TOPIC 2.4: Elements of network governance
There are six elements of network governance:
- Governance – shared purpose.
- Mutuality – payback for participants, achieve shared goals and individual participant aspirations.
- Political support – strong government role to ensure accountability versus the virtue of network flexibility, innovativeness and expanded capacity.
- Communication – open flow.
- Managing risk – media scrutiny, failure, speed.
- Measuring performance – depends on the purpose of the network’s formation; client level effectiveness; network capacity of achieving stated goals; network sustainability and viability; community effectiveness; network innovation and change.
Required
30 mins
Forrer, J. J., Edwin, J., & Boyer, E. (2014). Network Governance (pp. 122-129). San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass.
There are advantages and disadvantages of networks as a means of organising people and resources as reflected in Table 2.4 below:
| ADVANTAGES | DISADVANTAGES |
| • cutting across silos
• leveraging resources • greater transparency and citizen participation • innovation • knowledge transfer |
• less accountability
• less stability • cost of formation • more complex governance • network capture
|
Table 2.4: Advantages and disadvantages of networks
Activity
Consider the table above and add to the list of advantages and disadvantages from your experience of networks impacting on your agency.