Articles authored by Bloch, Didier

The development of an unionized work force in the north-east of Brazil is described. The area has seen considerable growth in the export markets for grapes and mangoes which provides significant employment; other areas of employment are in labour-intensive crops, for example tomatoes and onions. The paper discusses: some new union strategies, improvements for wage labourers, and some of the limited victories that have been achieved with the work of the NGO, Oxfam. It is argued that there are limits to this kind of development model given the low value of the wages earned by the workers.

The research work of Harvard professor Chris Argyris gave rise to much of what is today called Organisational Learning, an approach subsequently promulgated by Peter Senge and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The first section of this paper argues the relevance of Organisational Learning to NGOs, despite its origins in the study of the private sector. The second section describes a particular project intervention based on Organisational Learning theory, which is currently underway in a Brazilian NGO.