Network Governance Research Articles

Big data-driven public health policy making: Potential for the healthcare industry

The use of healthcare data analytics is anticipated to play a significant role in future public health policy formulation. Therefore, this study examines how big data analytics (BDA) may be methodically incorporated into various phases of the health policy cycle for fact-based and precise health policy decision-making. So, this study explores the potential of BDA for accurate and rapid policy-making processes in the healthcare industry. A systematic review of literature spanning 22 years (from January 2001 to January 2023) has been conducted using the PRISMA approach to develop a conceptual framework. The study introduces the emerging topic of BDA in healthcare policy, goes over the advantages, presents a framework, advances instances from the literature, reveals difficulties and provides recommendations. This study argues that BDA has the ability to transform the conventional policy-making process into data-driven process, which helps to make accurate health policy decision. In addition, this study contends that BDA is applicable to the different stages of health policy cycle, namely policy identification, agenda setting as well as policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. Currently, descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytics are used for public health policy decisions on data obtained from several common health-related big data sources like electronic health reports, public health records, patient and clinical data, and government and social networking sites. To effectively utilize all of the data, it is necessary to overcome the computational, algorithmic and technological obstacles that define today's extremely heterogeneous data landscape, as well as a variety of legal, normative, governance and policy limitations. Big data can only fulfill its full potential if data are made available and shared. This enables public health institutions and policymakers to evaluate the impact and risk of policy changes at the population level.

Research and technology organizations as entrepreneurship instruments: the case of the Institut National d’Optique in the Canadian optics and photonics industry

Research and technology organizations (RTOs) are studied in the innovation policy literature mainly as providers of R&D services and as intermediaries between universities and the private sector. Through the case of the Institut National d’Optique (INO), Canada’s leading RTO in the optics and photonics industry, we argue that RTOs can also act as entrepreneurs by generating technologies and commercializing them through licensing, technology transfers and spin-offs. By analyzing the broad range of activities undertaken by INO, we also discuss what characteristics make some RTOs more likely to embrace entrepreneurship than others. Those characteristics include the following: renewed access to government funding to build a strong in-house research infrastructure and scientific workforce; strategic R&D planning that incorporates commercial objectives and an environment that encourages a culture of entrepreneurship among employees; the ability to act as the driving force of a network of academic, government and private sector organizations. From a policy perspective, the INO case indicates that the main value of using RTOs as entrepreneurship instruments does not lie in profitability but rather in developing dynamic regional systems of innovation.

Analysis of Industry 4.0 Readiness among Regional Governments in Indonesia: The Worth of Digital Wisdom and Values in Public Services

This research aims to evaluate the readiness of regional governments to engage with the fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), especially in e-service delivery. In the era of Industry 4.0, governments are increasingly considered public service centres that are evaluated for their ability to provide expanded services in the most efficient and individual ways. This research applied an eservice model survey by evaluating indicators of e-services about maturity values on a user-based website or mobile device applications. Assessments of e-service in three regional governments in Greater Malang reveal flaws in personnel readiness, user preparedness, flexibility in e-service procedures and requirements, integration among applications, lack of socialization, weak leader support and commitment, low budgets, and infrastructure constraints. Guided by these discoveries, unlike with theory, this study proclaims the importance of digital wisdom involving empathy, simplicity, compromise, creativity, and humility in public service. This study also formulates the digital values of political leadership transformation, public need-based digitalization, immediate resolution, changes in digital governance networks, digital wisdom, and interregional connectivity in public services. Finally, the study expands on the theory that governments can exceed preparedness by incorporating digital wisdom and values to drive public service.

Parasitic events and host destination resource dependence: Evidence from the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games

Major events possess limited resources relative to those they must seize, extract and control from a host destination. All sport events, to varying degrees, are parasitic as they are highly dependent onexternal host destination resource environments to deliver complex operational and strategic event objectives. This dynamic poses a management challenge as the event's existence, sustenance and survival is principally determined by: 1) the host's munificence (the host destination's willingness to offer up local resources), and 2) the event's ability to secure the resources required for an extended period of time. This article investigates these complex resourcing relationships through an in-depth case study of the 2018 Commonwealth Games held on the Gold Coast, Australia, a well-developed tourist destination. Methodologically, we draw on interviews with representatives from the government, event managers and host community networks. Alongside the interviews, we analyse policy and planning documentation, and review in-person, observational evidence gathered before and during the 2018 Commonwealth Games. We apply, and extend, resource dependency theory and associated concepts to explain the event-host destination resourcing relationship. We detail how and why major events deploy constraint absorption (hard power) and co-optation (soft power) tactics to render a host destination's resource under internal control, reflecting on the parasitic nature of the event-host relationship. We conclude that the transfer of resource to external agents, justified as a means of reducing organisational uncertainty and operational failure, actually leads to deleterious outcomes for local stakeholders and the host destination, undermining the event's own social sustainability and inclusivity objectives.

