Urban commons is presented as a challenge of collaborative governance. This study delivers a normative perspective to analyse and evaluate processes and outcomes of the governance of urban commons. It demonstrates the development and application of the perspective in action research on Amsterdam’s Zero Waste Lab case, as a way to better understand successful and failing institutions in a concrete practice and to design interventions for improvement. Consequently, the (im)plausibility of collective action in urban communities and the participation of public actors present dilemmas for urban commons. The study specifically synthesises urban commons and collaborative governance scholarship and relates also in general to the transition towards co-creation in governing the city, e.g. in public administration or planning.
Executive Summary - Temperatures across the Middle East region are predicted to increase by 3°C by 2050 - Warming will be felt more in cities because of the urban heat island (UHI) effect, causing heat-related health problems - City planning and management regimes are often disconnected from disaster risk and resilience building and legislation is lacking - Lacking data and information sharing across multiple levels of governance hamper heatwave warning systems - Urban building projects lead to a soaring demand for cooling systems - Traditional adaptations such as street grid design, wind catchers and mashrabiya screens could be used more - Policy response should include national Heat Health Action Plans that are translated into Local Heat Plans, coordinated and implemented by local governments
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28-11-2022The external expectations of organizational accountability force organizational leaders to find solutions and answers in organizational (and information) governance to assuage the feelings of doubt and unease about the behaviour of the organization and its employees that continuously seem to be expressed in the organizational environment. Organizational leaders have to align the interests of their share– and stakeholders in finding a balance between performance and accountability, individual and collective ethical approaches, and business ethics based on compliance, based on integrity, or both. They have to integrate accountability in organizational governance based on a strategy that defines boundaries for rules and routines. They need to define authority structures and find ways to control the behaviour of their employees, without being very restrictive and coercive. They have to implement accountability structures in organizational interactions that are extremely complex, nonlinear, and dynamic, in which (mostly informal) relational networks of employees traverse formal structures. Formal processes, rules, and regulations, used for control and compliance, cannot handle such environments, continuously in ‘social flux’, unpredictable, unstable, and (largely) unmanageable. It is a challenging task that asks exceptional management skills from organizational leaders. The external expectations of accountability cannot be neglected, even if it is not always clear what is exactly meant with that concept. Why is this (very old) concept still of importance for modern organizations?In this book, organizational governance, information governance, and accountability are the core subjects, just like the relationship between them. A framework is presented of twelve manifestations of organizational accountability the every organization had to deal with. An approach is introduced for strategically govern organizational accountability with three components: behaviour, accountability, and external assessments. The core propositions in this book are that without paying strategic attention to the behaviour of employees and managers and to information governance and management, it will be extremely difficult for organizational leaders to find a balance between the two objectives of organizational governance: performance and accountability.
