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Sustainability governance in public administration: Interpreting practical governance arrangements in Swiss cantons
Author(s) -
Bornemann Basil,
Christen Marius
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
environmental policy and governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.987
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1756-9338
pISSN - 1756-932X
DOI - 10.1002/eet.1840
Subject(s) - sustainability , corporate governance , variety (cybernetics) , public administration , sustainability organizations , social sustainability , political science , business , public relations , accounting , computer science , finance , ecology , artificial intelligence , biology
In order to play a key role in the governance of societal change towards sustainability, public administrations need to transform their own ways of working, that is, their internal governance. This paper complements existing research on sustainability governance in public administration that focuses on formal institutions and instruments with a practice‐oriented interpretive perspective. Drawing on an open analytical framework and using qualitative document and interview analyses, the paper reconstructs sustainability governance in public administrations from the perspective of the actors responsible for the task, that is, sustainability officers. Based on detailed case studies on sustainability governance in six Swiss cantons, four ideal types of sustainability governance are derived, which help to better structure the empirical variety of practical sustainability governance arrangements. The results show that sustain‐ability governance is designed and implemented “on the ground” in a variety of ways, with overall diversity being confined. Both research and practice can benefit from such a conceptually and empirically enriched image of sustainability governance in public administrations.