The success of e‐participation. Learning lessons from Decide Madrid and We asked, You said, We did in Scotland

AbstractElectronic participation (e‐participation) has grown across the world in recent decades and many governments offer a range of opportunities for e‐participation. However, there is a lack of comparative analyses of successful initiatives, which can be useful in supporting subsequent adopters. This study identifies the best practices and areas for improvement of Decide Madrid and We asked, You said, We did in Scotland, whose software has been widely adopted by hundreds of institutions worldwide. Key common enablers include political leadership and senior management support, top‐down approach, high levels of internal and external collaboration, embeddedness in the formal policy‐making processes, and careful consideration of design features. Most of these factors are related to processes, organizational, or managerial dimensions, rather than being linked to the institutional context or information and communication technologies. Areas for improvement relate to the way the initiatives provide feedback, allow discussion and flexibility on policy options, incorporate possibilities for offline participation, and involve a wider range of stakeholders. An important contribution is the identification of factors contributing to the robustness and continuity of e‐participation initiatives, combining the flexibility of collaborative network governance and the stability of public bureaucracy.

Optimal adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system with biogeography-based optimization for numbers of COVID-19 vaccination prediction

This study attempts to develop the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) with biogeography-based optimization (BBO) (ANFIS-BBO) for a case study of the actual number of COVID-19 vaccinations in a medical center, considering the variables of the date and time of vaccination, the brand of vaccine, and the number of open appointments on the government network platform in Taiwan. The COVID-19 has brought about a great burden on the health and economy of the world since the end of 2019. Many scholars have proposed a prediction model for the number of confirmed cases and deaths. However, there is still a lack of research in the prediction model for mass vaccination. In this study, ANFIS-BBO is developed to predict the number of COVID-19 vaccination, and three other forecasting models, support vector machines (SVM), least-square support vector machines (LSSVM) and general regression neural network (GRNN) are employed for forecasting the same data sets. Empirical results show that the ANFIS-BBO with trapezoidal membership function model can achieve better performance than other methods and provide robust predictions for the actual number of COVID-19 mass vaccination.

Barriers to and Facilitators of Participation in Health and Social Care Governance: Categories and Cross-Cutting Themes from a Survey of SHAPES Project Partners.

Good governance-aligned with human rights and rights-based care, participation, inclusion, and person-centredness-of digital care systems is integral to their ability to meet their objectives. To gain insight into existing governance structures and processes and participation experiences across Europe and lay foundations for the SHAPES Project's network governance (a healthy and active ageing Innovation Action consortium), our objectives included: 1) expand the list of known stakeholders, 2) explore how the range of stakeholders participate in health and social care governance, 3) develop an inventory of barriers and facilitators. Using an empirical, survey method, we consulted SHAPES Project partner organisations, with respondents invited to suggest specific participation barriers and facilitators. 16 organisations responded. Numerous additional stakeholders were identified. Circa 150 unique barriers and facilitators were reported, rationalised into 20 superordinate categories. Six cross-cutting themes were assembled: dimensionality and flux; power; opportunity and environments; interest, motivation, and choice; valuing governance participation, and duality. This work allows consideration of a wide range of stakeholders for the SHAPES collaborative governance model and future research, and for system design with the benefit of a detailed inventory of barriers and facilitators, and thematic contextualisation. Participation is modifiable and we suggest intervention targets and mechanisms.

