The Ties that Bind minGovernance Networks

Christopher Koliba, 2010University of Vermont

Koliba, Meek and Zia, 2010, p.97)

Figure 2.1 Nodes and Ties

Node A

Node B

Node C

Exchanges of Resources, Execution of Administrative Power

“Rules” of governance

• Interdependence between organizations. Governance is broader than government, covering non-state actors…

• Continuing interactions between network members, caused by the need to exchange resources and negotiate shared purposes.

• Game-like interactions, rooted in trust and regulated by rules of the game negotiated and agreed by network participants (Rhodes,1997).

Ostrom’s differentiation of rule types:

(a) operational rules that govern day-to-day activities of appropriators,

(b) collective choice rules concerning overall policies for governing common pool resources and how those policies are made, and

(c) constitutional choice rules that establish who is eligible to determine collective choice rules. (as described in Stone and Ostrower, 2007, p.424).

Levels of rules:

• Macro• Meso• Micro--------• Meta – Rules governing the creation of rules…

Social Exchange Theory• Any organization is dependent upon other organizations for resources.• In order to achieve their goals, the organizations have to exchange

resources.• Although decision-making within the organization is constrained by other

organizations, the dominant coalition retains some discretion. The appreciative system of the dominant coalition influences which relationships are seen as a problem and which resources will be sought.

• The dominant coalition employs strategies within known rules of the game to regulate the process of exchange.

• Variations in the degree of discretion are a product of the goals and the relative power potential of interacting organizations. This relative power potential is a product of the resources of each organization, of the rules of the game and of the process of exchange between organizations. (Rhodes 1981; 98-99; 199; 78-79).” Rhodes, 2007, P.1245

Koliba, Meek and Zia, 2010, p.100)

Resources Provided by Actor B

Financial Natural Physical Human Social Political Cultural Knowledge

Resources Provided by

Actor A

Financial

Natural

Physical

Human

Social

Political

Cultural

Knowledge

Table 4.1: Range of Combinations of Resource Exchanges

The balance…

• Figure 4.2 Koliba, Meek and Zia, 2010, p.98)

Formality of ties

Formal Informal

A formal social structure is defined as: “one in which the social positions and the relationships among [social actors] have been explicitly specified and are defined independently of the personal characteristics of the participants occupying these positions” (Scott, 1987, p.17).

Strength of ties

Administrative Authority and Power Table 4.2 Koliba, Meek and Zia,

2010, p.105)

Vector of Tie Social Power Direction of Power

Dynamic of Authority

Compliance Organizational Structure

No ties Competition Authority against

Normative Market

Vertical ties Command & Control

Authority over

Coercive Hierarchy

Horizontal ties Collaboration & Cooperation

Authority with

Normative Collaborative

Diagonal ties Concession & Compromise

Authority negotiated between

Remuneration Mixed

Competition• Competition has been observed ecologically as,

“the struggle among organisms, both of the same and of different species for food, space, and other requirements for existence” (Webster, 1989, p. 300).

• Competition between social actors is defined as the: “rivalry between two or more persons or groups for an object desired in common, usually resulting in a victor and a loser or losers, not necessary involving the destruction of the other” (Mintzberg, 1983).

• Have you found evidence of competition in the case studies analyzed thus far?

Command & Control

Principal – Agent Theory

Principal A Preference P Agent X? or or orCan Principal B Secure Preference Q From Agent Y? or or or Principal C Preference R Agent Z?

Nature of the Principal-Agent “Problem”

• A principal commissions an agent to act on the principal’s behalf. In general, the agent’s interests do not entirely coincide with those of the principal; the principal does not have complete control over the agent; the principal only has partial information about the agent’s behavior. The agency relationship consists in the reliance of a principal upon the agent with an agenda of his own. The agency problem is the difficulty, in all but the simplest such relationships, of ensuring that the principals is faithfully served and that the agent is fairly compensated (Donahue, 1989, p.38).

• Transaction Cost

The Rules of Cooperative Behavior

• What are they?

• Group exercise: Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma

Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma Experiment

Person X Person Y Outcome

0 1 Y wins (1 pt)

0 0 X and Y tie (.5 pts @)

1 1 Neither X nor Y wins (0 pts @)

Gray’s 3 phase collaborative process:

• Problem setting• Direction setting• Implementation

What are the rules governing effective collaboration?

• Setting ground rules– see pages 75-76 of Gray• Enforcing ground rules…

• Structures matter…

•Coexistence LOW•Communication•Cooperation Integration and Formalization•Coalition•Coadunation HIGH-

Figure 4.4: Degrees of Collaboration (Source: Frey et al., 2006)

Network Management

Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them

. ---Paul Hawken

Public Administration Paradigm

Dominant Administrative Structure Central Administrative Dynamics

Classical Public Administration

Public bureaucracies Command & control

New Public Management Public bureaucracies or private firmsCompetition;

Concession & compromise

Collaborative Public Management

Partnerships with private firms, non-profits and citizens

Collaboration & cooperation;Concession & compromise

Governance Network Administration

Mixed-form governance networks

Command & control;Competition;

Concession & compromise;Collaboration & cooperation;

Coordination

Table 8.1: The Convergence of PA Paradigms into Governance Network Administration

Classical PA contributions

• Vertical authority may persist within the organizational culture of individual network actors.

• Vertical authority may persist at the network-wide 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 Information seeking• General funding of programs and projects• New funding of programs and projects

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

Horizontal Collaborative Activities Policymaking and strategy making• Gain policymaking assistance• Engage in formal partnerships• Engage in joint policymaking• Consolidate policy effort

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)

Governance Network Administration

CoordinatingStrategy

Strategy Characteristics

PA ParadigmClass-ical PA

NPM CPM GNM

Oversight;Mandating

Use of command and control authorities to gain compliance. Employed in most classical hierarchical arrangements and regulatory subsystems.

X X

Providing Resources Provision of one or more forms of capital resources as inputs into the network.

X X X X

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.

X X X

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.

X X X

Participatory Governance / Civic Engagement

Use of administrative authority to ensure the participation of selected interests or citizens-at-large. Relies on models of deliberative and consensus seeking processes.

X X

Brokering; Boundary Spanning

The development and use of social capital to bridge boundaries, establish new ties.

X

Systems Thinking The development of situational awareness of the complex systems dynamics that are unfolding within governance networks.

X

Table 8.4 Network Administration Coordinating Strategies

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 self-reinforcing (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, e-

democracy, 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).

(Wenger, 1998)

Systems analysis

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)

GroupDecisions 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)

OrganizationOrganizations make decisions in

relative autonomy. The structure and function of the organization matters.

Organizational filters, intra-organizational contradictions

and attention structures influence information processes and the decisions based upon

them.

Organizational process-model; 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)

Table 8.7 Multi Social Scale Approaches to Decision-Making(adapted from Koopenjan and Klijn, 2004, p.44)

Group Processes Consultative Roles Deliberative Roles

Consensus Non All deliberative.

VotingNone All deliberative: with majority opinion

holding sway.

Decisions made by a sub-set of the group

Those outside the sub-set may provide input into the decision.

Sub-set of the group makes the decision.

Single decision-maker in the group

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.

Group provides input into an Issue or decision

All consultative. Authority to make the decision falls to some other person or CoP.

Table 8.8 Group Decision-Making Process