State of the art in university research about local economic development in Colombia Abstract

Abstract

This article presents the state of art in university research about local economic development in Colombia.The methodological design was based on a hermeneuticand critical process divided in three phases:descriptive, interpretative and, evaluative. Therefore,it was necessary to design several instruments to get the information from researching products of investigation groups recognized by Colciencias. The results help to categorize researching problems, theoretical tendencies about development, methodological approaches,results and conclusions, and reconstruct them to propose some recommendations. Comprehensivetheoretical approaches about development both in general sense and in local sense and the advancement of qualitative approaches in research designs are implicitly or explicitly emphasized. Multidimensionality, transdisciplinar approach, holism, integrality and the sense of structure of economic local development are new concepts that have gained relevance in the recent research of this subject.