Smart Circular Cities: Governing the Relationality, Spatiality, and Digitality in the Promotion of Circular Economy in an Urban Region

This article discusses the governance of a smart-green transition in an urban region. The focus is on how the modes of public governance relate to relationality, spatiality, and digitality, which are of vital importance in determining the success of the transition in question. The empirical inquiry is based on observations of the case of the Tampere urban region in Finland, which exemplifies such governance efforts in the Nordic welfare society context. The discussion shows that the relationality in the given context is fragmentary, dominated by persuasive network governance and soft means of exerting pressure. Municipalities assume many roles in CE governance, which matches their urge to utilize different institutional logics from hierarchies to markets and networks. Rather than a genuine authority, municipalities emerge as facilitators and enablers. Spatiality is highlighted in the formation of designated areas that serve circularity and also provide brand benefits, as shown by the eco-industrial park in the city of Nokia. Digitalization is an underdeveloped area in the circular economy agenda vis-à-vis its assumed potential. Its relevance has been identified by institutional players in the urban-regional governance field, but its realization seems to require both nationally coordinated actions and local solutions that compensate for the lack of a critical mass of developers and users in the circular economy ecosystem. Lastly, regarding urban governance, the parallel utilization of different modes of governance forms a complex setting, in which increasingly sophisticated forms of hybrid governance are emerging. Most notably, in the case of the Tampere urban region, the promotion of a circular economy by intermediaries is supplemented by novel dynamic assemblages that utilize different institutional logics within loosely governed processes that aim at integrating a circular economy into business models and urban development.

FTP1.1 Using the STUMBL score to assess blunt chest wall trauma - does improving accuracy lead to improved patient care?

Abstract The STUMBL score is widely used to assess risk of complications in patients with blunt chest wall trauma. We audited its use in guiding the management of patients with rib fractures at a London major trauma centre. Methods This was a closed-loop audit. Data were collected retrospectively from electronic patient records for a period of one month (October 2021). Results were disseminated at the Regional Major Trauma Network Governance meeting. Educational updates were provided for the multidisciplinary team. After this intervention, a second one month audit cycle was completed (December 2021). Results Thirty-nine patients were included in cycle 1, of whom 41% (n=16) had care stratified using the STUMBL score. Calculation accuracy was poor: 0% had a correct score and 56.3% (n=9) had a score calculated within ±3 of the correct figure. Post-intervention, there was a significant improvement in STUMBL use in the 34 patients assessed in cycle 2: 85.3% (n=29; p=0.0001) had a documented score. Accuracy also improved, with 44.8% (n=13) within ±3 of correct and 31.0% (n=9) correct. There was no significant difference in the proportion of patients who were treated according to guidelines (74.3% vs 53.8%) or who were under-treated (23.1% vs. 38.2%) following our intervention (p=0.18). Conclusions We found a number of barriers to implementing the STUMBL score. Its use and calculation accuracy was improved by education, but this did not result in more patients following the suggested treatment pathway. Further evaluation is required to understand this discrepancy.

Strong collaborative governance networks support effective Forest Stewardship Council-certified community-based forest management: Evidence from Southeast Tanzania

Research on community-based forest management indicates its conservation outcomes depend on local rule enforcement, extraction pressures, and community support. However, many community-based forest management projects, particularly in the Global South, also involve collaborative networks of non-state actors such as NGOs and private corporations. Many of these networks promote sustainability certification under programs like the Forest Stewardship Council. We report on analyses of longitudinal forest cover data constructed using satellite observations alongside inter-organizational collaborative governance network data constructed from archival sources, document analysis, and oral histories to assess how collaborative governance networks shape community-based forestry’s conservation effectiveness in eight villages in Kilwa District, Tanzania. Our findings indicate certified community-based forestry’s impacts on deforestation can depend on the composition and structure of collaborative governance networks. Using matched Cox proportional hazards models with geographic fixed effects, we find evidence that certified community-based forest management can stem forest loss as effectively as state-led forest management (in the form of National Forest Reserves). However, the characteristics of collaborative governance networks connecting organizations engaged in forest management in our study villages shape both which areas are selected into certified community-based forest management and villages’ overall deforestation rates. Specifically, we find that the more each village government’s organizational partners are connected to one another through bonding ties, and the more civil society organizations collaborate with each village government through bridging ties, the lower the village’s deforestation risk. More private sector organizations connected to village governments through bridging ties, however, are associated with higher deforestation risks. Our evidence highlights the importance of investments in inter-organizational networks for promoting sustainably certified community-based forest conservation.

Understanding Ambiguity in Knowledge, Value and Institutional Structure: A Case Study of Chinese Open Network Community

Being a space for organizations to realize their value, it is necessary to minimize the structural Uncertainty of the virtual world. The analysis shows structural problems are the internal logical starting point of ambiguity in the net- work community and the underlying cause of gradual accumulation and pre- cipitation in social tension. Analyzing the structural stain from the dimension of knowledge, value, and institutional structure in the network community, multifarious ambiguity is found in Chinese network governance. A representative survey object is selected to understand Chinese network governance after COVID 2019. We choose The Changtze River Cloud com- munity on TikTok as the survey unit to analyze the public space management satisfaction ratio. Through theoretical discussion and case study, specific countermeasures are proposed, such as broadening the channels of expression, constructing cultural diversity in virtual space, and establishing clear specification standardization. It is expected that explicitness instead of ambiguity transmitted by authority can promote existing order to more open, creative, and satisfying institutional design for net citizens in virtual communities.

