Network governance

This study uses an exploratory case study design to explore, describe and explain the connection between how localised network governance is implemented and how localities are transformed in Uganda. Qualitative interviews were conducted with both Kyenjojo LG officials (district planning, human resources, finance, and community development departments) and local business owners (shopkeepers, roadside stall owners, market stall owners, hotel managers and officials from tea companies). Businesses chosen had all operated in the district for at least five years, meaning they had significant experience of working with LG officials, and had witnessed changes in the local economy. A total of 30 respondents, selected purposively and for convenience, participated in the interviews. Information was collected on: the nature of cooperation and coordination; the kind of issues on which the LG engaged local businesses; LG actors and their approach to network governance; the capacities of LG staff; and the effects network governance had on LGs’ autonomy and innovation in their delivery of LED. As the data was qualitative rather than quantitative, thematic analysis was used to identify patterns and understand the key findings. The data is presented in the voices of the participants, followed by analysis by the authors.

What has evolved is a form of policy making that might be termed “flexible network governance”. Social partnership has created a complex and flexible network of bipartite and tripartite negotiating capabilities, policy working groups, and consultative mechanisms. These typically involve direct participation by civil servants as well as by unions, employers, and representatives of the community sector of voluntary organisations, advocacy groups, and special interest bodies with some form of statutory basis. But the new feature of these arrangements is that there is also considerable fluidity across all these activities, not only because they involve overlapping personnel, but because they allow issues to be taken up or shelved, or passed between groups. They allow for difficult problems to be uncoupled and dealt with separately; they permit issues to be linked together for joint decision. They constitute a shifting resource base of policy ideas and priorities that can be taken up onto the government agenda.

While our findings are initially limited to the case of SSCA we are convinced that other Chinese civil society organizations are also contributing to this development. It is our hope that other Chinese CSOs together with social scientists can use our methodology in order to summarize and reflect upon their own experiences with above stated strategies in network governance. Critics of CSO strategies as exemplified by the practices of SSCA may argue that even successful experiments with cross-sectoral collaboration will only lead to new forms of party-state corporatism and co-optation. Yet such reasoning underestimates the transformative nature of learning processes that accompany such open-ended processes of collaboration. Once Chinese civil society practitioners and local government officials start to interact, they continuously learn and adapt to new situations. Through interaction, both sides realize that rather than pursuing 'lose-lose' or 'win-lose' strategies they can also create 'win-win' situations. This is by no means a small learning achievement given the prevailing 'winner takes all' attitude in Chinese politics. 56 By helping reformist government officials experience

A brief literature overview indicates that static explanations of network governance and its relationship to intellectual property creation and exploitation clearly prevail. So far, most studies have considered network governance as relatively unchanging in time, omitting patterns of individual governance forms within the plural system (Heide, 2003). However, developmental models (Ring and Van de Ven, 1994; Doz, 1996) are a notable exception, even those models remain rather vague in terms of evolution outcome, concentrating instead on the forces impacting over the interorganisational relationship. Therefore, network governance dynamics seem relatively less understood. Many authors suggest that the network context requires an evolutionary approach, as it is time and process dependent (Fitzpatrick and DiLullo, 2005; Hite and Hesterly, 2001; Bradach, 1997). Explaining change, finding patterns of change within network governance, would offer a closer understanding of competitive advantage generation through networks (Hurmellina-Laukkannen and Puumalainen, 2007; Lorenzoni and Lipparini, 1999). Also, it would contribute to surpassing the causal ambiguity problem visible in the embeddedness relationship to performance (Uzzi, 1997). The author’s study focuses on the relation of network governance dynamics to intellectual property management. Two research questions guide the study. The first question addresses the balance of social and bureaucratic mechanisms balance shifts from network formation to maturity in order to provide a description, find a pattern of changes occurring and confront it with extant literature (Larson, 1992; Lowndes and Skelcher, 1998; Jap and Ganesan, 2000).

While the general concept of interdependent relationships has broad currency within the network governance literature, there has been little empirical research on stakeholder salience and interdependency between actors and the impact of this mix in developing network governance situations. Until relatively recently, the broad trend has been to study interdependency from a task perspective rather than at the group or entity level. However, this approach, which emphasises information flows in task or goal completion, is quite narrow and when studied in isolation contributes little to our understanding of the complex social system operating in network governance.

On the contrary, the disaster management networks in LGUs have high-density scores with relatively lower average distance and diameter because of the smaller number of member agencies. Hence, the smaller the network, the higher the connection. Despite the relative cohesiveness in the local management networks, the presence and dominance of non- government agencies imply lack of capacities in terms of decision-making and resources among the mandated agencies. With this limitations, the local network structures nurtures the existing bureaucratic protocols which make it more difficult for the local government units to operate effectively. These network characteristics reduce the capacities of the local disaster management networks, which leads to weak disaster operations. Therefore, the tall structure and the lead organisation form of network governance (Provan & Kenis 2008), which is centralised in nature, do not work in the local and regional disaster management networks in Region 10, Philippines, because at the regional level, such structure does not build interdependencies among agencies, while at the local level, disaster response operations are constrained by bureaucratic protocols, which make disaster management networks less effective. Hence, shared governance should be explored. Structurally, a mixture of the forms of network governance – lead organisation and shared governance – should be investigated. At the national and regional levels, where many organisations are part of the network, centralised decision- making is necessary and disaster operations should be decentralised (Kapucu 2005). However, trust and inter- dependency should be cultivated in centralised networks to come up with effective mechanisms during disasters.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between network governance represented by senior government officers of the audit committee (SGOAC) and audit fee. Knowledge distribution, economic returns, effective enforcement and compliance with environmental regulations can be acquired based on the social network theory. Hence, lower audit fees may be charged by the auditors to the company with the presence of a higher SGOAC as the information and knowledge gathered are based on their good network government connection. Analyses were conducted using data from 690 listed companies in the Bursa Malaysia in 2014. The Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression method was applied to estimate the relationships between SGOAC and audit fee. The result shows that SGOAC has significant negative relationships with audit fee. Further analyses of the Big 4 auditor also show that lower audit fee charged in the number of SGOAC. It shows that it is not because of lower audit quality that resulted in the negative relationship between the SGOAC and audit fee. The evidence suggests that lower audit fees were charged by the auditor due to network governance, thus, network governance has a good impact on the company. Hence, the results provide initial evidence on the relationship between SGOAC and audit fees in business prospects in Malaysia.

to achieve their goals in project development and housing production. Van Bortel explores the way housing associations and local authorities in Groningen try to deal with the complexity of decision-making on urban regeneration policy. Haffner and Elsinga focus on decision-making in different neighbourhoods in Amsterdam. Two further articles apply network analysis to the social integration of new migrants in Sweden and in England, again highlighting links with housing and regeneration decision-making. Hertting explores prospects of political integration of minority ethnic organizations in neighbourhood net- work governance in Sweden, while Mullins and Jones focus on refugee integration and access to housing in five different local housing markets in England. In a concluding review article, Van Bortel and Mullins bring together material from the five earlier articles to explore relationships between network governance and democracy.

The description of the structure and the policies of the Netzallianz is based on official documents published by the German government and on the course books of the Netzallianz of which two editions were published so far: One for the period of 2014 to 2016 and one for the period of 2016 to today. In order to get an idea of why the Netzallianz was established in 2014, what problems and which situation it faces in the German broadband market, this thesis does also give an overview of the broadband market based on different studies and published documents. This part of the thesis can best be described as a document analysis, which means that documents are interpreted and presented in order to give voice and meaning around the topic. The document analysis makes it possible to gather data about the broadband situation and the Netzallianz effectively, as documents are a very accessible and reliable source of data. Just like the literature review the document analysis creates the risk of bias due to gaps in the documents or the fact that not all data is covered by the documents used (RESEARCH METHODOLOGY, 2016). In order to reduce these threats in the present thesis, I tried to stay objective and took a look at network governance and the broadband provision in Germany from different perspectives. Therefore, literature of of authors with different backgrounds and documents of public and private actors as well as press releases have been used.

Furthermore, Stoker (2006) refers to Moore who states that “the underlying philosophy of public managers […] should be to create public value […]. The problem is that they cannot know for sure what that is [...]” Transferring this issue to the topic of pupil involvement in school quality assurance and pupils’ satisfaction at school, one could at that point refer to Könings et al. (2011) who could reveal that the perspectives of adults and pupils on the quality of school life and school satisfaction are likely to deviate from each other. Coming back to Stoker (2006), including the pupil’s view point when assessing the quality of public services, in this case the quality of secondary education, could help to get a more precise picture on what ‘public value’ in the context of secondary education to pupils in the Netherlands in 2018 means. Moreover, the findings of this Bachelor thesis shall encourage future research on how pupil involvement can enrich network governance and include thought-provoking impulses for those in charge of monitoring and optimizing school quality assurance with a strong focus on the pupils’ roles in these processes. It contributes to research dedicated to the promotion of a more pupil-oriented school quality assessment by exploring whether the Dutch secondary school quality assurance takes the pupils’ assessment of the learning environment into account.

While the content and application of the term “governance” vary, it can be seen as a bridging concept between bureaucratic management and the NPM model (Scholz, Berardo and Kile 2008:393). Notably, there is a specific emphasis on network governance, which is characterised by the complex processes where a variety of participants/stakeholders with different interests and needs interact to achieve common citizen-focused objectives (Scholz et al. 2008:393). In line with this, for Zurbriggen 2014) NPM represents a paradigm that attempts to transform the public sector through organisational reforms that fit into the larger political theory of governance. This introduces the same principles as the private sector, namely efficiency, effectiveness and service quality. Many scholars see this as the heart of the NPM, while others emphasise the relationship between the public and private sectors. Zurbriggen (2014) suggests that the ideas and management practices of GNT has grown into the new paradigm of NPG. This new paradigm might deal with the complexities, interdependencies and dynamics of public problem solving and service delivery, which NPM failed to address. This implies that GNT has now developed into a theoretical perspective accompanied by an organisational and managerial practice (Torfing and Sørensen 2014).

Provan & Kenis (2008) provide what they refer to as the ‘key predictors of effectiveness of network governance forms’ and these are trust, number of participants, goal consensus and the need for network-level competencies. By trust, Provan & Kenis (2008) refer to “an aspect of a relationship that reflects the willingness to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations about another's intentions or behaviors" (p. 237). As they explain, it is not the dyadic relations, but rather the distribution of trust that matters most. Consequently, the extent to which network governance is centralized must be compatible with the overall level of trust that is present in the network. This implies that when trust-levels are high throughout the network, network governance need not be centralized (and vice versa). When it comes to the number of participants in a network, Provan & Kenis (2008) reason that the complexity of networks increases as more actors are expected to join. Because the growth of dyadic relations can produce coordination inefficiencies, the need for more centralized governance becomes apparent. Another predictor of effectiveness is the degree to which there exists general consensus on network-level goals, both regarding goal content and the process to achieve them. For networks without goal consensus to be effective, centralized network governance is required. Then finally, the need for network-level competences. This takes into account all the means (network-level coordinating skills and/or task-specific competencies) that are required by the network to achieve the goals. If this is high, then it implies that there may be called upon individual actors to bring skills to the table they may not possess. Situations like these are expected to favor configurations that include more centralized network governance.

b) Relations between co-equal actors (public and private). As noted by Klijn (1996) in interorganisational studies this characteristic of networks is strongly present. “This is a logical result of the fact that this literature deals with the relations between organizations and does not have a special interest in the role of governmental organizations. In policy community and sub-system studies… more attention is devoted to the role of governmental organizations”. However, within network governance governmental organizations (as public actors) are not analyzed as the central actor, but as one of the co- equal actors in the policy process as well as private organizations and other actors. In addition, as it has been argued by Herranz (2007) many public policies and programs are not administered by a government agency but rather are jointly coordinated and implemented through a range of multiagency agreements, partnerships and networks involving both governmental (public) and nongovernmental (private) organizations. On Herranz’s view, modern multisectoral networks involve public agencies, nonprofits and commercial firms. Besides the variety of actors, Klijn (1999) marks out their co-equality, which flows out from their interdependency.

The findings reflect that the Regions are not well capacitated to enhance principles of network governance. The findings alluded to a sense of aloofness by the community, because they do not see themselves as partners with the City in service delivery projects. Furthermore, the community members do not understand their role in collaborating with the City in delivering services as envisaged by network governance. Network governance theorists argue that all stakeholders in the network system must understand their roles so that there can be synergy and effectiveness. Carlsson and Sandström (2008) argues that a “self-steering networked governance approach engages and empowers local communities in the governance process, wherein it is proposed that actors across all sectors of society (the private, public and civil society sectors) have the capacities to effectively self-organize to achieve organizing functions and governance goals”

The main objectives of the study were to (i) contextualise the emergence of partnerships within the current legislative and practice framework for R&LED in South Africa; (ii) apply literature and tools from the fields of networks and governance to two cases in practice; and (iii) provide theoretical groundings for a network management strategy for partnerships in R&LED. The overall aim of the study is to contribute towards finding ways to overcome operational and performance barriers in R&LED partnerships, in keeping with the pragmatic practitioner approach. The empirical study was undertaken using a multi methods approach, while being heavily influenced as a reflective practitioner to undertake this investigation. The Case Study method was used to provide a rich and in-depth analysis of two R&LED partnership cases in the Western Cape, South Africa (one top-down and one bottom-up). The study revealed in the literature review process that diverse sets of role players in an R&LED landscape can be thought of as a network of actors in which one partner, usually a local authority or subnational government, wishes to influence and steer the network towards a common goal. This would entail the lead entity actively ensuring good network governance within the R&LED network. Partnerships in R&LED could take the shape of platforms, forums or entities established to perform this network governance actions and as such require the application of some set of good network management actions and strategies to be successful – both in delivering positive economic development results and meeting stakeholder expectations.

institutional power struggles between the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament (especially since the latter institution became increasingly engaged in the politics of agency design). Kelemen and Tarrant (2011) more explicitly address the conditions under which agencies or networks are created. They argue that member states will prefer to have more control over the implementation of EU policies through administrative networks under conditions of strong distributional conflicts (rather than see the establishment of a supranational agency, which tends to be the preferred solution of the Commission and the European Parliament). In an attempt to reconcile functional and political explanations, Blauberger and Rittberger (2014) argue that functional explanations perform well in explaining the decision to create a particular coordination structure (e.g. a transnational network rather than an EU agency), whereas political explanations are useful in explaining variations in the specific institutional design of transnational networks.

It is more difficult to find examples of social enterprises along spectrum C. Ridley-Duff (2008) provides examples of activities such as government promotion of private social investment in areas such as healthcare and housing. Requests from governments for businesses to establish social enterprises could also be included in this category. Social enterprises operating between the market and hierarchical modes could potentially suffer from the problems experienced by those operating in markets or hierarchies; either becoming a means to achieve profitability or losing their social goals as they attempt to meet performance targets. It can be seen however that the research on social enterprise, like that on governance, tends to focus on particular relationships among the three pillars. One explanation is that this reflects the reality in various contexts, which the authors are attempting to report and analyze.

In other provinces there is a clustered or decentralized policy network structure due to the existence of multiple nonprofit policy networks. In the case of British Columbia, the VOCBC, Board Voice, and Volunteer BC maintain an informal liaison that is due more to informal interactions between key actors than a formal strategy. In Alberta, the level of liaison and systematic policy coordination among the CCVO, the ECVO, and Volunteer Alberta is frequent and consistent enough to reflect a more structured and formalized relationship than one sees in British Columbia. The Saskatchewan Nonprofit Partnership (SNP) is emergent, much like the ONN was in Ontario in 2006–2007. While at this point, the SNP is dedicated to an inclusive and flexible network model, the long-standing and dedicated policy networks represented by SaskSport, Sask Culture, and the Saskatchewan Parks and Recreation Association cannot be ignored (Gidluck, forthcoming). Over time, the SNP could become more centralized (Type IV), or establish more formal connections with sister policy networks (Type II).

To further the analysis of the Urban Nexus, this research introduces the theoretical perspective of “networks and flows” as developed in sociology by Manuel Castells and as applied within environmental studies by [20, 21], among others. While most studies on the nexus adopt a quantita- tive methodology focused on the material flows involved (see for example Discussions in [11, 13, 17–23]), few authors examine the socio-political processes which help to explain the emergence or failure of nexus governance in the city (see Discussions in [14, 24]). Those that do exam- ine socio-political questions in the provision of WEF often use a critical discursive or political economy perspective to reveal dimensions of power and inequality in nexus gov- ernance (e.g., [2]). We argue that a network approach is particularly suitable when considering how complex socio-technical systems interact and overlap in the provi- sioning of WEF in a more integrated and sustainable way. Such an approach emphasizes how WEF networks overlap with respect to their operational structures, their functions, their material flows, and their dynamics of end-use and

Macroculture  is  critical  to  understand  network  governance,  for  its  goals,  shared  social  processes  and  structures  enable effective exchange among independent firms, because  the ground rules do not have to  be  re‐created  for  each  interaction  (Jones  et  al.,  1997).  Although  macroculture  enhances  network  governance  in  emerging  and  thriving  exchanges,  it  is  difficult  to  establish.  It  involves  disseminating  cultural  beliefs  and  values  among  many  autonomous  firms  and  it  may  take  decades  to  establish  the  shared understandings, routines,  and  conventions  for  complex  tasks.  It also takes third‐party institutions,  such  as  guilds,  professional  schools  or  associations  to  institutionalize  common  approaches  and  understandings  by  socializing  new  members.  In  general,  macroculture  is  enhanced  by  close  geographic  proximity, because of the increased likelihood and ease of interaction and tend to lead to business centers  to  develop  such  as  Silicon  Valley’s  semiconductors  (Saxenian,  1990),  Prato,  Italy’s  fashion  textiles  (Lazerson, 1995), and Westland’s, Dutch horticulture center.