Summary of mandatory literature Governance & Strategy
(2020-2021)
Week 1 ‘Unravelling the concept of governance’...................................................................................2
Rhodes, R.A.W. (2007). Understanding governance: Ten years on. Organization Studies..................2
Riley, R.G., and Manias, E. (2006). Governance in operating room nursing: Nurses’ knowledge of
individual surgeons, Social Science & Medicine.................................................................................8
Scholten G, Muijsers‐Creemers L, Moen J, Bal R. (2018). Structuring ambiguity in hospital
governance.......................................................................................................................................12
Peters, B. G., & Pierre, J. (2001). Developments in intergovernmental relations: towards multi-level
governance.......................................................................................................................................17
Week 2 ‘Decentralizing care’................................................................................................................19
Lowndes, V., Sullivan, H. (2008). How low can you go? Rationales and challenges for
neighbourhood governance.............................................................................................................19
Saltman, R.B., Bankauskaite, V. (2006). Conceptualizing decentralization in European health
systems: A functional perspective....................................................................................................27
Singleton, V. (2005). The Promise of Public Health: Vulnerable Policy and Lazy Citizens.................31
Bochove, M. van, Tonkens, E., Verplanke, L., Roggeveen, S. (2016). Reconstructing the professional
domain: Boundary work of professionals and volunteers in the context of social service reform.. .36
Week 3.................................................................................................................................................41
Van de Bovenkamp, H. M., Stoopendaal, A., & Bal, R. (2017). Working with layers: The.................41
governance and regulation of healthcare quality in an institutionally layered system.....................41
Stoopendaal, A., & van de Bovenkamp, H. (2015). The mutual shaping of governance...................46
and regulation of quality and safety in Dutch healthcare.................................................................46
Week 4.................................................................................................................................................49
No mandatory literature...................................................................................................................49
Week 5.................................................................................................................................................50
Mintzberg, H. The Design School: Reconsidering the Basic Premises of Strategic............................50
Management....................................................................................................................................50
Jarzabokowski, et al. (2007). Strategizing: The challenges of a practice perspective.......................56
Wijngaarden J.D. van, Scholten G.R.M., Wijk K.P. van (2010). Strategic analysis for........................60
health care organizations: the suitability of the SWOT analysis.......................................................60
De Korne DF, van Wijngaarden JD, Sol KJ, Betz R, Thomas RC, Schein OD, Klazinga.........................65
NS. Hospital benchmarking: are U.S. eye hospitals ready?...............................................................65
AP Spee, Jarzabkowski P. (2009). Strategy tools as boundary objects..............................................69
Week 6.................................................................................................................................................71
Johnson et al. (2017). Chapter 7: Business strategy and models. In Exploring strategy, text and
cases.................................................................................................................................................71
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, Scholes K., (1998). Chapter 10: Stakeholder mapping: a practical tool for managers. In Exploring
techniques of analyses and evaluation in strategic management....................................................80
Johnson, G., Prashantham, S., Floyd, S. W., & Bourque, N. (2010). The Ritualization of Strategy
Workshops........................................................................................................................................84
Week 1 ‘Unravelling the concept of governance’
Rhodes, R.A.W. (2007). Understanding governance: Ten years on.
Organization Studies
Abstract: this paper focusses on understanding the governance, whereby the author explains
concepts of policy networks, governance, core executive, hollowing out the state and the
differentiated polity and give critics with the aim of opening new directions.
The author argues the analysis of governance should focus on beliefs, practices, traditions
and dilemmas.
British context. Main concept = policy network analysis, decentralized
Personal introduction see article (not relevant for the course)
The story so far
Policy networks
It refers to sets of formal and informal independent institutional linkages between governmental and
other actors structured around shared interests in public policymaking and implementation.
Policies emerge from the bargaining between the networks’ members. Central departments
need their cooperation because British government rarely delivers services itself, and it must
aggregate interests ‘sets of institutional linkages’
Exchange theory is still very important for policy network theory: an organization has power, relative
to an element of its task environment, to the extent that the organization has the capacity to satisfy
needs of that element and to the extent that the organization monopolises that capacity.
Elements of this idea from Rhodes:
Any organization is dependent upon other organizations for resources.
In order to achieve their goals, the organizations have to exchange resources.
Although decision-making within the organization is constrained by other organizations, the
dominant coalition retains some discretion. The appreciative system of the dominant
coalition influences which relationships are seen as a problem and which resources will be
sought.
The dominant coalition employs strategies within known rules of the game to regulate the
process of exchange.
Variations in the degree of discretion are a product of the goals and the relative power
potential of interacting organizations. This relative power potential is a product of the
resources of each organization, of the rules of the game and of the process of exchange
between organizations’.
Policy networks gained power, which the governance tried to reduce by subjecting them to rigorous
financial and management controls. This had unintended consequences they fragmented the
systems for delivering public services and created pressures for organizations to cooperate with one
another to deliver services.
