Along with Daniel Taghioff I too have followed this discussion about foreign consultants and local expertise. I agree that scepticism about consultants is healthy. However, in the bias toward external consultants and against in-country expertise, I see the problems differently.
While it is important to examine why there is a plethora of foreign consultants and a shortage of local experts, I would rephrase the question and ask why local expertise has such a hard time being used. A market model would suggest the employment of lower-cost local expertise, which would capture an economic rent as demand unsatisfied by local expertise drew in more costly foreign consultants. However, foreign consultants capture the economic rent while local expertise remains unemployed. As with Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz, I am unwilling to accept that this is explained by quality. Something else is at work here, something that calls for research and correctives. Also, I would note that Taghioff's suggestion of participatory research is misplaced here. Participatory research includes research subjects as partners in research. Local expertise is not a research subject. It is a research input, and frequently more sensitive to context and richer in tacit knowledge. Local expertise is a potentially competing or complementary input into the research and consulting process. Such local expertise may object to a research agenda, but this is quite different from problems surrounding the idea of "research" itself. It is both wise and right to caution that the urge for instant action is misplaced, that topics cannot be decided lightly, and that real structural change does not happen in a hurry. We have the time to do it right, especially since wrong doesn't do it at all. We do need to understand why developing country expertise is so poorly utilised at home, while foreign expertise continues to provide services whose efficacy appears high (the report is produced) but whose efficiency is low (little happens). Much of the knowledge of a consultant is expertise tempered with contextual and tacit knowledge. It is imperative that consultations include explicit provision for the broader identification and greater inclusion of appropriate local expertise. This would result in both increases in consultant dollar efficiency and growth in the stock of developing country expertise. Sam Lanfranco ------------ ***GKD is an initiative of the Global Knowledge Partnership*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.globalknowledge.org>
