Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for understanding and analysing business's role as a development actor, and the distinction between development tool and development agent. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a theoretical analysis based on secondary...

Purpose – This paper explores the paradigm of international development that has persisted for the past five decades, and asks whether a fresh approach is needed – one that builds on the developmental potential of the corporate sector, not just on donor aid. Design/methodology/approach –...

In recent years, the rise of information and communication technologies (ICTs) contrasted with the dire living conditions of the world's poorest has been the subject of debate among industry and academia. However, despite the amount of writings produced on mobile phones, Western bias is...

Commercial control of the world's published literature has grown to the point where costs are prohibitive for developing nations. This article describes a computer engineer's response to this problem. The result is a publicly-accessible meta-search engine that focuses on open-access sources....

Purpose – Development ethics is an important topic which is often neglected in development studies. The purpose of the paper is to analyze international development in an ethical‐based context using the approach of development ethics. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is mainly...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a PhD thesis that examined the empirical relationship between a specific set of critical success factors (CSFs), project success, and success dimensions (criteria) from the perspectives of World Bank project supervisors (task managers or task...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to improve understanding and practice of project management by assessing whether two of its core myths also prevail in international development (ID): first, that project managers (PMs) plan fully for project success, including implementation success and...

Purpose – International development practice has had as its dominant paradigm the rational-analytic model of project planning, management and evaluation. This is reflected in the widespread adoption by donor agencies of results-based management (RBM), side by side with conventionally used...

Purpose – Hofstede's theory may be problematic from both a methodological/theoretical and practical view when applied to the 80 per cent of the globe we term developing. It is necessary to break out of an epistemic paradigm and a “view from nowhere” in order to focus on multiple layers of...