Collaborative Governance: Integrating Management,Politics, and Law

Scholars have engaged in an ongoing dialogue about the relationships among management, politics, and law in public administration. Collaborative governance presents new challenges to this dynamic. While scholars have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the design and practice of collaborative governance, others suggest that we lack theory for this emerging body of research. Law is often omitted as a variable. Scholarship generally does not explicitly include collaboration as a public value. This article addresses the dialogue on management, politics, and law with regard to collaborative governance. It provides an overview of the current legal framework for collaborative governance in the United States at the federal, state, and local levels of government and identifies gaps. The institutional analysis and development framework provides a body of theory that incorporates rules and law into research design. The article concludes that future research on collaborative governance should incorporate the legal framework as an important variable and collaboration as a public value.     

Knowledge for Governance,Governance of Knowledge: Inclusive Knowledge Management in Collaborative Governance Processes

ABSTRACT

Different ways of knowing (WOKs) present in governance processes easily give rise to controversies and conflicts and forestall collective action. To resolve these conflicts it is necessary to understand what constitutes a WOK and how we can organize inclusion through collaborative governance. This paper argues that WOKs contain different knowledge elements: they contain different bodies of factual knowledge, formulate specific knowledge questions, and prefer different methods and knowledge institutes. WOKs also encompass different frames, interpretations, or normative perceptions of reality. And finally, different WOKs make use of different sources and types of organizing capacity.

Realizing successful collaborative governance processes means organizing inclusion of these different components of knowledge. This paper investigates the implications of this knowledge diversity for realizing collaborative governance processes and the challenges for inclusive knowledge management—through an in-depth case study of a collaborative governance process between the Netherlands and Flanders.

We conclude that realizing inclusion between various WOKs and their knowledge components contributes to the overall success of a collaborative governance process. However, managing inclusive knowledge is as much a matter of conscious strategies as it is the result of an emergent interaction process between stakeholders, experts, and officials within various WOKs. Furthermore, although knowledge inclusion facilitates successful negotiation between stakeholders, it doesn't guarantee a successful outcome of these negotiations.     

Diversity,Trust, and Social Learning in Collaborative Governance

Scholarship on collaborative governance identifies several structural and procedural factors that consistently influence governance outcomes. A promising next step for collaborative governance research is to explore how these factors interact. Focusing on two dimensions of social learning—relational and cognitive—as outcomes of collaboration, this article examines potential interacting effects of participant diversity and trust. The empirical setting entails 10 collaborative partnerships in the United States that provide advice on marine aquaculture policy. The findings indicate that diversity in beliefs among participants is positively related to relational learning, whereas diversity in participants' affiliations is negatively related to relational learning, and high trust bolsters the positive effects of belief diversity on both relational and cognitive learning. In addition, high trust dampens the negative effects of affiliation diversity on relational learning. A more nuanced understanding of diversity in collaborative governance has practical implications for the design and facilitation of diverse stakeholder groups.     

Contextual Factors Influencing Collaboration Levels and Outcomes in National Forest Stewardship Contracting

The number of policies promoting collaborative processes in national forest management has increased considerably over the past decade but do mandates alone increase the levels of collaboration in national forest management? Collaborative governance literature identifies the importance of the situational context for the emergence and performance of collaboration but does not identify the role of specific attributes and processes. This article presents a comparative case‐study analysis of factors influencing levels of collaboration in USDA Forest Service stewardship contracting processes. Incorporating concepts from the collaborative governance literature and Institutional Analysis and Development framework we found policy and administrative guidance alone will not increase the use of collaborative processes associated with stewardship contracts. A combination of existing agency‐community planning efforts, leadership, and agency support were essential for collaboration to materialize. Top‐down policy direction meant to increase the use of collaboration to achieve natural resource management objectives must incorporate opportunities to establish these conditions.     

