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Home > Past projects > Governance for networked organisations: a report

Governance for networked organisations: a report

Check out the infographic below or download the full report: Governance forms for networked social enterprise models.

Organisations as living systems

Our world is alive, complex and full of interconnections. Our organisations are no different.

An organisation can be seen as a living system of value creation. As complex living systems, organisations are nested within a wider change ecosystem.

A diagram shows value creation of an organisation for a system it is nested within. This might be shareholder value creation in a profit-oriented company, or different kinds of financial and non-financial value creation for a wide range of stakeholders in social purpose organisations. Impact and capacity for change are created when this system of diverse actors can influence a wider field of shared endeavour.

What is governance?

Taking “governance” to mean everything that informs how we organise, “organising forms” are the structures that help shape this – from our meeting agendas to our legal entity.

A model/diagram that shows that systemic governance incorporates both the hard and the soft elements. Hard elements include Legal, polices and procedures, boards, new models and more. Soft elements include Identity, leadership, roles and accountability, dealing with conflict and other
A diagram shows a nested system approach to see the different layers and levels of engagement of organisational system. First level is level of organisation and team members. Second level is network of partners and network members. And third level is system of diverse stakeholder.

Governance is relevant to all stakeholders in a system, not just those holding traditional operational roles.

Legal options

Where legal options may feel limiting, there is an unlimited potential for us to imagine new ways of organising that are better representative of the futures we are trying to create.
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Page 47 of the full report contains a list of options for incorporation in the UK.

Design tensions

If the purpose (the why) of an organisation is to create a particular kind of value for those working within, with and beyond the organisational system, then how we enable value to flow and interact, through activities and supporting structures, is fundamental.

Playing with design tensions can help us make informed decisions and think about the implications for governance practice.

where might be healthy for us

Emergent

Strong purpose and vision
Flexibility around action
Strong culture of learning

Pre-determined

Strong action plan
Clear roles and tasks
Strong culture of doing(as we’ve always done)

Collectivism

Holding in mind that there will always be tension between the dominant paradigm we are operating in and the one we hope to move towards, it can help to remember we are not doing this work alone.

A purple tree that illustrates catalyst roots and fruits model. Initiative circles are the fruits of the tree represented by red strawberries, red hearts and red apples with black tops. On the top of the tree there is a text Collaborative Network circle with hearts with different initiatives within them, on the left there is support and training text with apples/red circles around it that contain different initiatives and on the right there is reuse infrastructure circle with strawberries around it that also contain different initiatives. On the trunk of the tree there is the core text and in the roots there are Funder Ecology, Learning & Impact and Inclusion. There is a girl in wheelchair reaching to one of the fruits of the tree on the right and on the left there is a man with scissors with his palm pointing at the core text.

The Catalyst collective governance model at the time this report was written (July 2023):

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