The success or breakdown of collaborative governance mainly depends on leadership. Collaborative leaders usually play an encouraging and facilitative role in the organization that enables the stakeholders to effectively work together as a group.
Collaborative leaders have a distinctive quality which is to facilitate not to direct. They must formulate a condition that hold up the stakeholders contributions towards collaborative process and create effective transactions between them.
There are three types of facilitative leadership and they include: steward leadership, mediator leadership and catalyst leadership. A steward leader normally facilitates the process of collaboration by protecting the veracity of collaborative process.
On the other hand, a leader who assists in nurturing and arbitrating relationships involving stakeholders is known as mediator. Lastly, a catalyst leader helps the stakeholders to recognize and identify their value-creating prospects.
Facilitative leadership requires leaders to take part in these three roles. They should however ensure that their relative eminence of these three roles greatly depend on collaborative goals, antecedent condition and system context.
There are also two special facilitative leadership styles and they include: organic leadership who has the potential to draw social capital in an extensive was since they belong to stakeholder community and there is professional facilitator who belongs to outside community but is autonomous of stakeholders (Ansell & Gash 2008, p. 552) These two leadership styles have special weaknesses and strengths.
They can both act as honest brokers, however professional facilitator usually find it easier to establish neutrality but have harder time persuading and motivating stakeholders to formulate effective contributions.
Organic leaders have the potential to mobilize and cajole but usually do not have the power to convince their stakeholders. Professional facilitators however do have the power to convince their stakeholders and maintain their integrity.
Despite the fact that organic leaders can convene collaborative forums, they are usually the major object of distrust when collaboration unfolds. This is the time when professional facilitators will facilitate meditation process effectively.
Collaborative Governance Leaders are important since they efficiently collaborate towards creative problem-solving, service delivery and consensus. They however need to perform within the limits enforced by voluntary action and shared power (Vangen & Huxham 2003, p. 22).
Powerful catalytic leadership is always required from organic leaders who aim at collaborative governance for creative problem-solving.
Perspectives on Organizational Change: Systems and Complexity Theories
The ability for change management and survival in organization is increasingly becoming paramount in an environment where there is high competition and market globalization exists. Organizations are therefore forced to acquire competitive advantage by having the potential survive and manage change.
The process of organizational change can be successful if examined through complexity and systems theories which have the potential to equip leaders in various organizations with understanding and knowledge on how they can adapt and respond to demands and uncertainties of change in the global market (Amagoh 2008).
Complexity and systems theories are useful in different areas in an organization and they include: in organizational design, corporate strategy, organizational intelligence and in knowledge management (Amagoh 2008, p. 542).
Changes in any organizations are usually interconnected to various complex effects and causes.
Complexity and systems theories can offer the managers with avenues of how they can address complex dilemmas in the organization and how they can learn to appreciate them too (McElroy 2000, p. 201).
Many attempts have been made to apply Organizational change theories since 20th century. The initial effort that was made involved system theory models which were majorly concerned with constancy and equilibrium and how they could be upheld through negative response control.
The business is being scrutinized as corporate environment through the systems theory. Stakeholder’s relations are what comprise of organization environment.
However, organizational environment is increasing in complexity such that the system concepts are no longer sufficient to handle the complex phenomena (Amagoh 2008).
This is the reason why complexity theory emerged which was meant to handle complex issues such as non-equilibrium, instability, entropy and surfacing of new structures and patterns in the organization (Amagoh 2008).
Based on complexity theories views, systems are evolving; they can organize themselves to formulate a new thing.
The most common trends in contemporary organizations are usually towards pervasive and continuous change and interdependence increase. They do also close parallels between public and private sectors where similar environmental tests are experienced.
Public and private organizations are therefore forced to face tumultuous environments which are characterized by many uncertainties caused by dramatic changes brought by economical, technological and political factors.
A more complete and vibrant change management analysis has been formulated to help in comprehending management process better.
This is why, complexity and system theories were integrated to help understand the fluid process disruptiveness of organizational change (Amagoh 2008).
Client Empowerment and Quality Assurance
In United Kingdom, quality of work offered by social care services is usually measured in terms of Best Value reports or Quality Indicators. It is however generally concerned about regular performance measurement.
User satisfaction survey is usually required. However this methodology does not normally give the user the chance to respond in holistic manner concerning the services offered. This means that the clients are not empowered when it comes to measuring quality creating a big dilemma on the issue.
Anything that is not measured in relation to quality enhancement, client empowerment and quality assurance is normally defined as an outcome, a process or an intervention (Dowling 2008, p. 215).
