The ‘Milky Way’ of intermediary organisations: a transnational field of university governance

This chapter focuses on transnational intermediary organizations in higher education and research. We conceive of intermediaries as organizations that are actively involved in transnational university governance without having formal access to or control over policy or governmental funding. Such intermediary organizations have in previous research been shown to play central roles in the development and circulation of new themes and ideas for how to manage universities and measure university performance. Intermediaries link different types of actors and act as translators of global themes. In this respect, they are decisive in policy formulation.

When collaborative governance scales up: lessons from global public health about compound collaboration

Global diseases require collaboration at multiple scales – from local to global. This article examines the experience of three international global public health partnerships – UNAIDS, the Stop TB Partnership and the Roll Back Malaria Partnership. These partnerships must be understood as compound collaborations. Such collaboration can often exhibit a marked tension between loose and tight coupling. Strategically designed to be loose or flexible in order to build initial support, loose institutional arrangements can also render these partnerships ineffective. Focal institutions, however, can help to align and facilitate the contributions of different partners operating on different scales.

Scaling up networks for starving artists

Creative industries development strategies have largely adopted a regionally embedded cluster platform to enhance the economic contribution of the sector. Such an isolated approach has done little to curb significant labour precarity and exploitation within the sector. Correspondingly, creative workers have sought to up-scale their networks, from local to global, to enhance their labour outcomes. This paper analyses the impact creative workers’ up-scaled network arrangements identifies significant policy implications concerning the support of up-scaled arrangements for economic segments that are vulnerable to labour precarity, such as the creative industries.

Governing EU employment policy: does collaborative governance scale up?

In the European Union (EU), employment policy is a prerogative of the member states. Therefore the EU’s ability to govern in this area depends on its capability to involve national governments and relevant stakeholders in a collaborative effort to formulate and implement shared policy objectives. Drawing an analytical distinction between cooperation, coordination and collaboration, the chapter analyses the formulation and implementation of EU employment policies. It concludes that while the formulation of policy objectives and the discussion of national policy approaches do involve elements of collaboration, the implementation phase mainly consists in the less demanding forms of cooperation and coordination.

How Does Collaborative Governance Scale?

This book investigates the challenges posed by the scale and scaling of network and collaborative forms of governance. Our original motivation arose from a concern about whether collaborative governance can scale up. As we learned more, our inquiry expanded to include the tensions inherent in collaboration across scales or at multiple scales and the issue of dynamically scaling collaboration to adapt to changing problems and demands. The diverse cases in this special issue explore these challenges in a range of concrete empirical domains than span the globe.

Scale and intensity of collaboration as determinants of performance management gaps in polycentric governance networks: evidence from a national survey of metropolitan planning organisations

Metropolitan planning organisations (MPOs) present a unique opportunity as real-world laboratories to investigate the dynamics of scale and performance management in polycentric governance networks. Using a 2009 Government Accountability Office survey of all 381 MPOs, this study examines whether the scale and intensity of collaboration of an MPO influences performance management; and tests two hypotheses: (1) small-scale MPOs have a significant performance management gap; (2) larger-scale MPOs with higher scale and intensity of collaboration have a smaller performance management gap. Theoretical implications concerning scale and collaboration in polycentric governance networks are discussed.

Institutional embeddedness and the scaling-up of collaboration and social innovation: the case of a Hong Kong-based international NGO

This chapter utilises the case of an international NGO (INGO) in Hong Kong to explore how institutional embeddedness may facilitate the scaling-up of collaboration and social innovation. Adapting Hess’s (2004) framework, we contend that the scaling-up of collaboration among organisations is affected by the societal, network and territorial embeddedness of the organisational actors. These three forms of embeddedness dynamically affect each other through the agency of the actors. The concept of embeddedness also usefully illustrates how networks and collaboration can scale up beyond the local level, thus providing the conditions for the scaling-up of social innovation.

Shifts in control disciplines and rescaling as a response to network governance failure: the BCJ case, Brazil

Rescaling might be a response to network failure. In order to describe a network’s modes of governance, this chapter borrows the idea of ‘disciplines of control’. This framework is applied to the Brazil Grows Together (BCJ) case, a policy aimed at pregnant women and early childhood care in a state in Brazil. Constituency pressures at state level lead to rescaling, and higher selectiveness, lead network managers to steer vertical communication and promote broader inclusion of stakeholders. The chapter concludes by suggesting general mechanisms that govern rescaling within the network governance framework.

Bridging the hierarchical and collaborative divide: the role of network managers in scaling up a network approach to water governance in California

Network governance represents an important approach to managing complex environmental challenges because of its capacity to support learning. However, multi-scalar problems often require networks to interface with hierarchical modes of governance. This paper examines how network managers can help mediate the potentially constraining influence of external demands on a network’s capacity for learning. It finds that a trusted lead agency can help bridge the hierarchical and collaborative divide by brokering across regional and state-level interests, developing processes that transform external requirements into learning opportunities, and supporting the development of informal dynamics in addition to formal rule compliance.