ABSTRACT
The low income, pre-industrial nations face poverty as their dominant social reality. No nation, rich or poor, escapes the realities which call for attention to the issues of social transformation. The paradigm which guides the creation and utilization of scientific knowledge places great value on order, precision, and external manipulation and control. The capacity to manage social learning is itself a form of social knowledge which is created through social problem solving and which is not easily transmitted through textbooks or conventional training. While closely related to the topic of mutual self-help approaches to social services, the community level management of natural resources involves complex issues relating to asset control, benefits allocation, adaptation of technology to microenvironments, and preservation of productive potentials. From a management perspective the central challenge of social transformation is how to build into large bureaucratic organizations a capacity for innovative learning leading to a fundamental reorientation in their purposes and modes of operation.
