PUBLIC GOVERNANCE AND STRATEGIC RESPONSIVENESS

• Main Author: POPESCU Luminiţa Gabriela
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Technopress 2014-06-01
• Series: Journal of Public Administration, Finance and Law
• Subjects: globalization; strategic responsiveness; dynamic capabilities; networks as innovative forms; meta-organization
• Online Access: http://www.jopafl.com/uploads/issue5/PUBLIC_GOVERNANCE_AND_STRATEGIC_RESPONSIVENESS.pdf

In the actual context, where globalization is moreover dynamic, the concept of solid state, well defined and territorialised is becoming diffuse while the traditional social connections (labour relations, community solidarity) are becoming weaker and more fragile. The economic individualisation, migration and cultural fragmentation hold a devastating impact upon the living environment, namely significant growth of anonymity, distrust and discontent. As effect of those realities, the governments are searching responses to these processes of “social liquefaction”. Taking into consideration the fact that that the governance tools based on authority, hierarchy and bureaucracy are becoming useless due to the lack of effectiveness and legitimacy, we witness the emergence of new modes of public governance, in light to reconfigure solid ground, adequate for interventions. The design of a new type of governance should take into consideration its dual character. One component aims accountable community, as the traditional society has demonstrated that it is not able to generate spontaneously neither trust nor social capital. The second component is focused on identifying those strategies providing that accountability should be taken jointly by the public authorities and the other actors such as companies, third sector organisations and citizens. The accomplishment of such a model means to overcome several challenges. On the one hand, are the members of the community aware of the importance of their commitment? Are they truly motivated to participate in such a structure? On the other hand, how prepared are the political representatives and public authorities to accept cooperation with various categories of actors at community level? The space of strategic responsiveness introduced by the current research provides a possible scenario for responding to the above questions. Additionally, the research attempts to provide an answer to a special question, namely: how prepared is the Romanian actual society to adopt such a space in view to develop new perceptions on objectives, new modalities of analysis, innovative measures, aiming to provide an institutional response on liquefaction of modern social life. The research methodology will comprise bibliographic syntheses, comparative studies as well as social empirical researches.