The Governance of Collaboration

Abstract

Governance has emerged as a major theme in the reform agenda for public services globally. It is a complex concept which contains within its usage several different meanings (Newman, 2001; Pierre and Peters, 2000). For some it reflects a critical assessment of the market-inspired reforms during the 1980s and 1990s and the desire to ensure that governmental bodies operate in line with a public service ethos. Even the World Bank, which for many years advocated the use of market mechanisms to deliver public services, now recognises the need for good government in creating a politically healthy community which is capable of improving the life of its citizens (World Bank, 1997). Others use governance to refer to the fragmented public realm and the need to establish processes for guiding and steering societal systems. This sense of the term relates to matters of social co-ordination in relation to public policy objectives, in which collaborations have a clear role to play (Kickert et al., 1997). However, it is the third meaning of governance with which this chapter is principally concerned. This usage is what in the private sector would be called corporate governance:

The procedures associated with the decision-making, performance and control of organisations, with providing structures to give overall direction to the organisation and to satisfy reasonable expectations of accountability to those outside it. (Hodges et al., 1996, p. 7)