Governance Network
Administration
Christopher Koliba
University of Vermont
Table 8.1: The Convergence of PA Paradigms into Governance Network Administration
(Koliba, Meek and Zia, 2010, p.191)
Public Administration
Paradigm
Dominant Administrative Structure
Central Administrative Dynamics
Classical Public
Administration
Public bureaucracies
Command & control
New Public Management
Public bureaucracies or private firms
Competition;
Concession & compromise
Collaborative Public
Management
Partnerships with private firms, nonprofits and citizens
Collaboration & cooperation;
Concession & compromise
Mixed-form governance networks
Command & control;
Competition;
Concession & compromise;
Collaboration & cooperation;
Coordination
Governance Network
Administration
Classical PA contributions
• Vertical authority may persist within the
organizational culture of individual network
actors.
• Vertical authority may persist at the networkwide level.
New Public Management
• A strong focus on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of
government performance.
• A strong focus on ideas and techniques that have proven their value in the
private sector.
• A strong focus on the use of privatization and contracting out of
governmental services, or (parts of) governmental bodies to improve
effectiveness and efficiency.
• A strong focus on the creation or use of markets or semi-markets
mechanisms, or at least on increasing competition in service provision and
realizing public policy.
• A strong interest in the use of performance indicators or other
mechanisms to specify
• the desired output of the privatized or automised part of the government
or service that has been contracted out (Klijn & Snellen, 2009, 33).
New PM contributions to Network
Management
• The role of market forces and competition
within governance networks needs to be
accounted for.
• Interest in monitoring network performance
is a critical feature of sound network
management.
Collaborative Public Management
• “A concept that describes the process of
facilitating and operating in
multiorganizational arrangements to solve
problems that cannot be solved, or solved
easily, by single organizations. Collaboration is
a purposive relationship designed to solve a
problem by creating or discovering a solution
within a given set of constraints…” (Agranoff
and McGurie, 2003, p.4).
Collaborative Activities
Vertical Collaboration Activities
Horizontal Collaborative Activities
Information seeking
•
General funding of programs and projects
•
New funding of programs and projects
Policymaking and strategy making
•
Gain policymaking assistance
•
Engage in formal partnerships
•
Engage in joint policymaking
•
Consolidate policy effort
Interpretation of standards and rules
General program guidance
Technical assistance
Adjustment seeking
•
Regulatory relief, flexibility or waiver
•
Statutory relief or flexibility
•
Change in policy
•
Funding innovation for program
•
Model program involvement
•
Performance-based discretion
Resource exchange
•
Seek financial resources
•
Employ joint financial incentives
•
Contracted planning and implementation
Project-based work
•
Partnership for a particular project
•
Seek technical resources
Source: Agranoff and McGuire, 2003, p.70-71
Governance Network Administration
• From the interdependence perspective, network
administration is aimed at, “coordinating strategies of
actors with different goals and preferences with regard
to a certain problem or policy measure within an
existing network of inter-organizational relations”
• Network administration may also be seen as promoting
the mutual adjustment of the behaviour of actors with
diverse objectives and ambitions with regard to
tackling problems within a given framework of
interorganizational relationships” (Kickert and
Koopenjan, 1997, p.10, 44).
The complex nature of network
conflict (O’Leary and Bingham, 2007):
• There are multiple members
• Members bring both different and common
missions
• Network organizations have different cultures
• Network organizations have different methods of
operation
• Members have different stakeholder groups and
different funders
• Members of different degrees of power
• There are often multiple issues
• There are multiple forums for decision-making
• Networks are both interorganizational and
interpersonal
• There are a variety of governance structures
available to networks
• Networks may encounter conflict with the
public (10-11)
Table 8.4 Network Administration Coordinating Strategies (Koliba, Meek and Zia,
2010, p. 204)
Governance Network
Administration
Strategy Characteristics
Coordinating
Strategy
Oversight;
Mandating
Use of command and control authorities to gain compliance.
Employed in most classical hierarchical arrangements and
regulatory subsystems.
Providing Resources Provision of one or more forms of capital resources as inputs
into the network.
Negotiation and
Bargaining
Engaging in processes of mutual adjustment and agreements
ultimately leading to common acceptance of parameters for
resource exchange and pooling and other forms of coordinated
action.
Facilitation
Use of coordinating strategies to bring actors together, ensure
the flow of information and joint actions between actors.
Usually relies on incentives and inherent agreements on
common norms and standards.
