The culture of management or the management of culture?

Authors

  • Chris Burman

Keywords:

knowledge management, development, women, poverty, rural organizations, South Africa

Abstract

In 1992, 43 women who considered themselves to be the ?poorest of the poor? began working together to grow food for themselves and their families, in a remote rural village called Apel (Limpopo Province, South Africa). By 2003, the original 43 had grown to a group of almost 3,500 women working together under a nationally registered, not-for-profit organisation known as the Rural Women?s Association (RWA). The RWA now fosters a broad portfolio of activities, offering a sustainable livelihood to the women involved. This article presents a brief mapping of their journey, highlighting a moment of cultural change that jeopardised the gains made after a decade of community development, partially framed within a critical view of the Community of Practice model.

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Published

2006-01-01

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 3 (2005): Understanding the role of culture in knowledge sharing: making the invisible visible

Section

Papers

License

The copyright of the articles published in this journal remains the property of the authors. For liability reasons, the title belongs to the Foundation for the Support of the Knowledge Management for Development Journal. The journal is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License. This journal is currently an open access journal as it has a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. From the BOAI definition [1] of "open access", we support the rights of users to "read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles." However, some of the content (2009-2012) is only available on the Taylor and Francis website. Within the next few months, this issue too will become available on the OJS. [1] http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess