The Challenges Confronting Public Managers and Their Capacity-Building: The Perspective of Collaborative Governance
Kuan-Chiu Tseng *
Abstract
“Collaborative governance” is a new concept which broadly refers to multiple stakeholders, the general public and private bodies engaging in public affairs via open, in-depth and balanced communication and dialogue to reach – to some extent – a consensus or deliver certain kinds of public services. Apparently, the advantages of collaborative governance are to gain policy legitimacy, responsiveness and even effectiveness in terms of public policy but, inevitably, at the expense of certain administrative efficiency from the institutional and structural standpoints. With the increasing pervasiveness and utilization of new governance tools, it is crucial to grasp what public-private collaboration or partnerships means and why the term generates new challenges and, in particular, how public managers face these challenges. In this study, drawing upon the perspectives of individual agencies, the author tries to explicate and address the problems above, and goes on to suggest that the issue of capacity-building for collaborative public managers should be seriously taken into consideration.
Keywords:collaborative governance, public-private partnership, individual agency perspective, collaborative capacity-building, boundary spanner
* Assistant Professor, Dept. of Public Administration, Tamkang University.