Collaborative Environmental Governance Frameworks

A Practical Guide

Timothy Gieseke

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429000447
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Droit
• Subtopic: Droit de l'environnement

This book takes a practical approach to understanding and describing collaborative governance for resolving environmental problems. It introduces a new collaborative governance assessment model and recognizes that collaborations are a natural result of organizations converging around complex issues. Rather than identifying actors by their type of organization, the actors are identified by the type of role they play. This approach is aligned with how individuals and organizations interact in practice, and their dependance on collaborations to solve emerging environmental problems. The book discusses real cases with governance issues and creates new frameworks for collaborations.

Features:

• Addresses communities at all levels and scales that are gravitating toward collaborations to solve their environmental issues.
• Prepares and enables individuals to participate in collaborative governance and design collaborative governance frameworks.
• Introduces the first simplified and standardized model to assess governance using governance actors and styles.
• Explains governance in simple terms and builds governance frameworks from the individual's perspective; the smallest, viable unit of governance in a collaboration.
• Describes "tools of convergence" for collaborative leaders to organize and align activities to create shared-governance outcomes and outputs.

1

Introduction

Social networking theorist Clay Shirky compares the 21st century social revolution enabled by today’s information and communication technologies to the 15th century social revolution enabled by Gutenberg’s printing press invention. Shirky states that Gutenberg’s “movable typeset” unleashed 200 years of social and economic unrest as the control of knowledge creation and distribution migrated from the Church and other elites to other sectors, businesses, and citizens (Shirky, 2008).

In looking forward from his 2005 TED talk, Shirky (2005) predicted not a 200-year period, but a 50-year period of unrest as society “dismantles” its 20th century hierarchical structure and seeks to establish a new social equilibrium based on a highly networked society and a far more decentralized model of knowledge creation and distribution to resolve society’s more complex, wicked issues.

1.1 Wicked Problems

Rittel and Webber (1973) introduced the term wicked problems to describe problems of an open societal system consisting of many variables and stakeholders. They are unlike ordinary or tame problems that can be solved with the traditional professions in science and engineering. Tame problems, such as landing a human on the moon, may be complicated, but they are solvable and replicable. Wicked problems, such as climate change, neighborhood poverty, or addressing watershed concerns are on-going issues with only continuous one-shot opportunities to influence their outcomes. There are no opportunities to apply the scientific method of analysis, application, and replication. Wicked problems are moving targets from multiple perspectives.

1.2 Networks

The emergence of wicked problems and the rearrangement of the flow of information and relationships is having profound effects on society’s institutions and its networks. Networks have always been an integral feature of democratic societies and their governments, but the advent of the Internet and communication technology trends has emphasized the role that networks play in commerce, institutions, and democracies.

Most public policies are no longer implemented by a single public agency with a single manager, but by a collaborative of public, non-profits, and for-profit organizations (Koliba et al., 2010).

Networks are dominating our lives, livelihoods, and how we interact, so much so that never before in the history of society have so many diverse organizations worked side by side to achieve common objectives. It is now commonly accepted that collaborative efforts are necessary to resolve the complex issues that single organizations traditionally addressed.

Networks are becoming a necessity as the scope and scale of social problems have outgrown the capacity of our existing, individual organizations to respond. The organizations are sometimes inadequate in terms of size, but more so, in terms of complexity and dynamism. It would stand to reason that an organization must be as complex, dynamic, and resilient as the issue the organization is attempting to resolve.

1.3 Communicating to Collaborating

Networking enhances the communication channels among individuals and organizations leading to more coordination of activities and cooperation toward common goals. As relationships and interdependency grow, organizations begin to share resources and evolve into a collaboration. In that light, Thomson and Perry (2006) defines collaboration as being a process in which autonomous actors interact through formal and informal negotiation, jointly creating rules and structures governing their relationships and ways to act or decide on the issues that brought them together. In this environment, organizations are motivated to exchange knowledge and resources for the purpose of resolving common issues.

These collaborations are essentially hybrid organizations that are created when individuals from multiple organizations and sectors form a new type of entity (Roberts, 2010).

1.4 Hybrid Organizations

Hybrids are the offspring of two different species, and, in the organization and management literature, the term has been employed to describe organizations that span institutional and sector boundaries. Hybrids are able to draw on different sectoral paradigms, logics, and value systems, creating novel forms that challenge the traditional concepts of organizations (Doherty et al., 2014). Hybrids are organizations that can represent conflicting issues of multiple organizations within a single organizational core (Besharov and Smith, 2014).

