Governing Third Sector Organisations in Asia: Comparative Notes from a Six Asian Country Study

Abstract

In Northern countries, in addition to a fiduciary approach to organisational governance emphasising the board's role as steward of public funds and tax concessions provided to the organisation, a corporate governance approach emphasising the role of the board in providing an organisation with strategic leadership is receiving currency now. This model is being suggested for third sector organisations (TSOs) everywhere. The question is does this corporate model of governance apply to third sector organisations in Asia? In order to approach the question logically we tried to to know how governance of third sector organisations in Asian countries work. Our premise is that the third sector organisation governance refers to performance of the following functions: Setting directions and strategies for the organization; Identifying and ensuring the type and quality of goods and services; Defining and maintaining relations between the 'board', staff, beneficiaries, and the fund givers, and other external stakeholders. Relating the organisation to its wider society: the government, the financiers, the members and other stakeholders. This paper is based mainly on the first (legal environment report) and second (key informant survey) steps of the project. A questionnaire survey of around 30 key informants drawn from the third sector, business sector, government sector, and international organisation in six widely varied countries in terms of culture, history, colonial past, economic institution, political system (i.e. China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) was undertaken. The initial analyses show that three factors influence TSO governance: legal environment, relations with the government (and other stakeholders), and internal structure of the organisations. This paper highlights issues related to these three factors. In the next phase the analyses, with governance surveys around 500 TSOs in the participating countries, are to deal with questions like how and to what extent and form the traditional system of governance impact on TSO governance, is there or why there is a variation of TSO governance across fields of activity, or the size and sources of income, what are the relationships between governance and accountability, and governance and performance in TSOs? These are to be reported in the later part of the project to be completed by Samiul Hasan and Jenny Onyx (with the help of Mark Lyons and researchers in each of the participating countries).