Governanceregimes im Wandel

Since the early 1990s, substantial changes have been observed in the organizational and decision structures of the non-university research sector. Drawing on a broad spectrum of quantitative and qualitative evidence, we investigate these changes in the governance regimes of the Max-Planck Society, the Fraunhofer Society, the Helmholtz Association and the Leibniz Association. Our analysis shows that the output efficiency of these four research organizations has increased markedly. Also, new governance mechanisms have become stronger, such as hierarchical management, resource competition, network coordination and international reputational competition. In contrast to developments in the university sector, however, we do not find evidence for a decrease in state influence. Rather, the governance regimes of research organizations have become more complex and tend to be “over-steered”.     

Editorial

This special issue of "Gender and Development" focuses on the challenges of implementing gender equity policies in organizations and development programs that have been influenced by hegemonic sex role concepts. Useful to this analysis is a framework developed by Schuler emphasizing the interdependence of substantive elements (laws or organizational policies), structural factors (procedures and mechanisms to enforce the substantive level), and cultural norms and attitudes. In general, adoption of a women-in-development approach has been based on efficiency rather than equality rationales, reflecting awareness of women's potential to contribute to economic growth. Other organizations have embraced gender equality as a prerequisite to poverty alleviation. Feminist organizations, in contrast, address the power inequities implicit in gender relations. Many enlightened grass-roots organizations currently face the dilemma of balancing their commitment to women's empowerment with the need to meet the funding requirements of bureaucratic donors in the context of an unequal partnership. Worrisome is an apparent shift on the part of mainstream development agencies from a women-in-development approach to a social welfare perspective. Alliances and networking between diverse stakeholders united around a common aim are essential to translate the rhetoric of gender equity into actual social transformation.     

China and global internet governance: toward an alternative analytical framework

Drawing on historical methods, this study assesses the conventional “cyber-sovereignty” framework, which has been used to capture and interpret China’s stance toward global Internet governance. This framework focuses on political control and tends to reduce China’s policies to the attempts by an authoritarian state to elevate governments and intergovernmental organizations to be the only legitimate governors of global cyberspace. As it traces the evolution of China’s relationship with the global Internet in the past three decades, the study demonstrates that China’s stance is more complex than the prevalent framework allows and that it is both built upon and different from the US-centric, market-oriented Internet governance scheme. This study recognizes the inadequacy of the conventional framework and invokes a theory of critical political economy of communication, thereby offering an alternative model to explicate the complex power dynamics behind China’s changing strategies. The alternative model advanced in this study is based on the understanding of China’s evolving approach as the product of multifaceted interactions among a group of power-holders that include both state agencies and business units on the transnational level.     

Patterns of governance structures in trade associations and unions

Most research on the governance of nonprofit organizations concentrates on welfare‐oriented organizations and disregards other types of nonprofits. This article examines the governance structures of trade associations and unions as a special type of nonprofit organization. Analysis is based on a qualitative case study survey of thirty Swiss trade associations. The results distinguish four categories of governance: satellite governance, delegate governance, executive governance, and inner‐circle governance.     

A contingency approach to nonprofit governance

A number of contingency factors may be relevant for effective nonprofit organizations and their boards. Although all boards must fulfill certain critical roles and responsibilities, strategic choices can be made about adopting different governance configurations or patterns. These choices can be meaningfully informed by understanding organizational contingencies such as age, size, structure, and strategy—and, even more important, by external contingencies and environmental dimensions such as degree of stability and complexity. This article extends or layers contingency thinking beyond its traditional focus on an alignment between the external environment and the organization's structure to focus as well on the alignment of the organization's governance configuration with its structure and environment. Structural contingency theory in general, and specifically within nonprofits, is reviewed. Two cases are presented of organizations that used an approach based on contingency theory in an action research process to examine and change their governance configurations. The steps they followed may help other nonprofits adapt their governance structures and practices and fulfill their responsibilities for board assessment and reflection.     

Rethinking Post-Fordism: The Meaning of Workplace Flexibility

Social scientists increasingly claim that work structures based on the mass production or "Fordist" paradigm have grown obsolete, giving way to a more flexible, "post-Fordist" structure of work. These claims have been much disputed, however, giving rise to a sharply polarized debate over the outcome of workplace restructuring. I seek to reorient the debate by subjecting the post-Fordist approach to theoretical and empirical critique. Several theoretical weaknesses internal to the post-Fordist approach are identified, including its uncertain handling of "power" and "efficiency" as factors that shape work organizations; its failure to acknowledge multiple responses to the crisis of Fordism, several of which seem at odds with the post-Fordist paradigm; and its tendency to neglect the resurgence of economic dualism and disparity within organizations and industries. Review of the empirical literature suggests that, despite scattered support for the post-Fordist approach, important anomalies exist (such as the growing authority of "mental" over manual labor) that post-Fordism seems powerless to explain. In spite of its ample contributions, post-Fordist theory provides a seriously distorted guide to the nature of workplace change in the United States. Two alternative perspectives toward the restructuring of work organizations are sketched—neoinstitutionalist and "flexible accumulation" models—which seem likely to inspire more fruitful lines of research on the disparate patterns currently unfolding within American work organizations.     

“Corporate” governance in nonprofit organizations

The economics‐based theoretical and related empirical literature on the governance of nonprofit organizations is brought together and integrated in a way easily accessible for noneconomists. This literature is scattered in academic journals covering economics, health economics, management, and accounting, and in the more nonprofit‐geared research publications. After defining corporate governance, I present in a nontechnical way the most appropriate economic framework for studying governance problems: the principal‐agent theory. Most of the economic literature deals with the role and influence of the board and its relation to the organization's management and performance. This is reflected in the article's structure. The board's functioning, composition, and committee structure are first discussed, followed by a review of the literature on incentive‐based remuneration schemes, disclosure of financial information, and the use of debt to mitigate agency problems between the board and management. The literature dealing with donors and subsidizing authorities in governance relations is then presented. The article concludes with a number of practical implications of the scholarly obtained results to date, as well as some suggestions for further theoretical and empirical research.     

Participatory Governance in Social Enterprise

This paper emphasizes the importance of participative governance in the study of social enterprise. Furthermore, it argues that social enterprise must be analyzed through a multi-dimensional perspective. The EMES approach is based on three dimensions emphasizing the social, economic, and political dimension, while many Anglo-American definitions tend to use a one-dimensional spectrum framework. The latter often see social enterprise as a simple phenomenon that can be arranged along a continuum, ranging from economic to social, where more of one means less of the other. However, this fails to acknowledge the multi-disciplinary nature of social enterprise. Scholars inspired by the EMES approach should devote greater attention to exploring the interactive and interrelated nature of the three dimensions of social enterprise, especially the governance dimension.     

Nonprofit versus corporate governance: An economic approach

This article proposes a new theoretical concept of nonprofit governance using transaction cost economics and the economic theory of contracts. After a short review of economic approaches to corporate governance, I clarify the specific nature of the governance problem in nonprofit organizations. Based on this analysis, I derive criteria for selecting an organization's relevant stakeholders. If stakeholders provide valuable specific resources without the protection of a comprehensive contract that details exactly how the organization is to use these resources, then such stakeholders seek decision and control rights in order to direct the use of the resources they have provided. I argue that the core problem of governance is how to enhance valuable specific contributions of the relevant stakeholders while keeping the costs of bargaining between stakeholders and the costs of collective decision making low. The theory developed is then applied in a discussion of practically relevant governance mechanisms, and the concept of governance is used to contribute to the discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the nonprofit character of organizations from a governance perspective.     

The Prospective Role of Economic Stakeholders in the Governance of Nonprofit Organizations

This article focuses on the nexus between the governance of U.S. nonprofit organizations and their ability to secure the resources necessary to effectively execute their missions. Different sources of nonprofit income are associated with alternative stakeholders. Viewing these constituencies as beneficiary groups, we consider how the particular mix of income sources influences the capacity of nonprofits to generate resources, especially if there is competition among stakeholder groups for control of the organization’s policies and practices. We then ask how nonprofit governance might be modified to improve the ability of the organization to generate resources through a regime of economic stakeholder governance.     

可持续生计视角下"参与式"反贫困路径探索

中国扶贫实践中出现的"贫困户生计能力提升不足"倾向源于可持续生计框架与现代贫困观念之间的冲突,而"社会参与"则为解决冲突提供了一种可能。2020年后,面对新的贫困现象和贫困结构,"参与式"反贫困理念能够通过社会参与链接可持续生计框架和现代贫困观念,在贫困治理过程中充分体现贫困者的参与性,形成主体意识和责任意识,提升个体或家庭改善生计系统的能力,使其摆脱困境、规避陷入贫困的风险,进而形成权利-义务相平衡、对城市和农村具有包容性、常态化、可持续的贫困治理策略,使全体社会成员实现不虞匮乏的生活。     

Transforming Global Governance in the Post-2015 Era: Towards an Equitable and Sustainable World†

This article reports on a dialogic symposium that brought academics from a wide range of disciplines together with practitioners and activists. The purpose was to discuss key issues conditioning the possibility of establishing global governance mechanisms which could promote transition paths toward a more equitable and sustainable world. Following the structure of the symposium, the article is divided into four thematic sections. The first contextualizes the discussions by looking at the characteristics and challenges of global governance today. The second addresses power relations in global governance with a focus on the corporate and financial sectors. It discusses practices of multistakeholder governance and public–private partnerships, the unhealthy levels of corporate influence on the UN system, and the dominant discourse that naturalizes corporate power, ‘free’ trade, and corresponding definitions of ideas such as knowledge, efficiency, and development. The third section turns to sites and forms of countervailing power and practice with particular attention to transcalar approaches and social movement actors. It highlights the potential of multi-level, territorial approaches for breaking out of hierarchical and nation state-based frames and building alternative forms of democracy. It illustrates the relevance of bioregions and ecosystems as meaningful arenas for thinking about and organizing social and economic life and for managing common pool resources. It invokes the imperative of protecting the human rights framework from the multiple challenges it faces. Finally, it explores alternative ways of generating and sharing knowledge and of challenging narrowly defined ‘evidence-based’ policy by assembling legitimate, qualitative evidence rooted in lived realities. The concluding section raises the question of whether—and on what conditions—intergovernmental multilateralism can be seen as a locus for transformation, and suggests some avenues of future research.     

Urban governance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: An Urban political sociological approach to the case of Osaka

In this article, we first review current Japanese urban and regional sociological literature on the COVID-19 pandemic. Some empirical studies of the current conditions, challenges, and difficulties faced by urban communities with the pandemic have loomed large. Although urban governance of infectious disease control has been generally an important research topic in urban studies, there is limited research on this aspect, particularly in Japan. Then, we briefly examine the urban governance of the pandemic in Japan, with a focus on the case of Osaka. Specifically, by analyzing the meeting minutes of Osaka Prefectural Government's countermeasure headquarters, we shed light on what issues were mainly dealt with and what main organizational actors were involved. The results indicate that, in addition to the administrative and political collaboration between central, prefectural, and municipal governments, the involvement of industrial and professional organizations (e.g., medical and economic associations) is particularly salient. This is because the governmental sector in Japan lacks a strong legal framework and a policy implementation capacity for infectious disease control. Consequently, it has requested (through intermediary associations) that residents, businesses, and hospitals cooperate with the government to control the spread of the virus. With regard to the characteristics of the Japanese urban governance of the pandemic, more comparative research between cities and regions in the country and those in other countries will be one of the important issues for future Japanese urban and regional sociology.     

The Adoption of the Corporate Governance Model by Nonprofit Organizations

This article examines the circumstances under which nonprofit organizations adopt corporate governance practices. In the study reported here, the authors found that adoption of corporate governance practices depends primarily on the presence of a supportive institutional (that is, value) context as well as available resources to support governance restructuring. These findings strongly suggest that the adoption of structures and practices from the for-profit sector is neither a feasible nor even a desirable solution to problems facing many nonprofit organizations.     

The power reinforcement framework revisited: mobile technology and management control in home care

Whereas digital technologies are often depicted as being capable of disrupting long-standing power structures and facilitating new governance mechanisms, the power reinforcement framework suggests that information and communications technologies tend to strengthen existing power arrangements within public organizations. This article revisits the 30-year-old power reinforcement framework by means of an empirical analysis on the use of mobile technology in a large-scale programme in Danish public sector home care. It explores whether and to what extent administrative management has controlled decision-making and gained most benefits from mobile technology use, relative to the effects of the technology on the street-level workers who deliver services. Current mobile technology-in-use might be less likely to be power reinforcing because it is far more decentralized and individualized than the mainly expert-dominated and centrally controlled technologies that were the main focus of the 1970s and 1980s studies. Yet this study concludes that there is general support for the reinforcement framework in the contemporary application of mobile technology in public sector home care.     

Representativeness from Within: A Comparison between the ILO and the ISO

Representativeness has become a keyword in reform projects of global governance. While it often appears as a cure for the legitimacy deficit of international organizations, this notion has hardly been defined at the global level. This article aims at filling this void by providing a socio-historical account of the meanings and uses of this concept based on a comparison of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), two of the oldest organizations in the global arena. Looking at the genesis of both organizations, the article shows that the categories and mechanisms used by international organizations to select their members are embedded in a broader socio-historical, political, and economic context. Moreover, they are subject to contestation and transformation. Representativeness may therefore be used both as a political resource for international players and as an analytical category for the study of the multilateral system over time.     

The Role of the Nonprofit Sector in a Self-Governing Society: A View from the United States

This article explores the role of private, nonprofit organizations in a self-governing society. A framework identifying the diverse theories that explain the various types of nonprofit organizations observed in contemporary American society is sketched. This provides a fuller understanding of the varied and complex ways that nonprofit organizations contribute to the institutions of governance.     

What future for the Global Aid for Trade Initiative? Towards an assessment of its achievements and limitations

As with any form of contemporary global governance, the impact of the global Aid for Trade Initiative (2006) has been mixed. However, to dismiss it as a failure would be premature. The co‐ordination system established was based on best‐practice techniques of governance in a diverse non‐hierarchical environment, such as the international development community. This form of co‐operation cannot overcome global economic and political asymmetries, but it can be effective in several respects. In particular, the Initiative led to increased funding for AfT and kick‐started a range of initiatives and technical advances; while the monitoring process has evolved significantly to give voice to new actors and issues. Although the future of the AfT Initiative is uncertain, its achievements merit careful consideration.