Boardization and Corporate Governance in the UK as a Response to Depoliticization and Failing Accountability

Abstract

Administrative leadership in UK central government has been reformed through the creation of boards in all departments and agencies. This `boardization' is modelled on principles of private sector corporate governance and is a civil service designed response to the administrative implications of depoliticization. It raises issues of political accountability and adaptation of private sector models to the public sector and therefore poses a challenge to the UK Whitehall model. Boardization has been variously implemented across accounting units of central government involving the negotiation of a variety of public sector bargains. It highlights a de-synchronization of administrative and political reforms but provides a potential for boards to become alternative locations for governance and accountability. The article registers concerns about the suitability of reform based on private sector corporate governance and identifies new research agendas.

New Political Governance in Westminster Systems: Impartial Public Administration and Management Performance at Risk

“…These departmental boards are essentially the senior management of the department sitting as a collective body. However, two aspects of these boards distinguished them from the traditional governance of the department (Wilks 2007, 450–451). First, there was “the stress of collective board responsibility,” as opposed to the individual responsibilities of each member of the senior management and their respective relationships in what was clearly a departmental hierarchy of positions.…”

“…The third approach is the one taken by the British Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government formed after the 2010 election based on the Conservatives' election campaign promises. This path moves away from the governance of management as represented, however awkwardly, in the Treasury corporate governance model (Wilks 2007) toward an integration of the governance of policy and management. The new structure thus entails a board for each department that is chaired by the secretary of state, the senior minister of the department.…”

Policy forums: Why do they exist and what are they used for?

“…If decisions are actually prepared in committees composed of members without an official mandate, this is a waste of resources but also a potential backdoor for advocacy. This "boardization" lacks transparency and accountability (Bogason and Musso 2006;Klijn and Skelcher 2007;Wilks 2007) and leads to "deparliamentarization", a "democratic deficit", or a "control gap" (Krick 2006). Second, deliberation in policy forums can lead to either of two extreme outcomes: expertocracy or technocracy, where experts dominate and bias policy making towards technical solutions (Busch 2009), and the use of policy forums by politicians or bureaucrats in order to legitimize their policies through scientific credibility ("policy-based evidence-making", Busch 2009).…”

Working with boards: The experiences of Australian managers in performing arts organisations

“…Chew and Osborne (, p. 103), in a study of the management of charitable organisations in the United Kingdom, argued that there are ‘risks of advocating “blanket” management approaches derived from for‐profit organisational contexts to non‐profit and non‐market contexts’. Concerns of the risks of merely reproducing/transplanting a corporate model from the private to the public sector, whereby accountability lies with a board of directors, is echoed in the term ‘boardisation’, with Wilks (, p. 456) arguing that private sector corporate governance, with its ‘assemblage of norms and tacit understandings that centre on the importance of access to finance, market positioning, margins, profits, dividends and the maximisation of shareholder value’, is a mismatch with the goals and operations of the public sector.…”