Participatory
Use of administrative authority to ensure the participation of
Governance / Civic
selected interests or citizens-at-large. Relies on models of
Engagement
deliberative and consensus seeking processes.
Brokering; Boundary The development and use of social capital to bridge boundaries,
Spanning
establish new ties.
Systems Thinking
The development of situational awareness of the complex
systems dynamics that are unfolding within governance
networks.
PA Paradigm
Class- NPM CPM GNM
ical PA
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Characteristics of Negotiations
• Sensitivity to early interactions: the beginning of
negotiations set the tone for future interactions.
• Irreversibility: Sometimes negotiators “walk
through doors that lock behind them.”
• Threshold effects: small incremental moves
resulting in large changes in the situation.
• Feedback loops: Established patterns of
interactions among actors readily become selfreinforcing (Watkins, 1999, p.255).
Facilitative managers…
• emphasize the possibility of leadership as
facilitation rather than the giving of orders, and
authority as accountable expertise rather than as
chain of command. Ultimately, working within
such a perspective, we should be able to ground
administrative legitimacy in accountability that
not only is exercised in the privacy of the
individual conscience or in the internal process of
a particular agency, but also tangibly enacted in
substantive collaboration with affected others,
including members of the general public (Stivers,
2004, p.486).
Participatory governance
• Participatory governance includes a number of strategies
within quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial administrative
tools employed by public administrators to leverage greater
citizen control and involvement.
– Quasi-legislative processes… include deliberative democracy, edemocracy, public conversations, participatory budgeting,
citizen juries, study circles, collaborative policy making, and
other forms of deliberation and dialogue among groups of
stakeholders or citizens.
– Quasi-judicial processes include alternative dispute resolution
such as mediation, facilitation, early neutral assessment, and
arbitration [and include] … minitrials, summary jury trials, fact
finding...” (Bingham, Nabatchi and O'Leary, 2005, p.547, 552)
Brokering relationships
“Brokers are able to make new connections across
[organizations] and communities of practice,
enable coordination.” He goes on to add that, “if
they are good brokers [their efforts lead to]
opening new possibilities for meaning (Wenger,
1998, p.109).
Translation
Coordination
Alignment
(Wenger, 1998)
Systems analysis
External Environment
Governance
Network
Structures and
Process
Functions
Table 8.6 Multi Social Scale Approaches to Decision-Making
(Koliba, Meek and Zia, 2010, p.215)
Level
Nature of Decision-Making
Central Insights
Useful Theories
Individual
The individual (central) decision
maker assesses alternatives on the
basis of his own objectives and with
as complete information as possible.
Limitation of information
processing capacity: ‘bounded
rationality.’
Rationality, incrementalism,
and mixed scanning (Simon,
1957; Lindblom, 1959;
Etzioni, 1967)
Group
Decisions are made in groups, where
the group process influences course
and outcome.
Group processes influence
information provisions, value
judgments and interpretations.
Social psychology of groups
(Janis, 1982); Community of
practice theory (Wenger,
1998)
Organization
Organizations make decisions in
relative autonomy. The structure and
function of the organization matters.
Organizational filters, intraorganizational contradictions
and attention structures
influence information processes
and the decisions based upon
them.
Organizational processmodel; Bureau-political
model (Allison, 1970);
Garbage can model (Cohen
et al., 1972); Community of
practice theory (Wenger,
1998)
Inter-Organizational
Decisions between mutually
dependent organizations are taken in
different configurations of vertical and
horizontal settings in a highly
‘disjointed’ nature.
Subjective perceptions, power
relations, dynamics and
coincidence influence
information and decision
making.
Policy stream model
(Kingdon, 1984); Complexity
theory (Koppenjan and Klijn,
2004); Policy implementation
(Pressman and Wildavsky,
1973)
(adapted from Koopenjan and Klijn, 2004, p.44)
Table 8.7 Group Decision-Making Process (Koliba, Meek, and Zia,
2010, p 219)
Group Processes
Consultative Roles
Deliberative Roles
Consensus
Non
All deliberative.
None
All deliberative: with majority opinion
holding sway.
Those outside the sub-set may provide
input into the decision.
Sub-set of the group makes the decision.
Group members may provide input into
a decision to be made by the individual
decider.
Single member (or non-member)
possesses authority to make decision.
All consultative.
Authority to make the decision falls to some
other person or CoP.
Voting
Decisions made by a sub-set of
the group
Single decision-maker in the
group
Group provides input into an
Issue or decision