Governance & Bureaucracy

Governance may refer to the general principles that determine the procedures in a bureaucracy. Bureaucracy may refer to the specific implementation rules of an institution's policies. Rules at any layers matter, as they guide institutional hierarchical actors how to perform and achieve the institutional mission and vision, while external stakeholders forming an image of the institution.

How an institution is governed and performed determines the degree to which whether an institution can make value-added impact on the civil, political, economic, social or cultural fronts. In my view, the key indicators of good governance are (1) performance-based effectiveness and efficiency, (2) equity-based fairness, reasonableness and non-discrimination, (3) procedure-based legitimacy, accessibility and transparency, (4) integrity-based answerability, responsibility, and accountability, and (5) outcome-based sustainability. These indicators reflect an institution's core values and ethical delivery, constituting its identity perceivable and measurable by external stakeholders.

Governance via necessary bureaucracy to keep institutional activities under rational control is positive intervention. Good governance implies the institution functions in such a way that its actors play their due roles to achieve the common goal of an institution, Further, institutional quality and institutional impact correlate with each other ie good institutional quality leads to good development, and good development in turn leads to better institutional quality and better development, maintaining and sustaining an institution's brand.