Multi-Stakeholder Action for Scaled Impact

Many global challenges are obviously too big and too complex for any one organization to address on its own.  In some cases, these challenges can not be addressed even by the collective efforts of organizations from a single sector of society (business, government, or civil society). These types of problems require a span of compentencies and resources that can be obtained only from a broad combination of actors from the different sectors, or multi-stakeholder action networks. These types of cross-sector initiatives can produce amazing innovation in response to seemingly intractable problems.

The table below, drawn from iScale Senior Steward Steve Waddell's book, Societal Learning and Change: How Governments, Businesses and Civil Society are Creating Solutions to Complex Multi-Stakeholder Problems, identifies the unique capabilitates and competencies that actors from each sector can bring to bear on a global challenge. 

The structure of efforts to address large, complex challenges and opportunities are varied. The following table outlines a typology of configurations for organizing to undertake an activity.

While of these organizing types can be adopted to structure efforts to address a particular challenge, the selection of the organizing model should follow the maxim that "structure follows strategy". Contrary to this maxim, enthusiastic actors often focus on organizational formalities before they have agreed upon a strategy. This results in trying to fit a strategy into a structure that may well limit the possibility of success.

One common issue, for example, is the concept of "membership". Often it is confused with a fundraising strategy and membership is driven by a need to raise funds. Other times it is equated to "participation", and decision-making becomes debilitatingly lengthy. If a strategy aims to engage a very large number of organizations or people, a traditional approach to membership can easily overwhelm resources and capacities.

Because multi-stakehoder action networks can be challenging to develop and sustain, iScale develops, tests and promotes innovative organizational practices to address these complications.

Global Action Networks

In particualr, iScale works closely to foster and support Global Action Networks (GANs), a specific type of multi-stakeholder network that offers a unique comination of five strategic qualities. 

A GAN's strategy:

1. is global
2. focuses on issues of common public interest (not profit-seeking).
3. develops interdisciplinary action-learning with real-time experiments to address novel and enduring challenges
4. creates a diverse network of organizations of stakeholders in their issue
5. generates systemic change by creating cross-sectoral (business-government-civil society) actions

GANs contrast with traditional approaches to global challenges and opportunities that focused upon national and intergovernmental organizations. Over the past few decades, as the pace of globalization has increased and environmental issues have grown, the limits of the nation-state have become increasingly apparent. Substantial disparities in wealth and seemingly intractable poverty in large regions, global health threats, pollution of the seas, and the growing pace of climate change are only a few examples of issues that are propelling the development of Global Action Networks. They organize around a particular issue and include Transparency International, the Forest Stewardship Council, the Microcredit Summit Campaign, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Global Water Partnership and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.

Through its program for GANs, iScale supports an association of GANs called GAN-Net. GAN-Net brings together people working in GANs and experts to share knowledge and address challenges to the development of GANs.

For GANs to become highly effective and realize their potential, they must develop new knowledge and capacity in eight "competencies":

1. Leadership: Network leadership contrasts sharply with traditional organizational leadership - it is leadership of influence, of carrots, of support and nurturing. We need to develop a new generation of leaders for the GANs.
2. Strategy-Structure-Governance: GANs are defined by their multi-stakeholder, global, global, interorganizational, systemic change, learning strategy. How to best organize these qualities globally, respecting transparency, accountability and participation is a complex challenge.
3. Measuring Impact: Traditional linear models of "act-impact" are inappropriate in the complex world of GANs. New methodologies must be developed to measure the contribution of GANs to the change goal, identify action priorities, and guide managerial action.
4. Generative Change: GANs must be experts at creating global transformation (in addition to scaling up and reform), engage tens of millions in the change processes, and sustain the change effort for the time necessary to realize the change goals.
5. Communications: Global conversations using leading social media technologies are critical to create common understanding and action to address global issues.
6. Knowledge and Learning: GANs must be experts at developing new knowledge and embedding it throughout the world as rapidly as possible.
7. Policy & Advocacy: GANs aim to influence a broad operating environment. They must be experts at developing policy, and ensuring its adoption and implementation.
8. Resource Mobilization: GANs must draw from taxes, revenue-generation and donations to finance themselves. This requires educating about GANs role and creating a new global economic model to realize the scale that is necessary.

Just as it is important to recognize these GAN competencies, it is also critical to recognize that GANs are dynamic institutions that all tend to pass through four development stages. These development stages are outlined in the table below.

 iScale promotes creating an explicit development process. By identifying and addressing critical tasks that must be accomplished at each stage of development, subsequent stages of development will be more easily attained. A disciplined approach supports effective allocation of resources and priorities. It also helps avoid problems. Often problems arise when the key tasks at one stage are not completed before the tasks in a second stage begin. Making these stages explicit, identifying the critical tasks and creating ways to achieve them and move to a new stage greatly speeds the development of a network.

For more information on GANs, see the following resources.

iScale, 'Network Life Cycle and Assessment: An Overview'

Download PDF.

GAN-Net, Presentation on Global Action Networks and GAN-Net

Download PPT.

Multi-stakeholder global networks: emerging systems for the global common good

Steve Waddell and Sanjeev Khagram. In Partnerships, Governance And Sustainable Development Reflections on Theory and Practice edited by Pieter Glasbergen. Edward Elgar 2007. Download PDF.

Global Action Networks: A global invention helping business make globalisation work for all

Steve Waddell. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship 12 Winter 2003. Download PDF.

Core competencies: A key force in business-government-civil society collaborations

Steve Waddell. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship 7 Autumn 2002. Download PDF.

Realising global change: developing the tools; building the infrastructure

Steve Waddell. The Journal of Corporate Citizenship 26 Summer 2007. Download PDF.

Possible future architectures of global governance: A transnational perspective/prospective

Sanjeev Khagram. Global Governance 12 2006. Download PDF.

Transnational transformations: From government-centric interstate regimes to multi-actor, multi-level global governance?

Sanjeev Khagram and Saleem H. Ali. In The Crisis of global environmental governance: Towards a new political economy of sustainability edited by Jacob Park, Ken Conca, and Matthias Finger. Routledge. 2008. Download PDF.