‘Loose tweets sink fleets’ and other sage advice: social media governance,policies and guidelines

While social media represents a broad range of benefits to organisations and institutions, such as enhanced brand engagement, it also presents challenges and risks to reputation and security, such as confidentiality breaches. Employee use of popular social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, both at work and about work has resulted in organisations developing social media policies and guidelines as part of contemporary governance practice. This paper investigates this recent approach to corporate governance by examining 20 social media policies and guidelines from a sample of corporate, government and third sector organisations that are active social media users. It develops a basic framework for social media governance based on the 13 common themes that emerge from the sample, including confidentiality, disclosure and the public–private divide of social media usage. It draws on social contract theory and considers its importance to the field of social media governance. Key implications for managers who are tasked with developing and implementing social media policies and guidelines are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding Business Improvement Districts: A New Governance Framework

What is the current state of research on business improvement districts (BIDs)? What is an appropriate framework for analysis? What are key questions for advancing future BID research? BIDs can be understood best within a network governance framework. The research shows, first, a blurring of the line between the public and private spheres as a result of BIDs; second, BIDs are increasingly important actors in urban governance; third, BIDs engage in collaborative, conflictual, and co‐optative relations with local and state governments; and fourth, difficult accountability and management problems are created by their interdependent relationships with local governments. Future research needs to focus on understanding the role of BIDs in urban governance and assessing their impacts on metropolitan areas, as well as their inherently complicated public accountability and management challenges.     

Collaborative Governance in the Reform of Western Australia's Alcohol and Other Drug Sector

Collaborative governance involves processes and structures for policy development and decision making with particular relevance for health and social services. We examined collaborative governance in the reform of Western Australia's alcohol and other drug sector, applying Emerson et al.'s (2012) integrative framework. A documentary review and group interviews with government, sector, and consumer representatives were involved. Contextual factors included increased service funding, and the development of a partnership approach. Drivers for collaboration involved leadership and financial incentives for policy implementation. Key stakeholders across government and the sector reported a mutually supportive and constructive relationship and increased capacity, and they shared an agenda for change. The integrative framework was a useful structure for the explication of collaborative governance, although financial arrangements were not addressed.     

Designing long-term policy: rethinking transition management

Long-term policy is enjoying something of a come-back in connection with sustainable development. The current revival tries to avoid the pitfalls of an earlier generation of positivistic long-range planning and control approaches. Instead, this new generation of policy design emphasises reflexive governance concepts. These aim at inducing and navigating complex processes of socio-technical change by means of deliberation, probing and learning. A practical expression of this move that is attracting growing international attention amongst researchers and practitioners is the policy of ‘Transition Management’ (TM) in the Netherlands. This article takes stock of TM implementation experience to date and discusses the critical issues it raises for long-term policy design. The article provides a framework and synthesis for this Special Issue, which comprises articles that address a range of those issues in more depth. We highlight three critical issues: the politics of societal learning, contextual embedding of policy design and dynamics of the design process itself. This leads us to propose a view on policy design as a contested process of social innovation. Our conclusion considers implications for continued work on designing transition management in practice as well as the reflexive capacities of democratic politics.     

Resource Dependence,Alternative Supply Sources,and the Design of Formal Contracts

Employing a resource dependence theoretical framework, the authors analyze a set of recently awarded contracts between the Environmental Protection Agency and its suppliers to determine how joint dependence, supplier dependence, and government dependence affect contract design—specifically, the decision to use a cost‐plus (flexible) contract. Findings provide evidence that organizations choose contract designs that will reduce uncertainty related to securing critical resources. However, different dimensions of dependence have different effects: (1) higher levels of joint dependence lead to more flexible governance forms; (2) the lack of alternative suppliers is a more important factor than high levels of financial dependence; and (3) the parties involved in government procurement are likely to perceive government as a unique type of organization, which, in turn, has implications for contract design choices. The authors conclude with managerial strategies for restructuring power/dependence relationships to achieve the contract design most likely to yield a surplus in the exchange.     

Does the Network Centrality of Government Actors Matter? Examining the Role of Government Organizations in Aquaculture Partnerships

The growth in the use of collaborative governance arrangements has been accompanied by burgeoning scholarship in the field of public affairs that seeks to understand the benefits of engaging diverse stakeholders in common venues. However, few scholars have formally assessed the role of government actors in facilitating outcomes for individual participants in such efforts. Moreover, little work on collaborative governance examines how individual incentives and barriers to collective action are formed within the nested nature of these contexts. We contribute to the study of collaborative governance by formally investigating how the relative centrality of government actors in collaborative policy‐making venues affects individual relationship building and learning for participants therein. We find that government actor centrality is positively associated with relationship building and learning. However, in testing two different conceptualizations of “centrality,” we find that the definition of this construct clearly matters.     

