Otto Kroesen

• Dr.
• Professor (Assistant) at Delft University of Technology

The challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is argued in this contribution, can only be met by a common effort of responsibility by all nation states across the world. That is what the COVID-19 pandemic has in common with the upcoming climate crisis and with the social and economic problems of the emerging world society in general. This contribution...

It is the objective of the book to put the daily problems of entrepreneurship for development and a broad framework on the origin of institutions into one perspective. Many case studies on startups and development projects are provided and analyzed in terms of (1) the quality of the internal business culture (time management and professionalism etc...

Usually the present-day understanding of Africa doesn’t look back beyond its colonial past. But the difficulties of African nation states with the Western system of a strong and accountable state and an open civil society have to be understood from the perspective of the precolonial system of in-group solidarity and vertical networks under paternal...

In Africa slowly but steadily a transformation is taking place in the management styles of enterprises. There is a trend towards more precise time management, more precision in dealing with increasingly sophisticated technology, more feedback from the bottom to the top in order to manage the processes properly, more professionalism and independence...

Tropical Greenhouses stand for a comprehensive agricultural innovation. Taking into consideration that half of the food production is still produced by smallholder farmers and that 70% of the world population is still active in farming, the question that emerges is this: is it possible to turn smallholder farmers into small agri-entrepreneurs? In f...

This contribution offers an overview of sustainability issues and initiatives in Surinam. It is not meant to be exhaustive and it doesn’t aim at providing an overview of the many types of business that are active in Surinam as such. But it shows the historical timeline of Surinam, that is, from where Surinam comes and where it might have to go in o...

The neoliberal approach dominating the globalization process is criticized in this contribution as not working for the promotion of entrepreneurship in the Kenyan situation. It is a shortcut of the Western social and economic heritage in the first place. It has a limited understanding of human beings as only consisting of needs which should be fulf...

Instead of presenting a business approach or a community (NGO) approach towards development as an either-or alternative, these two in actual fact constitute a continuum. This is particularly the case if the bottom of the pyramid is targeted, like smallholder farmers. Social enterprises often cannot avoid building the social and institutional condit...

This contribution answers the question: what capacities are required for engineers to participate in entrepreneurship for development, specifically in developing countries? Related to this main question is a number of sub-questions: (a) What extra demands does a different cultural and institutional environment pose on entrepreneurship? (b) How does...

In this contribution the authors will sketch the present condition of sustainable entrepreneurship in Suriname and the role of the government in creating an enabling environment. Sustainable entrepreneurship can make an important contribution to the Surinam economy by the creation of productive employment in innovative markets in order to fight job...

This paper takes a capability approach to analyze the role of entrepreneurship in the socioeconomic development of present-day Sub Saharan Africa. The paper zooms in on the nature of the capabilities that are built through the development of entrepreneurship; the key challenges to the development of such capabilities in a Sub Saharan African contex...

For entrepreneurship to flourish an enabling institutional and cultural environment is required. On the surface of things entrepreneurship is dependent on initiatives of daring and competitive individuals, but implicitly in the notion of entrepreneurship there are also assumptions about cooperation and regulation, without which it cannot deliver on...

Moral aspects of capacity building as part of responsible innovation deserve a more central place in the development debate and research. This comes to the fore in the capacity to deal with project implementation and the attitudes and values involved in it. The authors first provide some clarifications on the concept of capacity, emphasizing the va...

Different and even contradictory cultural repertoires and lifestyles need to cooperate on a global scale. This is not only an indispensable requirement for maintaining peace, but also for maintaining a sufficient level of globalised production. Together we need to decide in what direction the emerging world society should evolve. If there is no com...

In view of current massive water quantity and quality problems as well as shifting social wishes and requirements, the currently dominant water engineering and management approaches need to change. The water domain is indeed the scene of reorientation and transformation, though from a perspective of design for values much remains to be desired. Thi...

In an endeavour to deal effectively with tensions between competing values in developing countries this contribution will study the desirability of cultural transitions. The approach draws on various moral theories on distributive justice (equal access), unfolded in sociological literature on cultural differences, the impact of such differences on...

