Download or read book Towards a Culture of Participation? written by Julia Vorhölter and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2009 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although participation and empowerment constitute prominent ideals in international development cooperation, most development interventions are still patronizing and conducted in a top-down manner. This book argues that one reason for the unsuccessful implementation of participation and empowerment relates to the cultures and internal structures of development organizations. A theoretical model explicates how organizational culture influences an organization's approach to participatory development. This model is applied to an ethnographic case-study of a South African development organization.