After conducting a study on career and user experience in United Kingdom and Eastern Europe, it was found that client empowerment process is crucial to the future quality enhancement and quality direction of policies in the country.
Over 500 individuals gave out their experience of how they are being treated in public. The old, young, children, parents and disabled people were involved in the study. It was found that the welfare users were least empowered in the group in all the countries studied.
When it came to gender, class, age, disability, ethnicity, material resource and education, they found that these people were excluded by the society but professionals involved with them together with the staff members are under paid and their status is also too low.
The quality of service offered by social services is considered based on how quality is measured, how social service users and careers can contribute to quality service, how the quality of service offered can be improved such that innovative, ongoing and participative quality measurements are developed in social care organizations through career and user partnerships with the staff and managers of social care.
There will be different meaning for user and career groups if client empowerment is different and the quality of services offered is different in developed nations.
There can be an improvement in quality measurement if the user and the career organizations are in a position to provide evidence on their own thoughts and perspectives alongside managers, work partners and social care workers.
If user and career involvement and evidence are valued and lastly if they resource welfare services in such a way that partnership working can be offered and quality can be measured (Pfeffer & Coote 1991, p. 120).
Mini-Literature Review
This mini-literature review is to find out the difference that exists between the three articles, to find out the questions which the three articles are trying to answer and how they answer the research questions.
Lastly, possible research questions concerning the topics of the three articles are formulated which are to be studied.
The difference between the three articles discussed above concerns the topics discussed. The first article talks about how the success or breakdown of collaborative governance mainly depends on leadership and facilitated by three facilitative leadership styles known as: steward leadership, mediator leadership and catalyst leadership.
The second article talks about how the process of organizational change can be successful if examined through complexity and systems theories. Lastly, the third article talks about client empowerment and quality assurance.
The question that the first article (Stewards, Mediators, and Catalysts: Toward a Model of Collaborative Leadership) is trying to answer is why leadership is an important variable when explaining failure or success of collaborative governance.
This is because the success or breakdown of collaborative governance mainly depends on leadership. Collaborative leaders usually play an encouraging and facilitative role in the organization that enables the stakeholders to effectively work together as a group.
Collaborative leaders’ role is to facilitate not to direct and contributes towards collaborative process and create effective transactions between stakeholders.
On the other hand, the second article (Perspectives on Organizational Change: Systems and Complexity Theories) is trying to answer how organizational change theories of complexity and systems can be used to describe complex, unpredictable, chaotic and dynamic organizational transformation processes.
Complexity and systems theories have the potential to endow leaders in various institutions with indulgent and facts on how they can acclimatize and react to stipulations and qualms of change in the global market.
The third and the last article (Client Empowerment and Quality Assurance) mainly answers how the quality of social care can be considered based on how quality is measured, how social service careers and users take part in quality service and lastly how to improve service quality to develop quality measurement of social care organizations to increase on innovation.
There can be an improvement in quality measurement if the user and the career organizations are in a position to provide evidence on their own thoughts and perspectives alongside managers, work partners and social care workers.
If user and career involvement and evidence are valued and lastly if they resource welfare services in such a way that partnership working can be offered and quality can be measured.
Lastly, possible research questions concerning the topics of the three articles are: whether client empowerment and quality assurance exists in the world if they are not allowed to give out their thoughts?
Why are people still being judged based on their ethnicity, age, class and gender? Secondly, with the coming of new technologies that are being developed every single day, change is paramount and it is something that cannot be avoided; will new organizational theories be developed to manage the complexities that will come with new technologies?
Lastly, is collaborative governance success or failure only depends on leadership only? Are there any other factors that affect its performance?
List of References
Amagoh, F 2008, ‘Perspectives on Organizational Change: Systems and Complexity Theories’, The Public Sector Innovation Journal, Vol. 13 no. 3, pp. 530-551.
Ansell, C & Gash, A 2008, ‘Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice’, Journal of Public Administration Theory and Practice, vol. 18 no. 4, pp. 543-71.
Dowling, M 2008, ‘Client Empowerment and Quality Assurance’, The Public Sector Innovation Journal, vol. 13 no.1, pp. 210-220.
McElroy, M 2000, ‘Integrating complexity theory, knowledge management and Organization learning’, Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 4 no. 3, pp. 195-208.
Pfeffer, N & Coote, A 1991, Is Quality Good for You? New York: Institute for Public Policy Research.
Vangen, S, & Huxham, C 2003, ‘ Nurturing Collaborative Relations: Building Trust in Interorganizational Communication’, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, vol. 39 no. 1, pp. 5-31.