Beyond Blueprints: Educating for Systems Change in Development Contexts

Abstract (English)

In an era marked by global prosperity, the persistence of wicked problems—such as poverty, climate change, and health crises—highlights a strange paradox; while progress accelerates, so does systemic breakdown, and increasing inequity and inequality. We need to see these not as isolated events, but as a tangle of systemic challenges that point to a growing meta-crisis. These complex, systemic issues refuse to sit within clear categories and call for a systems thinking approach, one which can embrace adaptation, interconnectivity, and emergent properties, moving beyond reductionist methodologies. Addressing such challenges requires collaborative efforts among diverse stakeholders, recognising that complexity extends beyond problem structure to the social interactions and decision-making processes involved.
These challenges, no matter where they are located, manifest themselves uniquely, shaped by local heterogeneity and systemic constraints. Understanding these contexts involves exploring how distinct configurations of actors, mechanisms, and institutional innovations emerge. This necessitates a skill set that blends theoretical knowledge with practical application, including systems thinking, adaptive management, participatory engagement, stakeholder analysis, conflict navigation, and cross-sectoral communication.
The Knowing-Being-Doing (KBD) framework at the Indian School of Development Management (ISDM) offers a structured response to this need. By integrating cognitive knowledge (Knowing), personal and ethical grounding (Being), and applied practice (Doing), the KBD approach aims to develop reflective, compassionate and effective leaders capable of navigating and shaping complex development ecosystems. This pedagogical model provides insights into reimagining education to build capacity for tackling grand challenges in a manner that is contextually relevant, driven by values, and practically grounded.
The paper aims to contribute to the discourse on decolonising development management education by presenting a framework that integrates diverse epistemologies and emphasises the importance of context-specific approaches. The paper also interrogates how dominant managerial paradigms—often imported uncritically from the Global North—fail to address the pluralistic, value-laden, and political realities of development work in the Global South. The KBD framework foregrounds complexity, ethics, and lived experience to resist technocratic simplifications. It embraces reflexivity, collaboration, and experiential learning as continuous processes of becoming. By locating development practitioners as knowledge creators rather than passive implementers, it enables a shift toward epistemic justice and more inclusive pathways to systemic change.