Hybrid organizations can consist of representatives from a combination of public, private, and non-profit organizations (Panda, 2015). The challenge for hybrids is to align the disparate characteristics, goals, norms, cultures, and governance of diverse organizations.

1.5 Collaborative Paradox

The complexity of wicked problems demands the collaboration of a diverse mix of organizations; for their resources, knowledge, and perspectives. But as organizations converge to form hybrid organizations, new conflicts and confusion arise as organizational culture, norms, and governance do not align. This collaborative paradox is not a superficial issue; it is deep-seated in the culture of organizations. And at the core of organizational culture is governance.

1.6 Collaborative Governance

Simply put, governance is “how things are done” (Jessop, 2002). It is the “who and how” of decision-making and the activities conducted to accomplish objectives and goals. The term “governance” suffers from multiple definitions, as well as a variety of uses and applications, and it is often considered an awkward concept to discuss.

Many assume that governance only applies to those in legislatures, government agencies, and corporate boards, and so people in non-leadership roles often dismiss the need to understand governance. But new social networks, emerging collaborations, and hybridizing organizations not only put governance within reach of all collaborators; governance becomes a requirement for collaborations to succeed.

1.6.1 Collaborative Governance DNA

This book examines governance as an emergent quality of collaborations, and accepts four governance actors and three governance styles as the fundamental units, the DNA of collaborative governance. Each individual in a collaboration is a governance actor; the smallest unit of governance. And the decisions and activities of this smallest unit are influenced by the style of governance they adopt. Perhaps for analogy’s sake: the collaboration is the double-helix, the actor is the gene, and the style is the alleles.

1.6.1.1 Governance Actors

A governance actor is any participant involved in the action and decision-making processes that achieve an objective or goal. For example, in this book, a shared aquifer is used as a case study to identify the various actors that make decisions and conduct activities. From a traditional perspective, it is viewed that groundwater usage is governed by state agencies as they have permitting responsibilities with respect to the location of the well and the quantity of water an entity is allowed to use. What is often overlooked is that many individuals and organizations contribute to the overall governance of the groundwater.

Generically, four governance actors are identified: public policy-maker, private policy-maker, public practitioner, and private practitioner. Each of these actor types has unique perspectives and roles that are not associated with only one type of organizational type; private, public, and non-profit. There are relationships among actor types and organizational types, but the actor type is more fundamental when one examines governance frameworks. As an emergent quality, collaborative governance is based, in part, on the mix of governance actors.

1.6.1.2 Governance Styles and Footprints

The secondary component of collaborative governance is the three styles of governance: hierarchy, market, and network. Styles are also a component that is often overlooked. Traditionally, governance is defined, or assumed to be defined, as a number of top-down processes based on a command-and-control nature. This hierarchical style of governance does exist and is still prevalent, but market-style governance and network-style governance are also commonly adopted governance options. The mix or ratio of adopted governance styles is called the governance footprint.

1.7 Sense-Making of Collaborative Governance Frameworks

One strategy of this book is to reduce collaborations down to the units of actors and styles, so that one can get a sense of how collaborative governance emerges. Of course, no one individual or entity can direct or control collaborative governance to the degree of traditional hierarchical organizations, but with these insights, meta-governors; those that manage collaborations, can greatly increase their understanding and influence relative to the governance framework that ultimately emerges.

In the book’s first section, “Something Special Is Happening,” the social conditions causing the emergence of collaborations is discussed in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, collaborations are compared to biological superorganisms as they evolve into hybrid organizations. Chapter 3 identifies things to consider as one prepares to collaborate.

In the second section, “The Science of Collaborative Governance,” the nuts and bolts, or better said, the genetic material of actors and styles is analyzed. This section uses reductionism to understand the components of actors and styles, and then reassembles them to understand how collaborative governance emerges. This section is based on the quote by John A. Morrison, stating that “knowledge comes by taking things apart: analysis. But wisdom comes by putting things together.”

The third section, “Social Complexity and Three Wicked Case Studies,” discusses the purpose of collaborations; why they are needed. Chapter 8 describes complexity and how it manifests itself in society. Chapter 9 looks at the nature of society’s problems, and Chapter 10 reviews the nature of three case studies. This third section attempts to lay out the big picture of how society and its issues are rapidly evolving toward increased complexity, and how we can get a grasp of this.

The fourth section, “Designing Collaborativ...