Glossary of terms found in IGSP reports and studies
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Action
Step - A discrete implementable step or action
designed to achieve a strategy.
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Asset
Based Planning -An approach to planning that
begins by building a model of the asset locations within a community,
emphasizing the strengths rather than the weaknesses. Its internal
focus encourages full mobilization of local assets so that external
resources, when sought, can be utilized more efficiently.
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Best-Practice Model - An activity or procedure that has been proven successful
and can be adapted in other situations to help design and implement
activities that improve performance.
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Brokering Relationships - The practice of acting as a liaison and helping
network members with divergent viewpoints find common ground on issues
relevant to network activity and performance.
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Building
Trust and Cooperation - The process of shaping
network participants into a more cohesive group on the basis of trust
and for the purpose of furthering their collective endeavor.
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Business
Process Mapping - The
process of indentifying and diagramming the steps involved in the
business activities of an organization.
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| Change Management -
Promoting conditions that support the processes of change in an organization.
It is particularly important in the context of a network, where change
is characteristic of the organizational dynamics.
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| Citizen Empowerment -
The process through which citizens acquire know-how in working with
the institutions of government and their agents.
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| Citizen Planning - The
process through which empowered neighborhood residents work with
one another to establish planning priorities for their communities.
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Collective
Goal Alignment - The process of adjusting participants'
individual objectives to fit into the general goals and strategies
pursued by the network.
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Communities of Practice -
A group of people, with the same goals and interests, who use common
practices, tools, and language to undertake a shared enterprise.
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Complex Adaptive Systems -Units
of organization that are composed of independent agents who learn
and adapt resulting in self-organizing and emergent behavior. Complex
adaptive systems are capable of being influenced, but they are also
unpredictable and uncontrollable.
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Conflict
Management - The art of maintaining
a balance between cooperation and conflict. Encouraging constructive
conflict facilitates reexamination of issues or positions. It also
helps clarify these situations where there is too much agreement
and it diffuses conflict when it is unproductive or misdirected.
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Constructive Conflict -
Conflict on matters germane to network activity and purpose that facilitates
new understanding between network members, generates new insights,
and breaks down barriers to progress.
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Coproduction -
The production of a public good by several or more organizations acting
in coordination with one another.
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Creating
and Testing System Models - The identification,
outlining, and modeling of the key elements of a system, using it
to predict future outcomes, and assessing those predictions.
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Creative
and Critical Thinking - Active
search for the "way out" by continuously reevaluating problems
and proposed solutions from divergent perspectives and with the assistance
of alternative mental models.
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Critical Learning -
The core lessons extracted from a case study that have critical implications
for prospective decisions and actions.
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| Defining Performance -
Identifying and outlining the specific objectives the network intends
to reach and how it knows when it is successful.
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Effective Networks - Ones in which
members share ideas, concerns, and expertise in order to develop a common
understanding of issues and
a vision of what can be done. Maintaining effective networks involves
knowing when and in what way to jolt it to shift direction or activities
to meet network goals.
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Energizing
the Network - Identifying those stimulus points
that can jolt the network into activity or shift the direction and/or
locus of activity.
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Force Field
Analysis - A technique used in stakeholder analysis that illustrates
the potential power of stakeholders and the expected direction of their
influence.
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Group Decision
Facilitation - The practice of facilitating
a participatory network decision-making process that provides members
a meaningful opportunity to contribute in matters of substance.
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Knowledge
Management - The process of managing the conversion,
creation and transfer of knowledge as a major resource of organizations
for the purpose of furthering the aims of the group.
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Knowledge
Sharing - The explicit dissemination of data
and information to contribute to building the group or network's
capacity.
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Learning Organization - An
organization in which the value of learning is ingrained in management's
goal achievement strategy and that continuously strives to provide
learning opportunities to its agents.
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Legal and
Regulatory Systems - The framework of statutes, standards,
rules, and regulations established by the legislative, judicial,
and executive branches of government in which governmental actors
operate.
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Managing
and Systematizing Change - The practice of encouraging
a group or network to proactively embrace all aspects of change that
tends to occur within networks and exploiting those opportunities
to make changes when they occur.
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Managing
Information Flows- The process of facilitating
the dissemination of key information among member of a network, and
identifying and removing any distribution barriers.
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Mental
Modeling - The use of heuristics to guide
data and information integration, thought processing, and decision-making.
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Network
Analysis -
The process of examining the structure of the relationships among
individuals and/or organizations in a network.
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Network
Configuration and Reconfiguration - The skill
of getting the network off the ground and adjusting it as needs arise
(e.g., new interdisciplinary information and knowledge is required
to address the problem at hand).
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Organizational Feedback – The factors that may impact network
objectives. Recognizing these factors and determining how to ignore or
incorporate them is an important activity.
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Organizational Learning -
The process of acquiring, interpreting, integrating and institutionalizing
knowledge that takes place at the individual, group and organizational
levels. Individuals come up with innovative ideas which are shared
in a group setting. Common meaning is developed, eventually becoming
institutionalized as organizational artifacts.
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Participant Selection -The art of identifying
and bringing on board participants who are most compatible with the
purposes for which a network has been formed, and who possess and are
willing to contribute resources (time, money, information, expertise,
technology, etc.) toward that purpose.
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Policy Levers - The key elements within a system that effect sought
after outcomes. Identifying and managing the key policy levers greatly
impacts results.
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Problem Boundaries - Defining the scope of a problem,
including its outside borders. An important aspect is determining the
extent to which pieces of the problem should be included in a system
model in order to effectively capture critical dynamics.
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Problem
Framing - The practice of defining problems
in a way that exposes, incorporate or breaks down existing biases
that inhibit creative problem solving.
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Program
Evaluation - The process of identifying target
goals and determining the extent to which they have been reached.
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Project
Management - The process of supporting a project
through several stages, including conceptualization, design, and
implementation.
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Reaching
Agreement - The outcome sought
by availing ones self of the network activities of collaboration,
conflict management, collective goal alignment, and joint decision-making.
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Self-Organization -
When networks spontaneously organize to construct standards, protocols,
and other operating procedures through an interactive process of participation.
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Sensemaking - The
practice of actively scanning, interpreting and constructing meaning
out of an environment or situation.
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Shared
Decision Making - A highly collaborative decision
making process in which participants are not only allowed and expected
to share their ideas about potential alternative and evaluate them,
but also to collectively seek a choice from among surveyed alternatives.
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| Sharing
Leadership - Refers to the
allocation of responsibilities to move a cause forward. In an intergovernmental
network, the role of a leader is usually enacted by more than one
person, depending on the characteristics of the problem situation,
the nature of the task, and the availability of partners. |
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Sharing
Resources - The necessity of sharing resources
is a natural implication of the interdependence of the work in the
intergovernmental zone. In order to be effective, individuals and
organizations make their intellectual, time, technology, financial,
etc. resources available for use by the entire network.
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Silo Perspective (or Stovepipe Government) -
When government entities undertake their operations without regard
for what is occurring in other entities, even if their service delivery
overlaps or conflicts.
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Social Capital -
A resource created through the accumulation of trust and goodwill between
people and organizations that operate within linking social networks
and fosters cooperative collective action.
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Stakeholder
Analysis - The process of identifying
individuals and groups, who can affect, or be affected by the issues
at stake, as well as assessing the power, the legitimacy and
the urgency of their potential claims.
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Stakeholders
in the Intergovernmental Setting - Individuals
or groups from various organizations and at different levels of government,
communities, interest groups, associations, etc. that might affect
or be affected by the issue at stake.
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Strategic Planning - A
systematic, continuous and formalized process of formulating strategies
for future organizational actions. Strategic Planning employs a
linear model of rational decision making and generally involves
outlining the following sequence of procedural steps: problem definition
and strategic audit, mission statement and goal setting, formulation
and evaluation of strategies, implementation, and measurement and
control.
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System Dynamics - A
methodology for studying complex systems by looking at the interactions
of their component parts.
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System Modeling - Using modeling software to
design a model of how the parts of a system interact to produce behaviors
and outcomes.
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Systems Thinking -
An analytical approach that focuses on how the variables under study
interacts with other elements of a system - of which it is a part.
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Telling
Stories and Using Metaphors - The action of
sharing experiences of self and others with network participants
to clarify and render comprehensible matters being considered by
the group, and providing analogies to participants to assist with
visualization.
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Traffic Calming Devices -
Obstacles placed in an along roadways for the purpose of slowing traffic
and increasing pedestrian safety (e.g., speed bumps, rumble strips,
and curb extensions).
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Trust - Represents
the confidence a participant in a network has that other stakeholders
will act in a predictable manner toward other in the networks
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Urban
Decay - Decline
in the economic and social resource base for specific areas within
the urban ecosystem, often accompanied by abandoned buildings, crime,
drug use, etc.
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Vision
Building - The
practice of drawing from distinct and variant perspectives held
by group members to build an integrated, coherent multi-stakeholder
vision.
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