Allan Kaplan – författare

This book explores the practice of organisation development and group change in a way that will appeal to anyone involved in working towards social transformation. Drawing on extensive experience gained through many years of process consultancy within the development sector - mainly in Africa and Europe - as well as on the work of Goethe and Jung, Allan Kaplan presents a radically new approach to the understanding of organisations and communities and to the practice of social development.Challenging the tendency to reduce development to a technical operation that attempts to control, Kaplan's approach embraces the full complexity of the process of social transformation. He describes the terrain of social change whilst simultaneously providing exercises through which practitioners can enrich their abilities to respond to the mix of chaos and order which characterise social development. Exploring this delicate balance, Kaplan inspires a sense of responsibility and possibility for the discipline, and reveals how development groups can intervene in social situations in a manner that is both humane and effective.

Development is recognised as a major challenge, if not the major challenge, facing us all as we enter the twenty-first century. Yet those who practise development do so in a terrain which has become highly contested and contentious. Allan Kaplan demonstrates that the discipline of the development practitioner is an art which demands imagination, flexibility and the ability to work with ambiguity and contradiction; one which can use guidelines but not rules. Uniquely, The Development Practitioners’ Handbook views development from the point of view of the individual, the organisation, the community and society, as well as a living process in its own right, and explains where the development practitioner is best placed to pursue his or her work. Allan Kaplan outlines the illusive nature of development itself, in order to deepen and underpin the practice of development and to provide it with foundation and meaning.