School governance: More than a convenience
THE need for close coordination and performance synchronization in value chain strengthening, or more broadly in area (or regional) and sectoral development, points to two other governance requirements. The first requirement relates to leadership for the value chain; and the second relates to a secretariat that would serve as a long-term coordinating secretariat for the value chain.
The leadership issue in many instances is very naturally resolved. For any given area or region, the natural leader and coordinator would be the local government authority (e.g., the governor or the chosen head of a cluster of municipalities and other LGUs). For any given sector, that role may fall on the enterprise with a core position in the sectoral value chain. In every instance, it is most helpful that whoever takes on the leadership role for value chain strengthening should be heading an enterprise with a governance and transformation program of its own.
The issue of the coordinating secretariat may, at first glance, be more difficult to resolve. But we must all remember what value chain strengthening requires; its most important requirement is to have a mechanism for coordinating and synchronizing performance commitments and assisting the leadership in ensuring that those performance commitments are met. This role is best played by a professionally staffed, properly trained and highly motivated Office for Strategy Management (OSM). The staffing for such an OSM can be drawn from the different offices of strategy management of the governance units belonging to the same value chain. However, there are other critical roles that such a specialized OSM must also play, and these are:
• To serve as a center for governance values promotion. This role goes with at least some research and with lots of creative communication, not only within the value chain but also outside it, e.g., the wider community the value chain serves.
• To serve as a center for skills training and continuing professional formation. This role is best played by institutions with a capacity for “dual training”: Through institutionalized “work-study” arrange- ments, which involve outside enterprises providing on-the-job training opportunities for those learning specific skills of direct usefulness and relevance to those enterprises.
• To serve as an incubator of new social enterprises. This would include start-ups that can help fill gaps, remove bottlenecks, and iron out kinks in the value chain. Then comes the more important role of assisting these start-up enterprises progress towards sustainability and long-term viability.
Once these three other roles are taken into account, one enterprise stands out for special consideration, and it is the tertiary educational institution operating and serving in an area (or region), or one dedicated to the continuing development of a specific economic or social sector. Such a tertiarylevel educational institution—a college or a university—can be oriented and assisted to transform itself into a center for sustainable governance and transformation. Moreover, such a college or university would have greater permanence and long-term service capability; presumably, it would also enjoy greater objectivity and greater independence from narrower, more parochial interests.
That college or university would, however, need to take a first, preliminary step, which is that of adopting and actively pursuing a school governance program of its own. It must first secure its base as a center for academic excellence, with some focus on research covering area (or regional) and possibly also sectoral development. But that school---tertiarylevel educational institution---would also need to go through the different phases of the performance governance system.