Social Responsibility and Consensus Orientation in Public Governance: a Content Analysis

Abstract

Over the past two decades, social responsibility (SR) has become a key principle of many private sector entities that aim for business excellence. Similarly, in the public sector, the latest public governance models (PGMs) are based on the selected public governance principles (e.g. consensus orientation, participation, equity and inclusiveness) directed at connecting and including all types of stakeholders in decision-making and carrying out the activities of public sector organisations. Yet, there is insufficient reliable empirical evidence with respect to the relationship between social responsibility and the underlying principles of PGMs. The principal goal of the article is thus to identify the relationship between the concept of social responsibility and consensus orientation, which is one of the main theoretically and practically grounded principles of PGMs. This goal is addressed by applying the QDA Miner software package and analysing the contents of the 100 most relevant scientific papers from the Web of Science database. Specifically, the relationship between occurrence of the ‘consensus orientation’ principle and SR is identified and quantified, revealing the importance of the latter. Moreover, different PGMs are analysed in terms of consensus orientation and SR enforcement, providing tangible guidelines to help advance theory and practice in the domain of public governance.