The Evolution and Continuing Challenges of E‐Governance

E‐governance comprises the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to support public services, government administration, democratic processes, and relationships among citizens, civil society, the private sector, and the state. Developed over more than two decades of technology innovation and policy response, the evolution of e‐governance is examined in terms of five interrelated objectives: a policy framework, enhanced public services, high‐quality and cost‐effective government operations, citizen engagement in democratic processes, and administrative and institutional reform. This summary assessment of e‐governance in U.S. states and local governments shows that the greatest investment and progress have been made in enhanced public services and improved government operations. Policy development has moved forward on several fronts, but new policy issues continually add to an increasingly complex set of concerns. The least progress appears to have occurred in enhancing democracy and exploring the implications of e‐governance for administrative and institutional reform. ICT‐enabled governance will continue to evolve for the foreseeable future providing a dynamic environment for ongoing learning and action.     

Achieving Effective Collaborations to Help Communities Age Well

Effective policy responses to the ageing of the population are a priority area for government and non‐government agencies across Australia, particularly at the community level. This article focuses on the policy goal of ageing well at the local level, and more specifically, the strong principle of collaboration that underpins this goal. Too little is known about how to achieve effective collaboration in the ageing field. This article aims to address this by developing an analytical framework from the broad literature on collaborative processes, and applying this framework to data collected from interviews with stakeholders in ageing across two local communities in Queensland. While participants recognise the importance and strength of working together and provide local examples of how this has been achieved effectively, they also acknowledge the associated challenges and complexity. This all spanned the six factors of the framework: the context of ageing; the characteristics and relationships between partners; the need for adequate procedures; as well as structure and relationships aimed at building capacity; a shared sense of purpose; and access to adequate resources.     

Collaborative Decision Making in Urban Regeneration: A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective

In this paper we examine the processes and participants in urban regeneration with a view to identifying the nature of collaborative decision making in a particular policy arena. Recognizing that the environment in which public managers operate is a complex nexus of agency, structure, environment, and feedback processes, we apply a complex adaptive systems (CAS) framework comprised of agents, rules, outcomes, decision factors, and processes within the public policy arena—in this case urban regeneration in Ireland—in order to explore collaborative decision making in the public domain. The CAS framework draws particular attention to self-organizing features of the system under study and to the emergence of agents, order (“rules”), and outcomes. Using this framework, we found that three of the six urban regeneration projects (“systems”) in our study featured the emergence of project specific agents as important facilitators of collaborative decision making and as key contributors to the expansion of system scope.     

The New Governance: Practices and Processes for Stakeholder and Citizen Participation in the Work of Government

Leaders in public affairs identify tools and instruments for the new governance through networks of public, private, and nonprofit organizations. We argue the new governance also involves people—the tool makers and tool users—and the processes through which they participate in the work of government. Practitioners are using new quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial governance processes, including deliberative democracy, e-democracy, public conversations, participatory budgeting, citizen juries, study circles, collaborative policy making, and alternative dispute resolution, to permit citizens and stakeholders to actively participate in the work of government. We assess the existing legal infrastructure authorizing public managers to use new governance processes and discuss a selection of quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial new governance processes in international, federal, state, and local public institutions. We conclude that public administration needs to address these processes in teaching and research to help the public sector develop and use informed best practices.     

Stakeholder engagement as communication design practice

Stakeholder engagement competence is here framed as an ongoing matter of communication design—that is, professionals and organizations of all sorts are challenged to invent forms of engagement with organizational stakeholders making communication possible that may otherwise be difficult, impossible, or unimagined. An original framework for articulating logics of communication design that addresses extant shortcomings in understanding stakeholder engagement competence is introduced. The framework draws into relief how communication for stakeholder engagement is conceptualized and valued by professionals and organizations. The communication design practice framework provides a path for opening up the black box of stakeholder engagement to advance communication competence in professional practice and organizational communication. The framework is illustrated by reconstructing, from current corporate social responsibility practice, two competing communication design logics for constructing dialogue and stakeholder engagement. One logic, grounded in the shared value framework, reprises a common theme about business that points to constructing communication to maintain the primacy of shareholders in stakeholder networks and to seek profitability in social, environmental, and economic problems. The other logic introduces an alternative communication design logic grounded in commitments to collaborative governance and open innovation. This logic is for stakeholder networks to generate and manage multiple values that address matters of social, cultural, environmental, and economic concerns. We then consider some key implications for engagement practice and competency for inventing forms of dialogue and stakeholder engagement to create value in the new globalized, mediated context. Communication design practice opens new ways of thinking about stakeholder engagement that has implications for cultivating professional practice and improving organizational decision‐making about investing in communication resources and infrastructure. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Working with Complexity: Community Engagement and the Murdi Paaki COAG Trial 2002–2007

