Governance as a Service is a concept which is catching on quickly in the corporate world as a separate process from the traditional leadership and decision-making processes. ‘Governance’ comes from the Greek verb κυβερνάω meaning ‘to steer’ or ‘to guide’. The concept of good governance was popularized by Plato in The Republic. Good governance within an organization is often being measured as per standards and international norms.
In the case of business and non-profit organizations, governance relates to consistent management, cohesive policies, guidance, processes and decision-rights for a given area of responsibility.
As a process, governance may operate in an organization of any size and function. We usually think of governance as a Board function for large public corporations
The concept of governance applies to government organizations at all levels, corporations, partnerships and other associations, and also at the project level of common business and social activities.
As a service, governance is provided to an organization in much the same way as any other outsourced or co-sourced service is designed, contracted and implemented. Independent governance is particularly important within companies or associations (strategic alliances, partnerships…) where coercive power is the dominant form of control as a management style.
Within the business world, we often think of governance as a function of the Board of Directors, and by extension of the Executive Committee. Fair governance implies a harmonious, sustainable relationship between the agents (executive management) and the principals (all other stakeholders) as they define organizational expectations, grant power and decision-making authority, verify performance and determine rewards.
Governance as a Service (GOVaaS) is the contracting of part of their governance activities and responsibilities to a third party service provider. Some executives continue to see this option as weakness and a surrendering of their power but the more enlightened leaders are more than happy to accept help and support to ensure proper governance within their firm.
‘Governance as a Service’ delivers the often missing Project Governance layer as a low-cost, high-value subscription service. New partnership models where power is distributed equally among independent firms are now introducing facilitated governance services as a best practice.
Collaborative governance empowers multiple stakeholders to work toward consensus decision-making or at the very least to make recommendations to the final decision-maker who will not substantially change consensus recommendations from the group. Collaborative governance is governance with characteristics of both collaboration and empowerment.
The degree of collaboration is of course variable, ranging from non-participation (unawareness of decisions taken) to complete participation (direct involvement in all phases of decision-making). As a general trend, participatory involvement – all the 2.0 evolutions with interactive feedback loops – is also creeping its way into governance.
Open-source governance involves advanced mechanisms and tools (IdeaScale, Google Moderator, use of wikis…) to enable much different types of models than have been practical in the recent past. The evolution from a strictly vertical governance approach (autocratic top-down style) to a more vertically integrated, pluralistic model is the way GOVaaS is changing the way the best organizations are being run today.