Setting new standards of governance for the public sector (original) (raw)
Related papers
Governance: myths and mysteries
2017
The exercise is ‘educational about governance’. It encourages careful thought rather than reliance on simple formulae. As in most such things, there are some clear (often legal) rules. You picnic on my front drive: that’s trespass. The principal appoints his/her spouse to a senior post without external advertisement or a proper interview panel: that’s misconduct. The board introduces academic selection when the charitable objects state expressly that ‘admission is to be open to pupils from all backgrounds and abilities’: that’s ultra vires. But there are many, many issues that are not so clear cut, where different perspectives might lead to different answers. All I can do tonight is to illuminate some of these—and encourage careful reflection.
Paper to be presented at the Newcastle Symposium on Governance
2009
Over the past twenty years ‘governance ’ has become a ubiquitous term within a wide range of disciplines, so much so that for many disciplines it has become elevated to key concept status. Scholars from quite diverse disciplines make use of the term, giving little thought to the conceptual price that might have to be paid in consequence of giving it a new home within their particular disciplinary discourse. Yet within the voluminous literature generated by the term, there is little or no consideration given to this issue, even when scholars claim to be offering a theoretical account of it. What passes for theorising ‘governance ’ usually amounts to surveying competing uses of the term, as if identifying a term’s meanings from its various uses amounts to adequate conceptual analysis. At best, this is a representational strategy that has its own problems. Despite claiming to explicate the meaning(s) of ‘governance’, a concept, these surveys rapidly become accounts of governance, a pra...
New thinking on governance issues
There is a wide and diverse literature on political economy, public administration, public financial management, procurement, and social accountability. This literature search is neither comprehensive nor exhaustive, but instead a rapid review that looks to identify literature that provides novel approaches or insights, as well as notable literature that provides a good overview or foundation on the issues. Key websites consulted for this review include the GSDRC library, DFID’s Research for Development (R4D) and the University of Birmingham literature search facility ‘Findit@Bham’. In each section of the report, a selection of relevant GSDRC helpdesk reports are included because they highlight direct questions asked by the agencies that we serve. Literature included in this review has been published within the last 5 years, with the most recent literature presented first.
Reframing the ‘Governance’ Story
Australian Journal of Political Science, 2007
In recent years the concept of 'governance' has become a widely used concept within political science discourse. Although the meanings of 'governance' are contested, its position of influence is rarely questioned. This paper contends that the term exercises a prescriptive influence that shapes understandings about how governing should be interpreted and executed in the current era. The paper begins by examining briefly several prominent 'narratives of governance' that currently frame contemporary understandings of the term's significance. Attention then turns to an analysis of the return of 'governance', conceptually speaking, to the discourse of political science in Australia. The paper identifies when this began to occur and then examines the conceptual load that scholars expected 'governance' to carry at that time. These meanings are then counterpoised against the currently dominant cluster of meanings noted earlier in the paper to illustrate that they are not the only ways of interpreting how 'governance' should be understood. Furthermore, it will also be suggested that these hegemonic meanings represent a trajectory that, paradoxically, de-politicises what was once a clearly politicised term.
2014
Developments in the governance practices in UK public organizations show how ideas from the governance of listed companies have translated into public sectors bodies, government departments and the governance of parliament itself. The use of independent, non-executives directors in public bodies encapsulates the tension in the private sector between the service role of directors and how they control the executives who manage the business. This paper gives a preliminary examination of three public bodies, comparing how reform of their governance mechanisms has affected tensions in accountability and director motivation. What is evident is that the changes involve greater emphasis on extrinsic goals, potentially at the cost of the intrinsic ones that characterize public service motivation. These tensions seem inevitable, and the challenge for board is to maintain a balance.
Governance: Exploring Four Approaches and Their Relevance to Research
2011
Although governance is widely used in policy debates, it has remained a fuzzy concept, referring sometimes to theoretical approaches and sometimes to ideological stances. From the point of view of many developing countries it connotes a set of ‘recipes’ and constraints imposed by Western institutions. This article explores how, based on existing approaches, the concept of governance could be developed into an analytical tool for the social and development sciences that does not fall prey to ideological connotations.For this purpose, the article presents what I consider to be the four most popular approaches to the concept of governance: corporate governance, global governance, good governance, and modern governance.These approaches are compared and analysed in terms of both their gaps and their potential contributions to the analytical tool envisioned. The criteria developed for this tool are that it should be suitable for analysing social dynamics at various levels, in different so...