Community Development: History, Themes and Issues Essay

Introduction

Community development remains a major concept in the world today, being integrated in learning institutions and in several communities. This emphasis is immensely based on the role, which it continues to play in most countries around the world. Due to the changing needs of the society, community development has significantly advanced in order address several emerging issues, as it empowers the people.

Throughout history, community development has been faced with issues and challenges, which have been handled through a myriad of approaches. On the other hand, issues, which affect community development, have hampered the realization of some of the agenda driven by groups and organizations, with the aim of empowering the community (Ledwith 2011, p. 13).

This essay discusses change management in community development, with regard to how conflicts are handled and use of comprise to achieve desired results. In particular, the analysis will focus on examples of change for workers and communities, looking at the strengths and limitations that are involved. To achieve this target, up-to-date references will be used, to allow a comparison of views discussed by different authors and researchers, regarding the concept of community development.

What is community development?

In understanding the concept of community development and some of the issues, which affect it, it is essential to appreciate that most of these activities take place in rural areas, under rural community development. Community experts define this as a process, which is usually carried out by the community, by helping its members to be fundamentally able to manage the expected change.

Importantly, major benefits of community development occur as a result of efforts injected by local people through mobilization of skills, change of attitude, different approaches in solving problems, improved networks and use of available assets through unique and new ways (Phillips, 2009, p. 3).

Even though community development aims at empowering the community economically, it is crucial to appreciate that it gears towards establishing a strong functioning community. The five capitals of a community, which are normally emphasized by rural communities, are: physical, environmental, social, human, and financial. Through the community, people are able to reconsider their stance on various problems and expand contacts and networks.

From a literal point of view, community development merges the idea of “community” with “development” through different ways. Based on the fact that a community is formed by people, who have a shared identity, community development solely depends on interactions between people and collective action, instead of emphasizing individual activities.

This is commonly referred to as collective agency by some sociologists. In addition, development is widely viewed as a process, which is capable of increasing choices for members of the community. With increased choices, the community is further exposed to new options, diversification, analyzing of issues and anticipating change (Defilippis 2007, p. 9).

Development encompasses an array of issues, including but not limited to change, improvement and vitality, and the quality of life. Other analysts view it as the creation of wealth at a community level. In this case, wealth does not only refer to money, but also to other things, which are highly valued by the community. This further contributes to the net total of a community’s assets, thus avoiding the “zero sum-crisis.”

Based on this analogy, it suffices to mention that community development means that a community is involved in a process that is totally aimed at improving the environmental, social and economic situation of its members. In other words, the community can be viewed as the means and the end of community development, regardless of the path taken (Ferguson & Dickens 1999).

Through such actions, the community becomes more vital in not only its economic aspect, but also as a strong functioning organ in the society. More importantly, community development plays a pivotal role in improving the ability of communities to make collective and constructive decisions, with regard to the use of certain resources like labor, knowledge and infrastructure.

Development and growth

Regardless of the definition preferred by an individual, community development goes beyond the growth of a society. For example, growth can be described on the basis of increased job opportunities and investment, which could imply the same thing. This means that, growth does not necessarily lead to an increase in choices, ability to manage change or networks. More importantly, development can occur without growth, while growth can also occur without development (Phillips 2009, p. 7).

Similarly, there is a relationship between community development and economic growth. Sociologists concur that economic development is essentially part of community development. In most cases, the process of economic development incorporates many of the elements, which are essential in community development, such as action learning, participation and rethinking (Ferguson & Dickens 1999). Nevertheless, it aims at improving the overall economic position of the entire community.

This process does not necessarily lead to the improvement of neither quality of life nor collective agency as witnessed in community development. In particular, economic development, aims at increasing employment, the income and economic base of the community. In addition, economic development ensures that the five community capitals mentioned above are nurtured by enhancing the community’s social structures, environment, attitudes and assets (Cullen 1989, p. 11).

From the above analysis, it is evident that community and economic development play a significant role in the society. While this is case, several debates have revolved around the issue of determining the type of development, which has to come first, for a community to be, developed (Taylor et al. 2002).

In some cases, it has been argued that communities need jobs and income before the advancement of human and social development can be realized. On the other hand, some practitioners hold that better organization, and new attitudes and knowledge are the primary requirements for economic development (Swanepoel & Beer 2006).

It is therefore worth noting that community development is intertwined with several issues, which have to be properly handled and addressed in order to empower members of a given community. Due to the changing times and needs of various communities, community development has equally been faced with challenges, which have influenced its overall impact in the society today. The following segments describe some of these challenges.

Community development issues

As mentioned above, community development plays a major role in promoting development levels especially in low-income areas. Nevertheless, community development organizations face a wide range of challenges in advancing their development agenda. As a result, recent years have seen several organizations fail, merge or downsize in order to cope with existing, hostile and unfavorable conditions (Craig 2011, p. 201).

For many years, community development organizations have been known to provide housing and create job opportunities for residents within their region of operation. However, this trend has not remained steady as their ability to empower people has continued to deteriorate.