The government then swapped direct for indirect controls. The government can set the limits
to network actions as it still largely funds the services but it also increased its dependence on
multifarious networks.
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,Shared values and norms are the glue which holds the complex set of relationships together; trust is
essential for cooperative behaviour and, therefore, the existence of the network.
As a working axiom, networks are high on trust, while contracts are low on trust. With the
spread of networks there has been a recurrent tension between contracts on the one hand,
with their stress on competition to get the best price, and networks on the other, with their
stress on cooperative behaviour.
Governance
Governance has multiple meanings, like a new process of governing; or a changed condition of
ordered rule; or the new method by which society is governed. The authors defines it as governing
with and through networks. He talks about network governance, with 2 faces:
1. It describes public sector change (e.g. the increased fragmentation caused by the reforms of
the 1980s or the joined-up governance of the 1990s, which sought to improve coordination
between government departments and the multifarious other organizations)
2. it interprets British government; it says the hierarchic Westminster model of responsible
government is no longer acceptable we have to tell a different story of the shift from
government with its narrative of the strong executive to governance through networks
The term always refers to the changing role of the state after the varied public sector reforms of the
1980s and 1990s. It explores the limits to the state and seeks to develop a more diverse view of state
authority and its exercise.
Core executive
Instead of asking which position is important, we can ask which functions define the innermost part
or heart of British government? The core functions of the British executive are to pull together and
integrate central government policies and to act as final arbiters of conflicts between different
elements of the government machine. These functions can be carried out by institutions other than
prime minister and cabinet so to define the core executive we can ask ourselves ‘who does what?’
Second argument to look at the core executive rather than the prime minister and cabinet
The positional approach assumes that power lies with specific positions and the people who
occupy those positions. But power is contingent and relational; that is, it depends on the
relative power of other actors
This power-dependence approach focuses on the distribution of such resources as money
and authority in the core executive and explores the shifting patterns of dependence
between the several actors
Everyone fights for they want themselves, so the core executive is segmented into overlapping
games in which all players have some resources with which to play the game and no one actor is pre-
eminent in all games.
the term ‘core executive’ directs our attention to two key questions: ‘Who does what?’ and
‘Who has what resources?’
Example
- If the answer is the prime minister who coordinates policy, resolves conflicts and controls the
main resources prime ministerial government.
- If power-dependence characterizes the links both between barons and between the barons
and prime minister cabinet or ministerial government
Hollowing out
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, It means that the growth of governance reduced the ability of the core executive to act effectively,
making it less reliant on a command operating code and more reliant on diplomacy. It can be
hollowed out from above (e.g., by international interdependence); from below (by marketization and
networks); and sideways (by agencies and the several species of parastatal bodies).
It is important to distinguish between intervention and control. Indisputably the British
centre intervenes often but its interventions do not have the intended effects and so cannot
be considered as control.
Diplomacy and skills remain very important: the task confronting British government is to manage
packages; packages of services, of organizations and of governments. Such skills are not new.
Summary of British government: the differentiated policy
Its core ideas are policy networks, governance, the core executive and hollowing out and it argues
there has been a shift from government by a unitary state to governance through and by networks.
Differentiation became more extensive in the 1980s and 1990s, which saw significant
changes in the functional and territorial specialization of British government; the networks
have multiplied as an unintended consequence of marketization; that the degree of
international interdependence is greater and that, as a result, the core executive’s capacity
to steer is reduced or hollowed out serve to reinforce the interpretation that centralization
and control are incomplete and Britain is best viewed as a differentiated polity
Key criticisms and the way forward
The author continues by addressing some critics and develops a decentred, actor-focused analysis of
the games people play in networks. He focusses on the context of policy networks, explaining change
and the role of ideas, the decline of the state, rescuing the core executive, and steering networks and
explores in each one where to go from there.
1. The context of policy networks
Marsh, Richards and Smith gave critics on the authors and claim that the author is a pluralist who
believes that power is diffused and does not place the analysis of networks in a broader
socioeconomic context
His reaction: ‘’the point of neo-pluralist arguments is their rejection of both the diffusion of
power in pluralism and the centralization of power in Marxism. The core claim is that power is
structured in a few competing elites, which includes the private government of public policy
by closed policy networks. I uses the phrase ‘the oligopoly of the political market place’ to
capture this political elitism. I accept that Marsh, Richards and Smith may disagree with my
analysis of the socio-economic context but the claim that I neglect it is simply inaccurate. hat
said, I take the general point that changes in networks and governance must be placed in a
broader context’’
Where do we go from here? – context?
A tradition is a set of understandings someone receives during socialization. A certain relationship
should exist between beliefs and practices. The author describes how through time state changes
from centralized to neoliberal economics
In short, the history of governance during the 20th century appears as a shifting balance
between government and governance. It is through such an historical analysis of the shifting
boundaries between state and civil society that I would seek to explore the context of
network governance.
2. Explaining change/using ideas
The most common and recurrent criticism of policy network analysis is that it does not, and cannot,
explain change.
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