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In light of the current state of organization of public service provision and the growing importance of civil society in this area, this chapter examines the importance of an appropriate governance concept. This chapter argues that cooperation between organizations can be a key success factor and at the same time be regarded as an applied governance practice and the link between theoretical considerations and practical implementation.

The chapter describes the theoretical and conceptual ties between cooperation and governance. Based on an organizational development project, the potential applications and their implementations are illustrated.

Based on theoretical considerations, practical research, and demonstrated using a case study, some factors of success of collaboration are identified. Using these success factors as a framework, the concrete case study is reviewed and conclusions for interventions and the behavior of consultants are named.

The findings of this chapter can serve scientists but especially practitioners such as senior executives, managers or organization development (OD) experts as helpful guidelines and orientations when it comes to implement sustainable organizational solutions cooperatively in the field of public governance. In addition to the illustration of practical applied essential process and implementation steps, the chapter provides conceptual information for the anchoring of sustainable development in cooperative relations in the field of public governance.

This chapter examines public versus private sector roles in addressing CSR/Sustainability issues in the United States. It provides an historical perspective on the primacy of market-driven corporate practice in the United States and recent moves by the state to “balance” private and public interests through both regulatory and non-regulatory means. A typology of government and business roles, based on “who leads” and “who makes the rules,” illustrates shared governance of CSR/Sustainability in a variety of multisector and public–private partnerships.

Case studies examine how the U.S. government interacts with business and NGOs and its varied roles in the shared governance of sustainability. Examples from field interviews with business leaders in global operator General Electric (Global Business Initiative on Human Rights), apparel maker-and-seller Patagonia (Aquatic “Hitchhikers”), electronics retailer Best Buy (product recycling), IBM (global corporate volunteering), and others illustrate varieties of shared governance between business and the state in operation today.

Depending on “who leads” and “who makes the rules,” there are variations in whether responsible actions by the private sector are regulatory versus voluntary and whether government’s role involves mandating, partnering, facilitating, or endorsing private sector efforts. Successful shared governance depends on business’s “license to cooperate” and the multiple parties’s sharing responsibility for their goals, operations, and results.

There is a substantial literature on multi-business CSR-related networks and on business–NGO partnerships. Less attention has been given to the role of governments in this space, particularly in the United States where, partly for historical reasons, a company’s relationship with and obligations to society have been regarded as discretionary more so than regulatory activity and where government intervention in markets and in the affairs of companies has been sharply resisted, particularly by business interests, and is suspect among the citizenry.

The purpose of this paper is to study an articulated warning system that provides information about the heritage at risk and encourages a dialogue between the heritage sector, civil defense agencies and local communities.

The databases from the National Heritage Institute, National Civil Defense, National Geological Service and National Early Warning System were investigated and the local community provided input which helped form a participatory risk mapping strategy for a warning system in the heritage sector.

There is little knowledge of the Brazilian heritage that is at risk and a lack of coordination between the cultural heritage and DRR sectors. This means that there is a need to organize the geo-referenced databases so that information can be shared and the public provided with broader access. As a result, there can be a greater production, dissemination and application of knowledge to help protect the cultural heritage.

The findings can be included in the debate about the importance of framing disaster risk management (DRM) policies in the Brazilian heritage sector.

The findings and maps of the case study in the town of São Luiz do Paraitinga involve the heritage sector, civil defense agencies and local people and can be used for disaster risk preparedness.

A DRM program is being formulated in Brazil. However, the kind of strategy needed to incorporate the heritage sector in this program stills needs to be planned, and the knowledge of the cultural heritage at risk is a key factor when faced with this new social and scientific challenge.

Historically, the World Bank has been the largest external financier of education in the world, committing a peak amount of just over $5 billion in Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 through both its Education Sector projects and multisector projects managed by other sectors (World Bank, 2010b). The World Bank also hosts the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative (EFA FTI). Launched in 2002, EFA FTI is a partnership of governments, civil society organizations, and multilateral agencies such as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank, which provides grant funding and technical assistance to implement the basic education components of national education strategies. By providing significant funding for education in low-income countries (LICs) through its own International Development Association (IDA) and by managing the majority of EFA FTI grant funding, the World Bank has a major impact on the direction of education development around the world.

