Negotiating Autonomy

Abstract

This article is a contribution to the under-researched but growing literature relating organisational theory to non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Many developmental academics and practitioners have highlighted the imposition of Northern ideas and values on Southern NGOs as inherently colonial, patronising and leading to minimal grassroots autonomy (Crush 1995; Escobar 1995; Ferguson 2003[1990]; Hobart 1993). While acknowledging this, the present article analyses the diffusion of Northern managerialism on Southern ways of working with special reference to how Southern NGOs are pressured to exude a cohesive, uniform and positive organisational identity in order to work in partnership with their donors. In doing so, the analysis points to the concept of organisational identity itself being a construct of Northern ideas of management and, therefore, not applicable universally. It is suggested that fissures and resistances created by this double construction are played out in development project reports. It is in reports that an organisational narrative is created and an image is portrayed of the organisation: setting up a textual space where organisational identity is legitimated and used for negotiating autonomy in relation to donors.