ABSTRACT
The term ‘governance’ has been in wide use since the 1980s. It is often invoked in discussions around epidemics, risks, hazards, climate change, coastal erosion, environmental challenges, communities, globalisation and developing countries, but is neither clearly defined nor universally understood. Governance, it would appear, can be defined and enacted at multiple levels, ranging from the international, globalised context, through the public, the corporate and the portfolio perspective, all the way to the programme and project levels. The academic literature on governance is eclectic and relatively disjointed, reflecting a variety of theoretical roots. Yet, despite the diversity of levels and plurality of theoretical concepts, the contribution of the governance perspective lies in its ability to provide a fresh starting point for reasoning about the changing processes of governing and the demands and expectations that they impose. Many paradoxes in organisations revolve around the presence of contradictory and counter-productive tensions.