Achieving improvements in indigenous health and education and reducing the incidence of crime and domestic violence in indigenous communities has proved heartbreakingly difficult. The Murdi Paaki COAG trial in western NSW aimed to break this pattern of failure by tailoring flexible Commonwealth and State government support to indigenous communities, working within a framework of shared responsibility. In this article we assess the trial as a policy strategy by comparing outcomes and patterns of outcomes across the sixteen communities. We found that the strategy worked best where ‘good enough’ governance was aligned with flexibility, rather than with control. This way of working is difficult for governments as it can be a slow process, and requires stability in the policy and engagement framework to deliver results. More broadly, our findings confirm the usefulness of complexity theory to illuminate and to explain the evolution of process in administrative contexts involving networked governance.     

Using Common‐Pool Resource Principles to Design Local Government Fiscal Sustainability

This article analyzes local government fiscal sustainability as a common‐pool resource (CPR) problem. Comparing the experiences of Los Angeles County, San Bernardino City, and San Bernardino County, California, the analysis applies a framework developed from three decades of CPR research to show the importance of six micro‐situational variables—communications with the full set of participants, known reputations of participants, high marginal per capita return, entry or exit capabilities, longer time horizon, and agreed‐upon sanctioning capabilities—in shaping collective action dynamics and building the trust and reciprocity among stakeholders needed to achieve fiscal sustainability. The underlying contextual conditions for these micro‐situational variables vary based on specific socioeconomic and political settings, but the findings suggest that institutions and processes can be designed based on several well‐tested principles in CPR governance to encourage stakeholders to look beyond their immediate self‐interests and make decisions that account for the community's long‐term fiscal sustainability.     

Tasmania's Tamar Valley Pulp Mill: A Comparison of Planning Processes Using a Good Environmental Governance Framework

In November 2004, the Tasmanian government requested the state's planning body, the Resource Planning and Development Commission (RPDC), to undertake an evaluation of a proposal to establish a pulp mill at Long Reach near Bell Bay on Tasmania's Tamar Estuary. In early 2007, Gunns Limited, the project's proponent, pulled out of the RPDC process and the government established an alternative, ‘fast‐track’ process under the Pulp Mill Assessment Act (PMAA). This article evaluates the RPDC and the PMAA assessment processes using a ‘good environmental governance’ framework composed of eight criteria – transparency, accountability, openness, balance, deliberation, efficiency, science and risk. The comparison reveals that although the RPDC process fell short of the ideal, it was markedly superior to the PMAA process that replaced it. The case highlights how political economic power can be used to the detriment of public planning and the communities and environment that rely on it.     

Conservation in Context: Toward a Systems Framing of Decentralized Governance and Public Participation in Wildlife Management

Governance scholars have long championed the adaptive utility of decentralized management institutions, in part due to their ability to bring diverse stakeholders into decision‐making processes. However, research into the link between decentralization and participation often looks at policy design but bypasses important system feedbacks that shape sustained participation over time. To paint a more robust picture detailing how decentralization and participation are related, this paper uses a complex systems framework to explore interacting structural, operational, and cultural components of decentralized wildlife governance institutions in the United States and Botswana. Through this comparative analysis, I argue that the landscape of public participation in decentralized governance institutions appears to be significantly impacted by three factors: 1) how decentralization processes occurred, 2) where in the process of decision making participation is situated, and 3) perceptions of power distribution between groups with competing interests.     

Collaborative Institutions in an Ecology of Games

This article seeks to improve our understanding of policy institutions and cooperation by adapting Long's (1958) analysis of the ecology of games to the context of collaborative land use and transportation planning in California. The traditional institutional rational choice analysis argues that collaborative institutions reduce the transaction costs of cooperation among multiple policy actors. The ecology of games framework extends IRC by emphasizing the consequences of multiple institutions and identifies several reasons why collaborative institutions may actually reduce the amount of cooperation in existing policy venues. Analyses of survey data from policy actors in five California regions demonstrate that higher levels of cooperation in collaborative institutions are associated with lower levels of cooperation in other land‐use and transportation planning institutions.