ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the methodological approach to the research and how it was carried out. It deals with the methodological framing of this study as well as the methods used to gather and subsequently analyse the data. As I outlined in the introduction, taking the example of South Africa, this book aims to provide an analysis of the process of hybridization of management ideas and practices in development non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the power dynamics in which this process takes place with a view to developing more culturally astute ways of managing NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa. It does so by examining the interplay between discourses and the everyday managerial practices in these organizations. In order to uncover the mechanisms at work, the book focuses on how organizations are managed and what shapes management in these organizations. At the crux of my endeavour lies an interest in understanding of how participants creatively draw upon global and local discourses—managerialism and Ubuntu —enabling and constraining their construction of the notion of management in development NGOs. In addition to asking how participants construct and enact “NGO management” in the day-to-day running of the organization and what discursive resources they draw upon to construct their reality, my concern is also with why things are the way they are. This engenders incorporating an explicit consideration of the power dynamics at play. This emphasis on understanding both the processes by which the participants make sense of and construct management in the organization as well as what enables and constrains this construction places this book firmly within a qualitative research strategy.