In 2011 the Bank released a new Education Sector Strategy, Learning for All, which sets out the World Bank Education Sector's approach to education development over the coming decade. The analysis in this chapter examines the role of the EFA FTI and the growth of World Bank education operations managed outside the World Bank Education Sector, as well as their influence on Bank education lending objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. We examine trends in World Bank and EFA FTI basic education financing in sub-Saharan African countries that have joined the EFA FTI partnership to compare these two sources of financing for primary education and analyze the extent to which the World Bank is substituting its primary education lending with grants from the EFA FTI. We also assess the results frameworks of 10 multisector operations managed by noneducation sectors (Economic Management and Poverty Reduction; Urban Development; Rural Sector; Population, Health, and Nutrition; and Social Protection) to ascertain the extent to which they include education objectives and indicators. The chapter focuses its research around two questions:1.Is there evidence that financing from the EFA FTI is substituting World Bank financing for education in sub-Saharan Africa?2.Are World Bank multisector operations well designed to achieve education objectives in sub-Saharan Africa?

The research finds that the EFA FTI has almost certainly impacted the demand for IDA financing for basic education development. The comparison of IDA and EFA FTI primary education financing shows country-level substitution is occurring in a number of sub-Saharan African countries, with at least 13 out of 18 EFA FTI grant recipients in sub-Saharan Africa receiving a declining share of IDA financing for primary education since joining the EFA FTI.

Second, multisector operations now account for one-third of Bank education lending and have increased to comprise half of all new education commitments in sub-Saharan Africa. The research finds that multisector operations with education components are not as effective or accountable for education outcomes as those managed by the Education Sector, unless they are explicitly linked to national education plans. Given the disconnect between Education Sector managed education lending, and financing for education managed by other Bank sectors, it is unclear how the latter will be guided by the Bank's Education Sector Strategy, which will only apply to half of all Bank education lending for sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, there is no guarantee that both EFA FTI funding and noneducation sector managed lending will be measured against World Bank education strategy standards, and yet the Education Sector Strategy 2020 does little to address these challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the evolution of global and national policies linking agriculture to nutrition in 2010–2020, and provides insights on the recent policy trajectory in China to illustrate how individual countries are addressing agriculture and nutrition.

The authors utilize a noncomprehensive review of gray and peer-review literature, as well as a case study approach.

Select countries have made initial strides in linking agriculture and nutrition through policy, though progress is not widespread and uneven.

Researchers can begin closing the existing knowledge gaps on agriculture and nutrition. Policymakers can learn from the country lessons and experiences in agriculture and nutrition policy.

This paper provides one of the only overviews of global policy on agriculture and nutrition during the period 2010–2020.

This study explores the best strategies for regional economic development to attract highly skilled populations, regardless of whether the region is a multisector or unisector economic hub. It also determines the development variables affecting the success of integrated regional economic hubs to achieve spatial equality, enhance economic productivity and attain environmental sustainability.

In addition to a qualitative analysis, this study employed quantitative techniques using SPSS software. This allowed amplification of the most significant explanatory variables affecting the weaknesses and strengths of economic hubs.

The results highlight approaches that can be used to achieve socio-economic sustainability in regional hubs. These include multisectors or main centralised hubs (smart economic regional capital), which provide new services to regions and act as a unidevelopment sector or as a regional, economic capital.

The study analyses the effect of economic strategies and integration of natural resources and the required core services in regional economic development.

Case studies of successful economic hubs are discussed. The most important services proposed in such hubs promote human development and increase the standard of living.

Integration between the hubs in a region is fundamental to attracting direct investments that can benefit the local population.

The results could help governments, economists and planners implement multisector developmental hubs to achieve sustainable development.

Discussions about progressive gender reform across Melanesia highlight the need for more gender-inclusive policies and improved conditions for women and girls throughout all sectors. However, for many of these countries, attempts to address the problems are marred by insufficient resources and low prioritization of the issue and traditional, cultural and religious perspectives about gender and gendered roles. This article discusses how police responses are coordinated to address domestic and family violence (DFV) and provides a critical reflection on both internal responses and the complexities of multi-partner operations beyond urban spaces.

This article draws on the findings from a stakeholder engagement focus group with 20 participants from four Melanesian countries – Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu – to provide insight into policing innovations in rural contexts.

There is a need for improved multisector partnerships, increased police presence and greater reliance on indigenous strategies to improve responses to DFV in resource-constrained contexts.

The article provides insight into an under-researched area and makes recommendations for improving responses to DFV in rural areas in small-island developing states.

