Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
necessaryprecondition for confidence but trust and
confidence are more concerned with honesty and
truthfulness, and understanding of the motiva-
tions of the others (Kohn 2008).
Thirdly, they tended to treat problems as techni-
cal ones that could be solved optimally within
their own disciplinary domains. Hence, the not
infrequent complaints that they had developed
the 'optimum' solution but that this had been
stopped by 'politics' - the conflicts and interests
that they had failed to take into account in de-
veloping their technically 'optimum' solution.
Those bureaucracies also were slow to catch up
with the current emphasis on stakeholder en-
gagement - the recognition of the diffusion of
interests and power.
If collaboration is now essential, there are three
questions:
1
Why may collaboration result in more desirable
outcomes than independent action?
2
What incentives are there for organizations to
collaborate?
3
How can
Doing 'Better'
Sustainable development requires continuing
change - constant improvement upon what we
have done in the past. Thus, it requires both
learning and innovation, where learning is com-
monly defined as more successful adaptation.
Both aspects create problems, as does change itself
- since that will differentially impact on interests
and hence be opposed by those interests. In turn,
that change may result in a change in power
relationships (Olson 1982). Change is destabiliz-
ing and requires different skills to the traditional
emphasis on stability; for example, 'learning
organizations' have different characteristics from
conventional organizations (Hitt 1995; Argyris
and Schon 1996).
It is also inevitable that some innovations will
not be successful, and therefore what is required
aremore successful failures -: failures that provide
lessons as to how to be more successful in the
future. Arguably, there is more to be learnt from
a failure than a success. Hence, we have to demand
of our institutions that they have more failures
whereas conventionally we criticize institutions
for failures. At the same time, a strategy for inno-
vation must also ensure that failures are not po-
tentially catastrophic.
collaboration
be
successfully
delivered?
It is possible to show that under some circum-
stances, collaboration may result in more desir-
able outcomes for the organization involved than
independent action (Green 2008, 2009). But the
incentives have to exist for the organizations to
collaborate, and that requires some coordinating
action. Similar incentives have to exist for mem-
bers of those organizations to collaborate with
members of other organizations.
But the really difficult bit is to deliver collabo-
ration in practice. Collaboration is conducted by
people through the medium of symbolic systems,
notably language. Hence, it is the social skills
associated with conflict resolution, the manage-
ment of uncertainty, and the use of symbolic
systems for interpersonal communication that are
critical. What we require are teachable skills in
social relationships and use of symbolic systems
for communication. Taken together, those skills
are what is often called 'conversation'. That the
different disciplines are different cultures adds to
those complexities.
Where collaboration has been successful (Impe-
rial andHennessey2000; Lowry2003;Hooper 2005;
Moss andMonstadt 2008), the sort of words used to
describe the necessary conditions are those like
'trust' and 'confidence'. Technical competence is a
Conclusions
In order to become 'better' at governance, wemust
first understand it and determine what we mean
by 'better'. Governance, however, is composed
of dualities, including that between technology
and governance itself, and is about resolving
conflicts. Moreover, it is centred on power and
the questions of who has it and who should have
it. Consequently, whilst there is a functional
aspect of governance, governance also requires