Decentralization and resource contributions within local governance networks: Evidence from health sector reform in Honduras

AbstractMany public services are co‐produced through networks of governmental and non‐governmental organizations that choose to or are obliged to contribute resources, a trend that has been reinforced through decentralization reforms. We utilize original data for 826 organizations across 65 local governance networks to assess how decentralization affects resource contributions while accounting for municipality context, network environment, and organizational attributes. Drawing on a quasi‐experimental design in the context of health sector reform in Honduras, we find that decentralization is associated with a slight reduction in the number of resource ties an organization contributes to other organizations in its network. This association is most prominent where municipal governments, rather than non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) or associations, are lead intermediary organizations under decentralization. Additionally, NGOs contribute more resource ties relative to community associations or public organizations, and consistent with a crowding‐out dynamic, we find that this relationship is attenuated under decentralization. Our results suggest that administrative reforms can influence resource contributing behavior by organizations and the structure of inter‐organizational networks, which are important but underemphasized mechanisms potentially linking decentralization to service delivery outcomes. This is particularly relevant for policymakers working to support network governance for the joint production of public services in under‐resourced settings.

Liberal Democratic Mayors in Illiberal Regimes: Budapest’s Challenges

ABSTRACT While Karácsony’s win as Budapest’s Mayor seemed a significant breakthrough in challenging Hungary’s illiberal populist regime, opposition mayors in populist regimes are understudied, so the nature of the breakthrough was unclear. As illiberal populist regimes are as dense vertical networks, to expand liberal democracy, opposition mayors make governance networks more horizontal by increasing information, expanding participation, limiting the ruling party’s rent-seeking and clientelism, and (re)creating social solidarity. Central governments try to counter these efforts. Karácsony’s progress and challenges in Budapest illustrate this network model.

Liberal Democratic Mayors in Illiberal Populist Regimes: Istanbul’s Challenges

AbstractAfter Ekrem İmamoğlu won as Istanbul’s mayor, the contestation between the city and central government resembled other cases of liberal mayors winning in illiberal populist regimes. To expand liberal democracy, the mayor sought to reinvigorate effective democratic citizenship by increasing access to information, creating more inclusive governance networks through public participation opportunities, limiting the regime’s clientelism and rent-seeking opportunities in real estate and contracting, and (re)creating social solidarity. The national government responded by extensively covering “scandals” and continuing populist rhetoric to maintain polarization, limiting the city’s financial resources, and moving power and projects to agencies they still controlled. This article uses Istanbul to develop this model and illustrate how İmamoğlu has made progress in each area despite the central government’s effort to constrain his administration.

Governance, cooperation and coordination in large inter-organisational project networks: a viable system perspective

PurposeThis study aims to further the understanding of multi-level analysis in inter-organisational relationships by investigating the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination in inter-organisational projects (IOPs) on sub-system and project levels.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use the Viable Systems Model as a framework to analyse inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination by adopting a multiple-case study.FindingsThe findings illustrate how governance and coordination mechanisms exhibit a filter-down effect on lower sub-systems while cooperation influence is confined within each sub-system. While remarking the importance of specific sub-systems on the overall project performance, the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination across sub-systems appears to be complex, with governance influencing cooperation and coordination, whereas cooperation and coordination influence each other with an incremental effect.Originality/valueThis study defines two propositions that explain how multiple levels of analysis (project and sub-systems) can support the governance of large inter-organisational projects. The authors elaborate theory on the interplay of inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination.

A bibliometric analysis to reveal the drivers of university reputation

ABSTRACT University reputation is a topic that is attracting increasing interest. The first analysis of university reputation through the twin perspectives of performance analysis and scientific mapping is presented. The aim of this study is to employ bibliometric tools to visualize the thematic development, the relations, and the tendencies between the topics related with university reputation. In particular, (i) identify the structure of the relationships between past, present, and future research topics; and (ii) determine emerging research trends in the topic research from a longitudinal perspective. Concretely, a bibliometric analysis based on the co-occurrence of keywords (co-word analysis) was carried out, drawing from a sample of 219 papers extracted from the Web of Science. The main results indicated that the university reputation has, as a research topic, only started to attract academic attention more conclusively since 2006. Above all, for the differentiation of some terms from other concepts such as image and where a maturity of analysis has yet to be reached, especially in such topics as university governance and social networks (digital reputation). Moreover, there are topics considered emerging that leave possibilities for research development. Finally, there is a growing interest in academics in relation to the university reputation.