Statistically, problems facing community development are widespread, across the United States and the rest of the world. For instance, a research conducted in 2003 in the United States, revealed that more than one hundred community development organizations had experienced at least one of the challenges above.

Of those, about forty-six organizations had failed, forty-one had been downsized, and sixteen had been merged (Rohe, Bratt & Biswas 2003). These statistics further revealed that problems affecting community development cut across the country.

The root of community development challenges

It is believed that the change, which took place in local housing markets, had a significant impact to most community development corporations in the United States. As a result, the demand for housing owned or managed by these organizations significantly dropped, leading to their failure.

In other cases, a strong market became a hurdle for the organizations to acquire property, which was necessary for development. Due to this low demand, most organizations experienced financial challenges, forcing them to terminate their services to the public (Czerwinski & Cohen 2001).

It is worth noting that there has been an exponential increase in the number of community development groups across the United States and in most parts of the world. Consequently, this continuous increase has led to competition for private resources, foundation and limited public (Rohe, Bratt & Biswas 2003).

This was identified as the main cause of downsizing for most organizations in Dallas and Philadelphia. Besides downsizing, competition has led to mergers among several community development groups. Additionally, change in policies affect the manner in which community development activities are carried out in a country or state.

For instance, when policies are changed at the local level, funding could be reduced, which would in turn affect an organization’s ability to run its development programs. When the effects of these challenges are combined, community development requires change of strategy in ensuring that their activities are not hampered (Rohe, Bratt & Biswas 2003).

Change in community development

Like in any other sector, whether private or public, change is a paramount issue that has to be addressed with a lot of sobriety. The manner in which this shift is introduced and nurtured is essential in determining the success or failure of a given project or strategy. It has been observed that the rate at which change occurs today has had significant effect on the way in which people and organizations work.

Importantly, shifting from one mode of community development requires new people, with specialized skills and knowledge (Arensberg & Niehoff 2008). In some cases, change of technology would be inevitable in order to deal with existing issues and challenges.

Difficult Change

While change in community development is essential in addressing changing patterns and challenges in the society, it is crucial to emphasize that change is not easily accepted by the society or members of a given organization, say workers.

In most cases, people consider change to be quite uncomfortable, setting a new scale and pace of running an organization, managing people or advancing community development strategies (Arensberg & Niehoff 2008). Due to the fear of unknown and rigidity among managers and workers, change is commonly met with resistance, with a notion that aims at limiting the efforts to implement the desired shift.

Since implementation of change has an array of challenges, it is crucial for change management in community development to be highly emphasized. This is paramount in winning the confidence of workers and other stakeholders, and ensures that they remain focused on achieving the organization’s goals and objectives.

Although some people may not learn to manage change within the community, they may end up being influenced by changes, which are implemented with time. In essence, the main reason why change is important in community development is to respond to existing challenges, trends or even new policies.

In general, change management in community development is about how conflicts are resolved and accepting compromise in empowering people in various ways (Homan 2010, p. 26). This approach equally, has far-reaching effects on workers, who play a vital role in advancing the agenda of the organization.

Conflict management among workers

In order to advance any form of change in community development, it is important for workers to be satisfied with current conditions, policies and strategies. This can only be achieved through proper management of conflicts, which affect workers or the entire organization (Robbins 2009, p. 375).

To achieve this, there are several approaches, which have been proposed by analysts and sociologists. For instance, dialogue is considered as the best way of solving conflicts among workers, regardless of the setting. Under this approach, it is necessary for leaders to discuss community development’s core values and some of the dilemmas being faced. It has been argued that this approach allows a broader participation for stakeholders and generates mechanisms, which are capable of resolving certain disputes.

Even though this is true, many experts agree that inclusionary planning and decision-making has never been an easy task in any setting, due to the challenging task of establishing and sustaining the community’s time and confidence. In other cases, community members may lack trust in mechanisms of participation and in leaders that are involved in promoting change management (Robbins 2009, p. 375).

In some scenarios, there are workers and stakeholders who get inspired when they foresee a crisis or a conflict. This means that by managing the conflict, it would be easy to implement and manage change in community development, by finding solutions to the crisis at hand.

While the process of dialoguing is paramount in realizing inclusionary decisions, community developers are always confronted with a wide range of priorities, communication styles and cultural expectations. These variations come into play since final decisions have to be based on opinions raised by all the players involved (Nelson & Quick 2010). Due to these differences, it is possible to ignore underlying goals and values, thus eroding the trust and commitment of workers towards community development.

Besides these, the memories of stakeholders may affect the process of conflict management, leading to poor change initiatives. For example, some may bring on board past experiences, which may carry suspicion, thus affecting the working morale of community development workers.

Suspicions and use of previous baggage of issues may negatively affect the manner in which conflicts are viewed and managed. This therefore means that community development faces a serious civic challenge. Oftentimes, neighborhoods are characterized by varying styles, interests and narratives, which may be clear or not, but important in eliminating differences and establishing a wide-scope of agenda for an action plan.

