Collaboration in Development: A South African Heritage

Abstract

South Africa is under-capitalising on its rich ways of doing business. One such way, the focus of this book, is collaboration.

The collaboration approach should be promoted to the same extent that the Japanese have entrenched and exported their ‘small incremental improvement’ Kaizen approach. There are many such underexplored indigenous ways of doing business in Africa. Where improvement is required in relation to development and organisational performance, the need is not so much building new capacities as discovering and implementing more strategic and effective utilisation of existing indigenous ones. And there is no need to cringe when African culture is used to inform science.

This book uses history, interviews and documentary evidence from South Africa to weave together a story, arguments and lessons about collaboration.