Challenge of Governance

The concept of governance focuses on the structures and all processes of the decision-making mechanism, the regulatory principles and guiding rules that an institution and its actors (whether private or public, local or international) would have to take into account in conducting its affairs. While the external environment can be quite uncontrollable, the internal environment, through the structures of answerability, responsibility and accountability, can be controlled. One main challenge of governance is that actors of the decision-making mechanism fail to identify dysfunctional practices.

Dysfunctional symptomatic practices include:

(1) blinding (not accepting eg feeling frustrated to prove the negative, or treating one set of values as absolute);

(2) de-sensing (not empathizing eg building a wall between the internal and external auditors, or punishing non-conformers as they are different),

(3) absencing (disconnecting eg blaming others for errors, or showing no interest to cooperate as there are no common goals), and

(4) eroding (diluting eg neglecting the brand of what used to get, keep and grow the institution, or toppling existing foundations for a change towards the perceived set of absolute values).

The goal of good governance is to minimize the risk and to maximize outcomes. The strategic objective is to identify the challenges, resolving them before they manifest themselves as emergencies or even uncontrollable crises. Good governance orients towards (1) the values of openness, transparency and integrity, (2) the performance-based capacity manifestation and (3) the outcome-based effective collaborative support.