Strategic tensions of smart development

Abstract

The paper discusses the inherent paradoxes and contradictions of smart development. Reconciling the opposites lies at the heart of “smart” approach to management and governance of the complex social systems. Smart development calls for finding the “golden middle” solutions by matching the topbottom and bottom-up approaches, order and spontaneity, hierarchies and markets, bureaucracies and adhocracies. It is about building the right “architecture of choice” for the diverse actors in socio-economic system, taking into account their behavioural patterns and applying the appropriate incentive schemes. Encouraging the behaviour of smart “swarms” and applying the “nudges” are often more effective ways of solving the complex social and organizational problems. The proposed approach relies on the theoretical insights of the development of complex adaptive systems, which remains largely underexplored in the field of management and development studies. The paper claims that “smart” development is no panacea, but is particularly important for solving the complex problems where no linear approach is possible.