The Reimagined Role of the Public Manager in Collaborative Governance

Collaborative governance in addressing complex public problems as a postmodern alternative to the traditional top-down bureaucratic arrangement for implementation decisions and actions necessitates reimagining public managers’ roles within the public service context. The reliance on contributions of stakeholders from public, private, nonprofit/civic sectors during the collaborative process and attendant outputs as part of overarching collaborative governance intents allow for more vigorous solutions with impactful outcomes for societal benefits and with implications for the public manager. The nature of convening, collaborative forum engagements coupled with complementary effects of collaborative governance leadership, institutional design, system context, and community dynamics tend to redefine the public manager as a catalyst or champion without necessarily playing an authoritative or central role. Thus, the public manager’s support of collaborative governance both directly or indirectly generates benefits and creates additional opportunities to engage more stakeholders in tackling complex public problems with the consequential impact of addressing concerns of different people groups or demographics within the context of social contract service expectations. The vulnerabilities of the lack of public managers’ authoritative control of collaborative governance could be somewhat unnerving, but the embrace of cross-sector stakeholders’ collective resolve relative to addressing a complex public problem within an existing administrative mechanism is to create more benefits than headaches for bureaucratic leaders. This chapter presents and reframes the public manager’s role in collaborative governance and references rudiments associated with the reimagined roles. Therefore, this chapter integrates a public service-oriented case and an intervention stimulation case for solutions.