Sub-Saharan Africa in general and Kenya in particular, provide a challenging business environment to any would-be investor. In this contribution the authors first present an overview of the economic, sociocultural and institutional hurdles for small-scale entrepreneurship. These include lack of education and/or experience, gender issues, age of the...

First, the authors set the scene by exploring the main lines of the present development debate. They take a nuanced stand, not only looking at failures of Western development initiatives, but also going into the internal dynamics of African societies that stand in the way of social and economic development. Next, authors present some case studies o...

Foreword In ethics usually the time perspective of moral decisions does not receive much attention. If it receives any attention, the open and unknown future, from which time and again (!) new problems arise and become urgent is completely blinded of. It looks as if our moral makeup merely derives from the past, whereas actually it is the future w...

In an endeavour to deal effectively with tensions between competing values in developing countries this contribution will study the desirability of cultural transitions. The approach draws on various moral theories on distributive justice (equal access), unfolded in sociological literature on cultural differences, the impact of such differences on...

In many development projects capacity training and building is a crucial factor for success or failure. The authors set out to clarify the concept of capacity by means of a number of examples and they propose a strategy for rural entrepreneurship for smallholder farmers and vocational practitioners, with capacity training in a pivotal role. The int...

In many development projects capacity training and building is a crucial factor for success or failure. The authors set out to clarify the concept of capacity by means of a number of examples and they propose a strategy for rural entrepreneurship for smallholder farmers and vocational practitioners, with capacity training in a pivotal role. The int...

Why do so many projects in which technology transfer is involved, fail? This chapter analyses this problem and offers an alternative for well-intended but un-reflected ways of dealing with technology transfer. The authors offer a comprehensive approach, taking into account the needs of the receiving society and the sociocultural context in which th...

In the present ongoing development debate the moral side of development did not receive the attention it deserves. By this the authors do not mean the world should be divided in good guys and bad guys, but they point to the dimension of values and the basic attitudes, which are shaped by such values. These values and attitudes immediately affect su...

This chapter will explore how an entrepreneurial approach can help creating sustainable development in developing countries. Different ways of framing relationships adopted by western countries have influenced these developing countries. We will distinguish three of them and will discuss how they have contributed to development. A major problem is...

In this paper, we discuss the use of role plays in ethics education for engineering students. After presenting a rough taxonomy of different objectives, we illustrate how role plays can be used to broaden students' perspectives. We do this on the basis of our experiences with a newly developed role play about a Dutch political controversy concernin...

Global student diversity greatly enhances the quality of education. The authors do not conceive this only in didactic terms but rather, once more, in qualitative terms: Student diversity adds to the curriculum the quality of global citizenship. ‘Global citizenship’ means that cultural differences and characteristics of all humanity are turned into...

In view of present-day water stress, water transitions are necessary, incorporating both technological innovation and institutional reform. Water provisions and problems involve a range of diverging interests and values, with which a corresponding range of actors and stakeholders are connected. This paper focuses on both the social and the technolo...

Of many academic curricula internships have become an integral part. This is indicative of the general development of universities into institutes not so much of higher learning, but much more of applied science. In general, universities do not have this role anymore of being the sensors of future trends and imperatives. They are not anymore the te...

Although entrepreneurship is generally considered to be a promising solution for development in Africa, not yet much scientific work is available on the question, how to take the African cultural context in due consideration. A western-style business plan cannot just like that be transferred to the African context. Cultural differences should be ta...

Already for many years the faculty of Aerospace Engineering includes a compulsory course on ethics in its MSc curriculum. The course aims at introducing the students to ethical decision making in an aerospace engineering context and is traditionally terminated with a role play re-enacting the fatal decision making process around the launch of the C...

In this contribution I will first explore what pressure a machine bureaucratic society puts on the development of personal identities. Related to this I will explore the meaning of a dialogical understanding of personhood. It will be shown, how dialogue understood as responsiveness towards others and as participating in the ongoing conversation of...

Martin de Jong is associate professor of policy, organisation and management at the Faculty of Technology , Policy and Management of Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. He publishes and lectures mainly on subjects of cross-national policy transfer, cross-cultural management and transport infrastructure policy. He is also responsible fo...