Leading health care institutions have recommended greater alignment among health care and social services organizations as a strategy to improve population health. Deepening our understanding of how interorganizational relationships among health care and social service organizations influence care for people with complex needs could improve the design of interventions aimed at aligning these organizations to achieve health goals. Accordingly, we used qualitative methods to (1) elucidate the functions performed by health care and social service organizations caring for older adults and (2) investigate corresponding relationship forms. In-depth interviews with 175 representatives of health care and social service organizations in 10 communities were analyzed. Three distinct interorganizational relationships functions emerged: First, interorganizational relationships gave organizations a deeper and more accurate understanding of how their work was interdependent with the work of other organizations in the community. This function was achieved through coalitions that loosely tied large numbers of organizations and allowed information to flow among them. Second, interorganizational relationships allowed organizations to take joint action toward a shared goal, a function achieved in the form of pairs or small groups of organizations working closely together. Third, interorganizational relationships fostered accountability, with one organization advocating for the needs of clients or patients with another organization. Our results suggest that initiatives to promote regional alignment among health care and social services organizations may benefit from flexible models that anticipate a narrowing of partners to achieve tangible outcomes. Initiatives also need to accommodate low-level conflict that routinely exists among organizations in these sectors.

Both the theory and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) are foundational to the field of Business & Society (B&S). However, efforts to define and operationalize this construct have been undermined by definitional discord arising from the disparate sense-making assumptions and methods of competing North American and European research traditions. Scholars wedded to the North American research tradition have striven mightily to uncover “objective” evidence in support of the instrumental proposition that IF corporate executives were to invest more resources to enhance social and environmental performance, THEN the firm’s burnished brand image, reputation, and perceived legitimacy would elevate the firm’s long-term financial performance as well. However, the inconclusive statistical record has failed to move many corporate decision makers beyond the minimal social and environmental investments needed to create the impression of compliance with societal expectations. The proliferation of corporate scandals and the pattern of settling legal disputes without admitting guilt are also troubling. The muted impact of B&S research based on proving the instrumental proposition has prompted a new generation of European B&S scholars to explore the sense-making potential of the European research tradition, which seeks meaning and normative validity within a pluralist crucible of community discourse. This contested communicative space is filled with paradoxical tensions and contending stakeholder voices and narratives. With respect to CSR, this discursive sense-making process is animated by an aspiration toward constructing shared meanings that can guide a search for more collaborative approaches to addressing systemic challenges via stakeholder engagement and experiments in multisector collaborative problem-solving. Rather than try to scientifically “prove” a fact-based pre-existing condition, this approach embraces “an emergent and mediated form of strategic ambiguity” to keep open the possibility of “fulfilling often conflicting instrumental and social/ethical imperatives at the same time” (Guthey & Morsing, 2014, p. 556). This discourse-based search for shared meanings in support of a convergence of economic, social, and environmental values frames CSR as an aspirational cocreative process rather than as a pyramid of normative assertions loosely grounded on a search for validation in efforts to find correlations (or causation) within an assortment of “objective” facts. The discursive approach to constructing CSR also highlights the relevance of the emergence of institutional innovations that enable network interactions to address shared systemic problems. Ultimately, CSR may be expressed as a form of network governance seeking to assure the sustainable outcome of system health and vitality across micro-, meso-, and meta-levels of thought and action.

While it has long been established that social factors, such as housing, transportation, and income, influence health and health care outcomes, over the last decade, attention to this topic has grown dramatically. Reforms that promote high-quality care as well as responsibility for total cost of care have shifted focus among health care providers toward upstream determinants of health care outcomes. As a result, there has been a proliferation of activity focused on integrating and aligning social and medical care, many of which depend critically on cross-sector alliances. Despite considerable activity in this area, cross-sector alliances in health care remain largely undertheorized. Both literatures stand to gain from more attention to carefully knitting together the theoretical and management literature on alliances with the empirical, health policy and health services literature on cross-sector alliances in health care. In this chapter, we lay out what exists in the current scientific literature as well as a framework for considering much needed work in this area. We organize the literature and our commentary around the lifecycle of alliances: alliance formation, including factors prompting alliance formation, partner selection, and alliance goals; alliance maturity, including the work of these cross-sector alliances, governance, finance and contracts, staffing structure, and rewards; and critical crossroads, including alliance timelines, definitions of success, and dissolution. We also lay out critical areas for future inquiry, including better theorizing on cross-sector alliances, developing typologies of these cross-sector health care alliances, and the role of policy in cross-sector alliances.