Network Governance Research Articles

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.

Challenges in implementing sustainable construction

AbstractIn response to the alarming environmental problems, there is a pressing need for a fundamental shift towards sustainable construction. However, limited attention has been given in the literature to the governance of this transformative change. The paper aims to address this research gap by investigating how the transition to sustainable construction can be realized despite the barriers encountered. The analysis focuses on the Dutch Building Agreement Steel as an illustrative case. By examining the governance structure of the Agreement and evaluating its results thus far, the study concludes that a collaborative network of partners has effectively developed a roadmap and performed accompanying activities to achieve the intended objectives. Nonetheless, a key challenge lies in mobilizing the entire construction steel chain and the government during the upcoming scale‐up phase to actively adhere to the Agreement. This new form of network governance, facilitated by an independent intermediary, does not replace traditional public governance; rather, it complements it. The approach tested in the Netherlands holds potential for application in other contexts as well.

The Role of Intermediate Collaborative Forums in Polycentric Environmental Governance

Abstract In complex, polycentric environmental governance systems, actors may choose to collaborate with one another to reduce their collective vulnerability and enhance system function. However, collaboration can be costly, and little evidence exists for how particular collaborative forums impact the broader governance system in which they are embedded. To address this gap, we investigate the role of intermediate collaborative forums, which support collaboration among a subset of system actors, in polycentric governance systems. Empirically, we analyze the structural and functional role of an intermediate collaborative forum called the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association (AMWUA) within the municipal surface water governance network for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area (PMA) in Arizona, United States. To do this, we draw from 21 interviews with water professionals in the PMA, which we analyze through a combination of network analysis and qualitative coding. We find that AMWUA facilitates strong bonding capacities among members, allowing for streamlined bridging to the rest of the network that enhances information processing and advocacy of member needs. Our findings advance theory on the role of collaboration in polycentric systems and inform the design of collaborative institutions to improve environmental governance.

Bank shareholder network and board governance: Evidence from Chinese commercial banks

Board governance is an important aspect of internal bank governance. We conduct an empirical study on 100 banks in China for the period from 2004 to 2017 using a time-varying growth bank shareholder network to investigate the relationship and mechanism between bank shareholder network and board governance. The bank shareholder network is found to have a positive impact on board governance. This positive effect differs across bank's service areas and ownership properties, indicating a reinforcing weakness effect. The empirical analysis shows that enhancement of network centrality can improve board governance in a bank shareholder network through three mechanisms: information sharing, reputation incentives, and effective connections. These findings provide new evidence for applying social networks in the financial services industry and identify policy implications for improving internal governance from an informal institutional perspective.

Transforming Trade, Investment and Environmental Law for Sustainable Development?

The 2030 UN Sustainable Development Agenda aims at ‘transforming our world’ to protect universally agreed sustainable development goals (SDGs) that – due to globalization – can no longer be secured by any state without international law and multilevel governance of global public goods (PGs). Democratic and republican constitutionalism historically emerged as the most effective methods for protecting local and national PGs demanded by citizens; they need to be complemented by functionally limited, multilevel constitutionalism securing transnational ‘aggregate PGs’ like mutually beneficial trade, investment and environmental protection systems. This contribution explains why commitments to human rights, democratic governance and rule of law have become incomplete safeguards of the SDGs without complementary, constitutional reforms of international trade law (II), investment law (III) and environmental law (IV). Human rights require embedding national ‘constitutionalism 1.0’ and functionally limited ‘treaty constitutions 2.0’ into ‘cosmopolitan constitutionalism 3.0’ empowering and protecting citizens and representative, multilevel governance institutions (V). Constitutional, participatory and deliberative democracy, private-public partnerships (e.g. for inventing and producing vaccines) and citizen-driven network governance (e.g. for decarbonizing economies) remain crucial for providing PGs and for protecting humanity against authoritarian power politics (VI). Are the necessary constitutional reforms politically feasible at a time of Russian wars of aggression aimed at suppressing human rights and democratic governance?

Review on the influence of enterprise network power on innovation performance

With the advent of economic globalization and knowledge economy with information technology as the core, innovation has increasingly become one of the important sources of building the core competitiveness of enterprises.In the network environment, enterprises are actively or passively embedded in various complex networks, and no enterprise can have a complete sense of technological innovation activities independent of cooperation. As long as there is information exchange and knowledge flow, network power will be derived.Power is the foundation of network governance, and rational allocation of network power has become one of the effective means to improve the innovation performance of network organizations.This paper first defines the relevant concepts of enterprise network power and innovation performance, and then reviews the impact of enterprise network power on innovation performance from four aspects: the relationship between the two, network power allocation, different network power classifications, and different research perspectives. Then, based on existing research results, it discusses and looks forward to future research directions.

Network Governance for School Turnaround: A Case Study Exploration of Third-Party Actors in China

Network governance has become central to government school turnaround policy in many education systems. While external forces are essential in facilitating school turnaround, most studies focus on governments’ leadership, paying less attention to the role of third-party actors. Referencing Shanghai, China, this empirical case study examines the complexity of third-party actors’ participation in network governance for school turnaround. Drawing on data from interviews, document analysis, and observation, this study found three patterns of third-party actors’ interactions with turnaround schools and local governments—government agent, egotistic leader, and dedicated ally. Third-party actors’ differential participation indicated their different approaches toward supporting turnaround schools and different value orientations toward implementing government tasks, exerting different controls over turnaround schools and different influences on government intervention. This study aimed to enlighten China’s policy-makers on giving full play to third-party actors in collaborative networks as well as contributing to the theoretical and practical understanding of network governance and school turnaround in the globe.

Network Governance in Chinese Education: The Case Study of Schools in Civil Aviation Industry

Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) established schools to reduce the burdens of the government to the provision of public education to its citizens since the 1950s. They spend billions of Chinese yuan each year to educate the children of their employees by creating and operating a variety of early years centers, schools, vocational institutes, and universities. However, the Chinese SOEs schools are required to transfer to local education bureaus under the modern enterprise system. This article utilizes network governance theory to explore the process of handover of Civil Aviation Guangzhou Children’s School from the Civil Aviation Department to the local education bureau. It traces the historical development of SOEs schools under the Civil Aviation industry. By drawing on policy document analysis and semi-constructed interviews of different stakeholders, this article reports the detailed process of transferring. By applying Asia as method lens of network governance, Mohe involves various stakeholders to work together to solve the problems and achieve win-win results. This article argues that education governance in the Chinese administrative system has entered a new phase, from a central hierarchical approach to the approach of central steering with local diversity. The central government drove its core policy objective, and the local governments were able to achieve the objective by their own means in ways that reflected local characteristics.

Educational Functions of the Chinese Communist Party Schools in Professional Development Program: A Network Governance Perspective

Governance has various structures, and involves complex decision-making. In contrast to the Western governance systems, China has the dual Party-state governance system for managing different levels of governmental agencies. Under the design of such a system, the system of Chinese Communist Party Schools (CCPS) has specific missions and agendas to train all levels of governmental leaders in the process of policy formulations and implementations. This article utilizes the school principals’ professional development program of Suzhi education in Shanghai in 2016, in which the CCPS and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission shared their power interdependence relationship, as a case. Through document analysis and semi-constructed interviews of different stakeholders, this article reports that in the implementation of Chinese education policy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) holds the leading power in providing policy directions for the CCPS professional development program, which aims to train educational leaders. Building a stable and interactive relationship between CCPS and the education system through professional development program is beneficial for maintaining the CCP’s leading power and strengthening the CCP’s influence in the process of education policy implementation.