What lessons can we learn from the historical and contemporary narratives and analyses from the previous articles? Can any tendencies or trends be distinguished as to the dos and don’ts of policy transfer to developing countries? To answer that question, we will first go back to the issues raised in the prologue and then relate them to the particul...

Application of principles, methods and techniques of structured policy analysis, regular impact assessments and clearly defined planning frameworks (names vary from policy area to policy area) is relatively common in what are known as Western countries, especially North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Northern Europe. Although political forces...

Present-day worldwide water problems require new management tools and sustainable system innovations. At Delft University of Technology research is being carried out into water resources and management development aimed at forming such tools and innovations, focused on Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM). One of the case-studies deals with Dut...

"He is thinking my thoughts", Rosenstock-Huessy says in a letter to his wife1 about Spengler’s "Die Untergang des Abendlandes". Yet in his review of this book Rosenstock-Huessy utters such a sharp criticism - polemically calling his review "Die Selbstmord Europas"2 for instance - that it even wasn't taken up in a volume of reviews devoted to the "D...

It is a long and winding road from invention to innovation. Starting from this observation, this paper presents a historical perspective on the capabilities engineers should possess to do their work. The importance of the ‘communicative competence’ involved in creating a social base for innovation is underpinned. We will present a theoretical frame...

‘Without the dreams of the engineers modern civilization would be impossible’. These words from the American civil engineer F.H. Newell, known from several publications about irrigation and agriculture in the USA, strongly apply to W.J. van Blommestein, a Dutch East Indian engineer whose dreams and constructions enabled ‘civilized life’ in a number...

Information technology is conquering the world. Internet, communication by email and all kinds of data traffic constitute not only a climax of technological development, they also constitute the backbone of the global economy. By means of the zeroes and ones of computer language, IT is making all the different cultural groups, professional groups,...

Innovations are explorative expeditions. The innovator is not only unable to guarantee success in advance; the goals of its innovation might shift considerably during the process of creation. Innovation is not a linear process starting with basic research and culminating in a market product. Various feed back loops generally exist and the process c...

Otto Kroesen has studied theology and presented a thesis on the philosophy of the French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. He worked as a minister and is now students chaplain and lecturer on 'Ethics and Technology' at the Delft University of Technology. After his thesis he mostly published on the work or Rosenstock-Huessy, sociologist and langu...

The sustainable development in developing and newly industrialising countries (China, India, South Africa, and Brazil) is central issue for policy makers, decision makers, academic, and planners. The attainment of sustainability has become a challenge for rapidly urbanising India. The paper focuses on the challenges for building less energy consumi...

Europe owes its advanced technology to its orientation on the future. This future orientation has been the driving force behind Europe's technological as well as the accompanying societal developments of the last millennium and its resulting rise to world power. Many inventions had their origins elsewhere, but, only in Europe, they got a revolution...

A key issue in curriculum development is how to integrate basic knowledge. This issue is addressed in relation to the evaluation of a Technology Dynamics course, part of the master programme Engineering & Policy Analysis both at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management of Delft University of Technology and at the School of Management of Har...

It has for long been assumed that low-income communities do not know their infrastructure needs, so that decisions have been made by authorities without obtaining information and understanding of household and agricultural water demand. This top-down approach has been the reason for the failure of many water management initiatives, particularly in...

This paper deals with the implementation of western-based renewable energy technologies within a developing country context. It describes theoretical frameworks that can be used to that can be used to analyze an interpret this process. It also offers insights on good governance and civil society in developing countries and on cultural differences b...

In the revolutionary history of the West a civil society has evolved step by step, supported by the articulation of a successive series of human qualities and related values and historical institutions. At the same time, concurrent developments in engineering and technology took place. Here we present the relevant human qualities and achievements,...

In the revolutionary history of the West step by step a civil society has evolved, supported by a series of human qualities and historical institutions. This process is reflected in the concurrent developments in engineering and technology. Here we present these human qualities and achievements against their historical background and context. The a...