The Logic of Collaborative Governance Corporate Responsibility, Accountability, and the Social Contract

Emerging collaborative arrangements between public and private institutions provide the potential for novel ways for enhancing the provision of public goods. This potential is framed by organizations’ willingness and ability to participate in such arrangements. Business engagement is a particular challenge given business’ distinct societal mandate to create private economic gain. The basis of business accountability establishes the logic of business’ terms and interests, and therefore its participation in such collaboration. This basis of accountability is, however, in constant flux. “Corporate responsibility” is proposed here as the ongoing negotiation and realignment of this basis, which in turn is driven by the micro-dynamics of business competition, risk management, and reputation. This dynamic is described in terms of the interaction between micro, business-level learning and macro, societal learning. The potential for “collaborative governance”—the process by which multiple actors, including public and private institutions, come together and evolve, implement, and oversee rules, providing long-term solutions to pervasive challenges—depends on the pace and direction of such learning. THE LOGIC OF COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE 3 Simon Zadek is Chief Executive of AccountAbility and a Senior Fellow with the CSR Initiative at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is particularly appreciative of comments on earlier drafts by Jane Nelson and John Ruggie, and also by Gavin Andersson, David Browne, Pepper Culpepper, Jack Donahue, Paul Kapelus, Alejandro Litovsky, Mark Moore, Edwin Ritchkin, Holly Wise, and Ricardo Young. Further comments to the author are welcomed at simon@accountability.org.uk or through www.accountability.org.uk. Collaborative Discourses Everyone wants to collaborate. Even those who do not want to work together want to be seen to be willing, at least in principle if not in practice. Talk of partnerships, alliances, coalitions, and networks fill the media. Wars have become clubbish affairs, whether against terrorism, drugs, or poverty. The language of competition has become intertwined with that of cooperation, as even the most aggressive acquisition strategy is made to appear like courtship and marriage. “Open source,” the ultimate expression of “come as you are and contribute what you can,” symbolizes a political challenge to the old order of control through delineation and ownership, and yet also represents the latest organizational model for business innovation and financial enrichment. Collaboration is this era’s source of hope. The language of dialogue, participation, and consensus increasingly underpins today’s utopian visions of social organization, from South Africa’s post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission through to engagement with Iran over the development of nuclear capabilities. It is through collaboration, often involving the oddest bedfellows, that we vest this generation’s hope for effectively addressing the challenges of poverty, inequality, and environmental insecurity. Partnerships involving public institutions, and private commercial and civil society organizations, underpin a growing number of initiatives addressing issues as diverse as HIV/AIDS, labor standards, obesity, and corruption, and the delivery of public services from education to traffic systems to safe and civilized prisons. There are literally millions of such partnerships in the world today, of every possible shape and color, many localized and focused on specific issues, and a growing number operating at a national or international level. The potential of such is now well-documented, combining institutional competencies, cultures, and access to resources. Their span is immense, not just in application, but also in who participates, what drives them to engage, and to what effect. This diversity is particularly apparent when it concerns the drivers for business involvement. At one end of the spectrum are those created on the very edge of the market, essentially “philanthropy plus” partnerships, delivering public goods in ways that offer sufficient business as well as social gains to attract sustained corporate involvement. At the other end are the burgeoning numbers of classical public–private partnerships. These embed commercial contracts at the core, providing specific profit-making opportunities in return for well-defined public good outcomes. In between these polarities is an almost infinite range of intermediary variants, blending rationales, competencies, and outcomes. 4 THE LOGIC OF COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE Collaboration is this era’s