultants and beneficiaries.The results suggest a novel theorisation: knowledge engagements are shaped by power relations exercised through discourses and financial aid on one hand and shared and unshared lifeworlds and backgrounds of actors on the other. They are also characterised by collusive behaviour with the discourses and practices of aid on the part of consultants and beneficiaries, which in turn influences outcomes. Southern consultants, although aware of these issues, are in a difficult position to challenge these relationships. A greater recognition of the tensions could lead to a new role for 1 Address: Development Policy and Practice Group, MCT Faculty, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK; correspondence can be sent to: alexander.borda-rodriguez@open.ac.uk. 2consultants if collective action were to renegotiate their terms of engagement and aim for a new mutuality.

Translating Policies into Informal Settlements' Critical Services: Reframing, Anchoring and Muddling Through

“…Future research should examine whether the real beneficiaries (i.e. the urban poor) really take advantage of the production and travel of novel ideas/knowledge beyond the benefits for the idea carriers (Borda‐Rodríguez and Johnson, ), such as consultants, NGOs, development agencies or researchers like us.…”

World Bank Technical Assistance: The Relational Dynamics of Policy Movement

“…This is an appropriate turn, because development assistance ‘is a manifestation of inequality … Being poor usually means being powerless [and] the aid system is dominated by the interests of the powerful, as opposed to the powerless’ (Robb, , 21). As Borda‐Rodriguez and Johnson (, 345) remark, TA is not ‘knowledge transfer’ (‘a product or good that can simply be transferred’) but ‘knowledge production’ (‘a process in which social relations and communication between actors play a central role’). This article builds upon the recent TA literature by recognising the importance of presentation and packaging to the effective transference of development policy norms; the focus is not on what is said but how it is said.…”

Consultancies in public administration

“…This, in turn, raises the question of how these justifications are articulated, and how they are recognized by others (see recently Audenaert et al, 2019). As we discuss below, the variation in such justifications and their recognition by significant others are sources of variation in how different national and international public administrations engage consultancies (e.g., Borda‐Rodriguez & Johnson, 2013; Momani, 2013).…”