Bhutanese Indigenous Rice Cultivation Cycle

Lessons in Management Practice

Abstract

This article explores similarities between traditional Bhutanese rice cultivation in Samcholing village, Bhutan, and modern management practices, and highlights how both systems, despite operating in vastly different contexts, share some core management principles. Based on ethnographic information, the study argues that traditional rice cultivation in Samcholing is a sophisticated model of resource, labour, and knowledge management, adapted to its unique environment over the centuries. Both managers and rice cultivators adopt structured, systematic, and goal-oriented approaches through planning, organizing, leading, staffing, and controlling. The study emphasizes how Samcholing rice cultivators manage vagaries of weather, constants of time and labour, and a host of risks. The paper contributes to management studies by reframing traditional Bhutanese agricultural knowledge as a contextspecific yet transferable system of effective management, offering insights into sustainable and community-based resource governance.