Community development as organizational learning: the importance of agent-participant reciprocity

This paper argues that for the development process to be successful, stress should be placed on both community and development agents engaging in mutual learning in order to promote change. This reciprocal relationship can be developed using the organizational learning model. The authors contend that this type of agent-participant relationship is beneficial in two ways: people with different experiences, interests and worldviews can be brought together; change within the development agent is acknowledged as legitimate. A brief literature review on community participation is given and Nonaka's theory of organizational learning (which suggests that learning occurs in four stages) is outlined and applied to the case study of the development of the rower pump in Bangladesh. Finally, implications of the organizational learning theory for community development are described.