Engagement duality: less organised civic voice in front of structural stakeholder organisations

Participation, engagement and empowerment become magic words to describe good public management. Normative approach towards participation calls for better and wider inclusion of citizens in to public decision making empowering... [ view full abstract ]

Participation, engagement and empowerment become magic words to describe good public management. Normative approach towards participation calls for better and wider inclusion of citizens in to public decision making empowering them via process of policy outlining. In that perspective, the public management bodies are the main actors who responsible to set the rules of inclusion. In respect of interest groups, it does not matter whether those groups represents citizens or any other private interest, perfect match between rules of participation and appropriate group capacity become necessary precondition for civic voice to be heard.
The goal of the paper is to discuss the duality of engagement that emerge from uneven capacity, which interest representing organizations possess. The enhancement of interest representation goes in hand with the citizens’ organizations internal practice of management. As consequence, less organized society rather able to develop necessary capacity to respect participation rules and can be heard weaker by governmental organizations as partners for inclusion.
Research methodology is based on qualitative data and their analysis. Semi-structural interviews with 8 respondents from interest representing organizations were conducted on 5 topics: main goals and activities of the interest group, internal management practice, attitudes towards participation, cooperation across governmental and private organizations active interest representation. Respondents were selected from health care and business sector with the purpose to cover society based interest (e.g. patients) and private interests (industry, health care institutions) cases.
Research has revealed rather diversified organizational capabilities across selected sample. The way of approaching government various a lot as well. Interest based organizations that represent pure private interest demonstrate rather flexible interpretation of measures they are used to be suitable and select them according situation (for instance, they apply cooperation or competition simultaneously). More public oriented interest organizations seek more visibility, cooperation and usefulness for society. There are also rather clear distinguish between sectors what can be explained by different approach to civic voice as a premise for engagement. Health care sector is more reachable by civic voice while business sector are close to private interest oriented organization.
In conclusions, public management in the governmental institutions create the engagement rules that can be recognizable by individual interest better than civic institutions capable to responds to. So the normative model of interest group capacity has been proposed. The model took the premise of equalization civic voice capacities in front of any other stakeholder capacity. The strategies of capacity measuring and building the missing are discussed.