Governing Societies:
The Emergence of New Governance Structures (Part II)
Promotion of Corporate Social Responsibility
The increasing role of the private sector in societal governance means that businesses are now becoming increasingly involved in addressing social and environmental issues that were traditionally the responsibility of governments. The benefits to the organization from engaging in corporate social responsibility have been explored and to a large extent the business case can be justified. There is however a less explored benefit, which accrues to governments from promoting responsible business practices in the private sector. The promotion and facilitation of corporate social responsibility within a framework of relevant public policy allows the government to benefit from the resources, skills and expertise of the private sector who can play a substantial supporting role to the government in identifying and addressing societal issues.
In Trinidad and Tobago, one of the most advanced countries in the region in terms of the institutionalization of corporate social responsibility practices, the governments needs to recognize and appreciate the role that the private sector continues to play in societal governance and work together with them to enable and incentivize responsible business practices.
Beyond this, the government must themselves demonstrate responsible business practices in their own operations, endorsing responsibility especially in key areas of public procurement, and effective resource utilization.
Facilitation of Multi-Stakeholder Partnership
In many instances, developed out of, or associated with the area of corporate social responsibility is the multi-stakeholder partnership. Multi-stakeholder partnerships have increasingly been recognized as useful approaches to addressing global governance issues. Internationally, we have seen large organizations like the United Nations who traditionally dealt exclusively with governments, now recognizing the importance of establishing multi-stakeholder partnerships that also include civil society and the private sector.
Likewise, these multi-stakeholder approaches can be equally effective at a national level for enhancing societal governance throughout Trinidad and Tobago. Multi-stakeholder partnerships leverage off of the variety of skills and resources that the various actors can bring to the table. Given the resourcefulness of the private sector and the steadily increasing capacity of civil society, there is tremendous local potential for the establishment of successful multi-stakeholder partnerships to facilitate democratic societal governance.
For effective implementation however, they requires a coordinated approach and this presents an opportunity for the government to use its convening power to bring the actors together for the establishment of these partnerships, as ‘new governance’ mechanisms to identify, prioritize and address societal concerns.
Promotion of Responsibility, Transparency and Accountability
All mechanisms that provide direction to society require the existence of certain core characteristics to ensure their effectiveness. Foremost of these are responsibility, transparency and accountability. Responsibility requires an understanding of the relationships that exists between and among all the actors and stakeholders with the governance structure and the ensuing obligations that arise as a result of these relationships; social, economic and environmental. Transparency is based on open procedures, process and mechanisms for decision making and the disclosure of information relating to these. Accountability requires that the appropriate checks and balances exist within the system and that all functions are answerable to the consequences of their actions.
It is not enough for these characteristics to be promoted within structures of societal governance but they must be demonstrated by example. It is here that the government must themselves lead by example ensuring that their own systems, processes and procedures demonstrate responsibility, transparency and accountability.
Finally, in the making the shift toward more pluralistic approaches to societal governance, actors need to be increasingly flexible and adaptable to changing societal concerns. Modern societies are dynamic in nature; social, economic and environmental conditions and constantly changing, and with these changing conditions, come changing priorities. Effective systems of societal governance require the ability to easily adjust to changing conditions which usually can only happen if actors keep ‘an ear to the ground’ to anticipate and responds to these dynamics.
Not surprisingly, knowing what is happening on the ground is usually easier when there are more ears to the ground; that is, when all the actors are engaged through approaches which ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to participate in providing direction to society; where every citizen plays an active role in societal governance.
