A MORPHOLOGY OF THE ORGANISATION OF DATA GOVERNANCE

Both information systems (IS) researchers and practitioners consider data governance as a promising approach for companies to improve and maintain the quality of corporate data, which is seen as critical for being able to meet strategic business requirements, such as compliance or integrated customer management. Both sides agree that data governance primarily is a matter of organisation. However, hardly any scientific results have been produced so far indicating what actually has to be organised by data governance, and what data governance may look like. The paper aims at closing this gap by developing a morphology of data governance organisation on the basis of a comprehensive analysis of the state of the art both in science and in practice. Epistemologically, the morphology represents an analytic theory, as it serves for structuring the research topic of data governance, which is still quite unexplored. Six mini case studies are used to evaluate the morphology by means of empirical data. Providing a foundation for further research, the morphology contributes to the advancement of the scientific body of knowledge. At the same time, it is beneficial to practitioners, as companies may use it as a guideline when organising data governance

Adapting to informality: multistory housing driven by a co-productive process and the People’s Plans in Metro Manila, Philippines

Faced with an ever-increasing demand for land in Metro Manila, as well as with the domination of standardised low-income housing models, the local civil society and the urban-poor sector embarked on the development of an alternative shelter approach in-city multistorey housing delivered through the People’s Plan. The article documents the emergence of the approach, interrogates its main assumptions and takes a closer look at the implementation process through two case studies, in Pasig and San Jose Del Monte. The article analyses the modality as an attempt to create a hybrid approach between formal and informal delivery systems within the built form conventionally associated with the imaginaries of the ‘formal’ city. The findings underscore the role of co-production in enabling the urban-poor sector to leverage their approach, while documenting the need to move beyond a formal–informal dichotomy in both theory and urban development practice

From techno-scientific grammar to organizational syntax. New production insights on the nature of the firm

The paper aims at providing the conceptual building blocks of a theory of the firm which addresses its "ontological questions" (existence,boundaries and organization) by placing production at its core. We draw on engineering for a more accurate description of the production process itself, highlighting its inner complexity and potentially chaotic nature, and on computational linguistics for a production-based account of the nature of economic agents and of the mechanisms through which they build ordered production sets. In so doing, we give a "more appropriate" production basis to the crucial issues of how firm's boundaries are set, how its organisational structure is defined, and how it changes over time. In particular, we show how economic agents select some tasks to be performed internally, while leaving some other to external suppliers, on the basis of criteria based on both the different degrees of internal congruence of the tasks to be performed (i.e. the internal environment), and on the outer relationships carried out with other agents (i.e. the external environment)

Cities and global governance: State failure or a new global order?

International society, so long the resolution to problems of collective political order, now appears to be failing in its capacity to deal with transnational challenges such as climate change, global security and financial instability. Indeed, the structure of international society itself has become a significant obstacle to such pressing issues of global governance. One striking response has been the reemergence of cities as important actors on the international stage in recent decades. This article will show how these two issues are intrinsically linked. Cities have taken on new governance roles in the gaps left by hamstrung nation-states, and their contribution to an emerging global governance architecture will be a significant feature of the international relations of the twenty-first century. But do the new governance activities of cities represent a failure on the part of states, as some scholars have argued? Or are they a part of an emerging form of global order, in which the relationship between states, cities and other actors is being recalibrated? This article argues that the remarkable renaissance of cities in recent decades has been a result of a shift in the structure of international society, and assesses the causal drivers of this shift. It goes on to draw out some of the implications of the recalibration of the relationship between the city and the state for how we understand the emerging form of global order

Towards a network government? A critical analysis of current assessment methods for e-government

Contemporary public administrations have become increasingly more complex, having to cordinate actions with emerging actors in the public and the private spheres. In this scenario the modern ICTs have begun to be seen as an ideal vehicle to resolve some of the problems of public administration. We argue that there is a clear need to explore the extent to which public administrations are undergoing a process of transformation towards a netowork government linked to the systematic incorporation of ICTs in their basic activities. Through critically analysing a selection of e-government evaluation reports, we conclude that research should be carried out if we are to build a solid government assessment framework based on network-like organisation characteristics

The scalar politics of economic planning

Across England, modes of governing larger-than-local development strategies are undergoing far-reaching change. In particular, the new government of 2010 has a political and financial mission of rescaling and simplifying sub-national economic planning. Alongside the revocation of myriad and sometimes unpopular regional strategies, their supportive institutional structures are being rapidly disbanded, opening up a strategic leadership gap or fissure between national and local scales of policy. Analysing the theory and processes of spatial rescaling, including the emergence of new geographies of governance at the sub-regional scale, the paper draws attention to some of the key opportunities and dilemmas arising from these ‘scalar shifts’. The economic planning roles of the new, cross-boundary entrepreneurial governance entities – Local Enterprise Partnerships – are explored. A key question is whether these public-private arrangements, across what were intended as ‘functional’ economic areas, present a pragmatic way of resolving the strategic tensions between local authority areas that would otherwise be neglected in a post-regional era. The research is based on national monitoring of policy shifts and draws upon participatory observation as an instrument to enrich more formal policy narratives. The paper finds these new bodies lack powers and funding, and concludes that state-led rescaling in effect provides a new ‘cover’ for some old politics; namely neoliberalism including the deepening of entrepreneurial forms of governance. Key words: Strategic planning, sub-national development, economic planning, entrepreneurial governance and Local Enterprise Partnership

Launching Delta Alliance, final report of phase 2

Delta Alliance is a network that aims to improve the resilience of the world’s deltas. It provides a foundation and framework for international knowledge sharing and development around delta issues. Phase 2 focussed on three components: developing the Delta Alliance organization, initiating network activities and (development of) research and knowledge sharing projects

Open Innovations and Living Labs: Promises or Challenges to Regional Renewal

The paper brings to the foreground modes and strategies of organising purposeful action that may be conductive to local and regional actors’ successful coping in the more and more competitive environment. The paper is pragmatist by its approach in a sense that it emphasises preconditions and possibilities for making ideas work. However, to do this is a difficult task. In the maze of multifaceted information flows and revolutionary technologies for reaching them enterprises and public actors need to find and construct better structured information that really helps them to operate. The paper introduces two sets of case activities that build on open innovation and living lab approaches in their attempts to make the boundaries between organisations and their environment more permeable. Its findings support the structuralist idea that spatial attributes matter more than as a mere venue, platform, or even container of social action. The venues studied in the paper are unique: one of the oldest still remaining factory buildings in the innermost core of the city of Tampere and a re-used loghouse in a peri-urban landscape outside the city. They both serve now as true exploratory spaces with no functional or institutional lock-ins stemming from them to bond their present-day users

Exploring the relationship between knowledge management and organizational learning via fuzzy cognitive mapping

The normative literature within the field of Knowledge Management has tended to concentrate on techniques and methodologies for codifying knowledge. Similarly, the literature on organizational learning, focuses on aspects of those knowledge that are pertinent at the macro-organizational level (i.e. the overall business). There remains little published literature on how knowledge management and organizational learning are interrelated within business scenarios. In addressing this relative void, the authors of this paper present a model that highlights the factors for such an inter-relationship, which are extrapolated from a manufacturing organisation using a qualitative case study research strategy, supplanted by a cognitive mapping technique: Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM). The paper looks at the Information Systems Evaluation (ISE) process within a manufacturing organisation, the authors subsequently presenting a model that not only defines a relationship between KM and OL, but highlights factors that could lead a firm to develop itself towards a learning organisation