Business and Government in Canada

Conclusion

CONCLUSION THE NEED FOR VIRTUOUS HYBRIDS Despite the emergence of a more socially, technologically, and organizationally networked world, the messages put forth by Jacobs, Stanbury, and Paquet with respect to sectoral relations remain useful guideposts. Business and government continue to be fundamentally different in both purpose and structure, they continue to influence and attempt to influence one another on matters of policy and strategy, and they continue to be intertwined in shared governance models and processes that impact themselves as well as their jurisdictionsas a whole. As discussed in the introduction, the guiding premise of this book has been that these three typologies are not at odds with one another; rather, they can be viewed as complementary lenses through which the growing amount of networked interaction between public, private, and civic sectors can best be understood. Fundamentally, Jacobs7 boundaries create the conditions for lobbying as well as many of the challenges for multisectoral collaboration. While the Boulding triangle boundaries must certainly be transcended —and often renegotiated (akey thematic lesson of Paquet's work)—erasing or ignoring such boundaries can only lead to a dangerous path of ineffective governance arrangements at best, corrupt and harmful ones at worst. At the nexus of today's sectoral interactions, there are two overriding and interrelated commonalities that affect the 159 Business and Government in Canada three sectoral typologies examined throughout this book. They include the widening emphasis on (1) transparency and more direct forms of both participation and accountability and (2) a language of stakeholder engagement and sustainability-driven governance systems. As the preceding chapters demonstrate, the relative strength of these trends is not uncontested by variables such as tradition, varied interests and objectives (acrosssectors and countries), and rising degrees of complexity across most realms ofsociety. Growing demands for transparency and directaccountability permeate concerns and discussions pertaining to corporate governance in the private realm and democratic governance in the public realm. Both along with and beyond calls for proper oversight and challenge functions by boards and legislative committees respectively, shareholders and citizens are becoming less passive and deferential —seeking to become more informed and involved in shaping decisions and directions. Similarly, within organizations, the samelogicisreflected inlesshierarchical and more networked, horizontal work patterns, personified by companies such as Google that provide their knowledge workers with the means and flexibility to create and collaborate. Transparency is a precursor to such involvement both internally and externally. Yet it is not without its challenges as both corporations and governments may often feel as though accelerating external information flows (emboldening activists and citizens alike) call for a more tightly orchestrated message from within. This tension between a command-and-control mentality rooted in clarity, decisiveness, and top-down authority on the one hand and more consultative and collaborative styles of decision making on the other is at the heart of the twenty-firstcentury nexusbetween management, leadership, and governance (Rheingold 2002; Reid 2004; Paquet 2005; Roy 2006b). Such tension also pervades governance challenges of a more encompassing or systemic variety involving multiple sectors and howtheyinteract.Forinstance,the traditionalworld oflobbying— secretive and often outside the realm of formal structures and 160 Conclusion rules— is gradually giving way to what was described in chapter 2 as legitimacy-based lobbying. This perspective does not seek to negate the self-interest, competitive motivations of private corporations that often clash with public interest, and more collective demands; rather, it places a higher ethical standard on more open intervention (which also creates the conditions for at least the possibility of compromise as a basis for consensus and learning when multiple interests and viewpoints collide). This view of lobbying as a legitimate and overt business function carries the potential to transform the adversarial and linear policy arena described by Stanbury while also challenging Jacobs' inspired notion ofstark boundaries between business and government as somehow optimal. Such stances mean that only a select few—professional lobbyists with privileged points of access— cantranscendsectoralboundaries.Increasingly,however, organizations in all sectors face situations of interdependence, and as a result companies must do more than contract lobbyists to act on their behalf: they must act on their own behalf. Actinginthismanner, more directly and openly inarenas and processes that transcend sectoral boundaries, brings us closer to Paquet'sco-evolutionary world inspired bytheBoulding triangle. In such a world, multistakeholder governance is understood to be not only necessary and workable but also optimal. While this language of " stakeholders'7 is relatively common in...