It is believed that these differences occur as a result of varying income and ethnic groups being merged (Lee, 2006). More importantly, changes in a community can also be a major source of conflicts among workers to oppose views towards the proposals made in achieving community development’s agenda. It therefore implies that proper management of conflicts is directly connected to change management.

Apart from these, conflict management in community development can be realized through community capabilities. In this case, residents are recognized and allowed to act as agents of change, and as individual entities. However, these efforts are sometimes considered to be uneconomical since they are expensive and time-consuming. As a result, funders may find it hard to support them with necessary requirements.

Furthermore, the involvement of residents in running complex programs may lead to disappointments and failure through costly mistakes, which can be avoided through training and access to relevant information. By so doing, conflicts among workers or leaders are minimized, thus allowing a stable and smooth process of initiating and implanting change in community development.

Advantages and disadvantages of conflict management

Based on the fact that conflicts usually have a negative impact on the success of a business or community, it is clear that the success of implementing change in community development solely depends on the ability of leaders to manage such conflicts every day. This has a wide range of advantages, which are essential in ensuring that the key goals and objectives of programs put in place are achieved.

Importantly, conflict management increases overall productivity among community workers (Bercovitch & Jackson, 2009). Even though the process may result into low production in its initial stages, it has been found out that proper conflict management ensures that there is maximum productivity.

Whether in community development or any sector of the economy, management of conflicts allows an individual or organization to concentrate on important tasks other than dwelling on issues to do with conflicts. With an effective conflict management strategy, it is possible to resolve an issue, which has the potential to escalate and affect all the workers if it is left unresolved. By doing this, a lot of productive time and energy is redeemed for the purpose of refocusing on set goals and objectives.

While no worker or leader may prefer the reoccurrence of conflicts, it has been found that conflict management also has negative impact especially during change management among community workers. Notably, the development of an effective conflict management strategy requires a lot of time, which would equally be used in driving development goals (Bercovitch & Jackson, 2009). Leaders and stakeholders must be committed towards managing the conflict in order to realize positive results.

Wastage of productive time is common in cases where the strategy being implemented affects all the workers being involved in community development efforts. Another important factor to consider is that conflicts come in different shapes and sizes, based on existing circumstances.

As a result, a conflict management strategy can be disastrous when it is applied to all conflicts arising, during community development. In order to avoid this scenario, it is advisable to develop a conflict management strategy, which has the potential of addressing several conflicts, to cut on productive time consumed during development and implementation of conflict and change management strategies.

Compromise in change management

No one can deny that accepting compromise is a common technique applied during change management in community development. Compromise is sometimes referred to as middle-ground. In most cases, the parties involved in negotiations abandon part of what they initially wanted. In other words, a gain on one side usually carries a loss on the other side (Teseriero 2010, p. 31).

This creates room for the two sides to reach a conclusion, which is more acceptable for the benefit of the community. Even though compromise does not lead to complete satisfaction for both sides, it is believed that there is usually equal dissatisfaction. Another disadvantage of accepting compromise during change management is that it does not allow optimum implementation of solutions, since a middle ground has to be considered by addressing the concerns of every side.

Besides these demerits, accepting comprise during change management may have several advantages. For instance, this approach enhances understanding between workers and community developers. Through discussions, people’s awareness, regarding a given problem is resolved, giving them a glimpse of how a solution could be achieved (Stacey 2008, p. 118).

In other words, people learn to achieve their goals without necessarily interfering with other members of the community. It further promotes cohesion among community members, thus leading to stronger faith and mutual respect among community workers.

Conclusion

From this analysis, it is evident that change management in community development heavily depends on conflict resolution and accepting of compromise. These principles are essential in achieving community development goals. Practitioners are however advised to understand the implications of these strategies, in order to prepare workers and the entire community for possible outcomes.

Reference List

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Bercovitch, J & Jackson, R 2009, Conflict Resolution in the Twenty-first Century: Principles, Methods, and Approaches, University of Michigan Press, Michigan.

Craig, G 2011, The Community Development Reader: History, Themes and Issues, The Policy Press, London.

Cullen, B 1989, Poverty, Community and Development: A Report on the Issues of Social Policy that Have Arisen in the Work of the Nine Projects of the Second European Programme to Combat Poverty, 1985-1989, Combat Poverty Agency, Combat Poverty Agency, Dublin.

Czerwinski, S & Cohen, S 2001, Community Development: Local Growth Issues – Federal Opportunities and Challenges, DIANE Publishing, Darby, PA.

Defilippis, J 2007, The Community Development Reader, Taylor & Francis, United Kingdom.

Ferguson, R & Dickens, W 1999, Urban Problems and Community Development, Brookings Institution Press, Massachusetts.

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Nelson, D & Quick, J 2010, Organizational Behavior: Science, the Real World, and You, Cengage Learning, Stamford.

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Stacey, R 2008, Complexity and the Experience of Values, Conflict and Compromise, Routledge, London.

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Taylor et al. 2002, Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures, JHU Press, Baltimore, Maryland.

Teseriero, F 2010, Community Development: Community-based alternatives in an age of globalization, Pearson Education, Frenchs Forest.