A Study on Online Voting of Minority Shareholders and Stock Price Trait Volatility Based on Data of Chinese Listed Companies

This article investigates the impact of medium and small shareholders' online voting on idiosyncratic volatility based on the data of all A-share listed companies in China from 2008-2021. The regression analysis finds that minority shareholders' network voting can significantly increase stock price idiosyncratic volatility. Second, this paper performs robustness tests in the form of replacement of explanatory variables, PSM tests, and excluding sample of significant event shocks, and the results show that the aforementioned findings remain valid. Additionally, the results of the mechanism test indicate that minority shareholders' voting enhances the level of stock price idiosyncratic volatility by improving information transparency. The heterogeneity results suggest that minority shareholder voting will significantly enhance share price idiosyncratic volatility for firms with stronger external monitoring power through Big four audit oversight. The paper provides new empirical evidence on the theoretical mechanism of minority shareholder network governance in influencing share price idiosyncratic volatility and provides a policy basis for the government to improve minority shareholder network voting.

Bottom-up and bottom-top institutional changes in environmental management in the Niger Delta

Research into how changes occur in repeated human practices, or ‘institutions’, is expanding rapidly. Yet there is still only limited understanding of how institutional change involves social networks. To address this gap this paper proposes a new Network Communication Framework, which predicts how ‘bottom-up’ and ‘bottom-top’ institutional changes can arise through interplays between state and civil society networks. While ‘top-down’ institutional change requires perfect compliance with state policies by a civil society network in a ‘strong state’, bottom-up institutional change can occur in a ‘weak state’ when a civil society network has high autonomy and adapts to a vacuum in state institutions at local scale by devising new informal institutions itself. Bottom-top institutional change, proposed here for the first time, can occur when a state network has a moderate ability to enforce its formal institutions throughout a country and a civil society network has moderate autonomy, and members of the two networks jointly negotiate new hybrid informal institutions. This paper reports evidence from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria for: (a) a bottom-up change by a clan network in its traditional land rights institutions which enabled it to sell communal land to an oil company; and (b) a bottom-top change in timber harvesting institutions, negotiated between members of a logging network and an informal government network (comprising staff of the state forestry department), which allowed loggers to extract more timber than permitted under formal state institutions. The example of bottom-up institutional change reported here leads to higher environmental impacts than under the original informal traditional institutions, showing that autonomous bottom-up change is not always as environmentally benevolent as previously assumed, though environmental impacts will vary according to circumstances. The example of bottom-top institutional change has higher environmental impacts than under perfectly implemented formal state institutions. This is likely to be typical of bottom-top changes generally, and shows that it is difficult to treat overlogging as ‘illegal logging’ if state personnel are complicit in its operation.

Autocratic Electoral Management: Lessons From Thailand

How can we ensure quality elections when the key institutions responsible for the organisation of polls are openly partisan and anti-democratic? In their 2017 paper, Birch and van Ham suggest that partisan electoral management bodies (EMBs) do not matter for the quality of polls so long as effective alternative oversight institutions exist, are active and independent. These institutions can make up for the EMBs’ shortcomings and ensure that a relatively high-quality election is still achieved. I argue that the notion of active and independent alternative oversight institutions leaves us guessing under which conditions it works. Adopting James’s network-based approach to electoral management, I show on the example of the 2019 Thai election that electoral governance networks that are characterised by high levels of political polarisation, the presence of entrenched authoritarian elites and formally independent EMBs that are too powerful make substitution untenable.

Exploring the impact of collaboration processes on policy networks success: a case study of food policy councils

ABSTRACT Innovative forms of collaborative governance have evolved to address a diversity of wicked problems. Collaboration processes involved in these forms of governance appear to have a paradoxical nature, where the necessary inclusiveness and diversity of actors may also be important obstacles for a successful collaboration. We apply theories of collaborative and network governance, and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, to explore the impact of collaboration process characteristics (network density, diversity, inclusion and participation) on 12 food policy councils. Our findings suggest that collaborative arrangements where diverse stakeholders have equal and inclusive access to active deliberation constitute one path to effective outcomes.