The Logic of Collaborative Governance: Corporate Responsibility, Accountability, and the Social Contract

Emerging collaborative arrangements between public and private institutions provide the potential for novel ways for enhancing the provision of public goods. This potential is framed by organizations’ willingness and ability to participate in such arrangements. Business engagement is a particular challenge given business’ distinct societal mandate to create private economic gain. The basis of business accountability establishes the logic of business’ terms and interests, and therefore its participation in such collaboration. This basis of accountability is, however, in constant flux. “Corporate responsibility” is proposed here as the ongoing negotiation and realignment of this basis, which in turn is driven by the micro-dynamics of business competition, risk management, and reputation. This dynamic is described in terms of the interaction between micro, business-level learning and macro, societal learning. The potential for “collaborative governance”—the process by which multiple actors, including public and private institutions, come together and evolve, implement, and oversee rules, providing long-term solutions to pervasive challenges—depends on the pace and direction of such learning.