Governance is a term used for describing how public institutions, from private companies to non-profits, conduct their affairs and manage their resources. Transparency and accountability are imperative for ensuring good governance because of the need to disclose vital information to facilitate the transparent decision-making process1. In terms of governance issues identified in the case study, it is essential to mention the problem of transparency. Within the WA Schools Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project, there is a lack of transparency between the participants of the project, which ultimately hinders collaboration.
Without fostering transparency, the project will suffer from a lack of understanding of the objectives and goals of the partnership. In a PPP, transparency is reached with the help of open data and proactive disclosure, which implies the consistent and regular reporting of information between the project’s stakeholders2. The managers of the project should be more proactive in sharing relevant information about the PPP to foster an environment of trust and collaboration.
It is expected that the project will involve important stakeholders from the sphere of politics (for example, the Minister of Education), which is why it is imperative to establish an environment of transparency within the PPP. The interactions between teachers and students are also important to the project, which is why transparency is needed to ensure that there is no missed or undisclosed information that can limit the project’s success.
Wastage of money and resources is another important governance issue related to the WA Schools Public-Private Partnership. This problem is associated with the insufficient use and management of financial and other resources available to the stakeholders of the project. In addition, there may be a lack of effective leadership to guide the control of the resources and their improper use within the project. In order to prevent the wastage of money within the PPP, it is recommended to invest in leadership coaching, evaluate the decisions made in the project on the basis of costs and benefits of the project3. The involvement of technologies in the project is among the essential solutions to solving the problem of money wastage within PPP governance because it would allow for the match of the project’s needs to the processes necessary for meeting those needs.
In their article “Visualising and mapping stakeholder influence,” Bourne and Walker provide an insight into the tool used for visualising the power of essential stakeholders within a specific organisation. One of the tools used for the purpose of evaluating the power of stakeholders in the stakeholder circle, which represents a circle with multiple concentric lines that indicate the distance of stakeholders from a particular project4. The shading and the size of the sections in the circle play a significant role in indicating the scope and the scale of influence as well as the degree of its impact. The stakeholder circle below represents the discussion on the degree of leverage of key stakeholders involved in the PPP project. In the PPP project, the collaboration between key stakeholders such as school staff and political players defines the success of the project.
The two key stakeholders of the project include Teachers and the Minister of Education, both of which have various degrees of influence on the project’s success. The project is concerned with the provision of fair and inclusive education for those individuals who are below the poverty line. As stakeholders, teachers are interested in the success of the project because they are the ones to provide educational services to the target population of the project5.
They have a strong influence on the project as well as close distance because they can contribute to the program’s success while also leading to its failure. For example, when teachers do not possess enough information on how to cater to individuals living below the poverty line, they are more likely to be ineffective in the provision of education. Teachers make up a significant part of the stakeholder circle because they are high in numbers in terms of representation and need to be considered in the process of decision-making. For example, when involving technologies in the provision of education to low-income individuals, it is imperative to train teachers on how these technologies can be used in the classroom and outside the classroom.
Effective leadership efforts are required to manage the performance of teachers within the project because of the need for them to have a clear vision and an understanding of the project’s objectives. Having a leader among teachers is a way of managing their performance as well as ensuring that they fulfil the intended role.
Policy shaping represents the critical change necessary for reaching the success of the project. In a private-public partnership concerned with education, the Minister of Education represents one of the most important stakeholders who will influence the decision-making. The Minister is interested in promoting himself or herself as a politician and develop a cohesive government initiative to ensure that low-income individuals receive the desired level of education. The influence of the stakeholder is strong because of the direct impact on the decision-making process as well as the ability to represent the interests of the project’s target population in government.
To manage the result of the Minister’s influence on the project, transparency and accountability are essential to establish. As discussed earlier, transparency is an aspect of governance that ensures the consistent sharing of relevant information between key stakeholders of a project and implies further accountability on the basis of the information sharing. The Minister should be encouraged to discuss relevant issues with the stakeholders of the project and then transfer the findings to policy and exploring it with his or her colleagues in the political sphere.
Social welfare organisations will hold the stakeholder accountable for the decision-making process to ensure that the needs of the low-income population are met in terms of providing them with a high-quality education. Overall, cohesive governance efforts are needed to address the challenges associated with the involvement of stakeholders in the PPP project.
Bibliography
Bourne, Lynda, and Derek Walker, “Visualising and Mapping Stakeholder Influence.” Management Decision 43, no. 5/6 (2005): 649-660.
Buchanan, Rohanna, Rhonda Nese, and Miriam Clark. “Stakeholders’ Voices: Defining Needs of Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Transitioning between School Settings.” Behavioural Disorders 41, no. 3 (2016): 135-147.
Grover, Simmy and Adrian Furnham. “Coaching as a Developmental Intervention in Organisations: A Systematic Review of Its Effectiveness and the Mechanisms Underlying It.” PLoS One 11, no. 7 (2016): 1-10.
Jomo, KS, Anis Chowdhury, Krishnan Sharma, and Daniel Platz. “Public-Private Partnerships and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Fit for Purpose?” DESA Working Paper no. 148 (2016): 1-30.
Paschke, Anna, Deirdre Dimansesco, Taryn Vian, Jillian Kohler, and Gilles Forte. “Increasing Transparency and Accountability in National Pharmaceutical Systems.” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 96, no. 11 (2018): 782-791.
Footnotes
- Anna Paschke et al., “Increasing Transparency and Accountability in National Pharmaceutical Systems,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 96, no. 11 (2018): 782.
- KS Jomo, Anis Chowdhury, Krishnan Sharma, and Daniel Platz. “Public-Private Partnerships and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Fit for Purpose?” DESA Working Paper no. 148 (2016), 12.
- Simmy Grover and Adrian Furnham, “Coaching as a Developmental Intervention in Organisations: A Systematic Review of Its Effectiveness and the Mechanisms Underlying It,” PLoS One 11, no. 7 (2016): 3.
- Lynda Bourne and Derek Walker, “Visualising and Mapping Stakeholder Influence,” Management Decision 43, no. 5/6 (2005): 656.
- Rohanna Buchanan, Rhonda Nese, and Miriam Clark, “Stakeholders’ Voices: Defining Needs of Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Transitioning between School Settings,” Behavioral Disorders 41, no. 3 (2016): 136.