The approach

Governance refers to the arrangements for the exercise of power within a group, organisation, or society. Here, ‘arrangements’ includes anything put in place to organise how power is exercised, such as roles, hierarchy, rules, policies, committees, processes, or practices.

Plain Governance is an approach to designing, explaining, and assessing these arrangements. It makes explicit what the arrangements provide for and how they work. Those charged with governance should be able to explain the arrangements they adopt and give reasons for their design and use. Plain Governance also allows users to assess acts, decisions, or conduct as they relate to given governance arrangements.

Purpose

Plain Governance aims to help people understand and examine governance arrangements, including when designing or changing them. It connects an account of what the arrangements are supposed to achieve with an assessment of whether they are appropriate in the circumstances. The assessment also considers how the arrangements operate or are likely to operate.

Objectives

Plain Governance aims to help users:

• describe governance arrangements in terms that minimise potential ambiguities and misunderstandings;
• focus on critical governance issues, considering procedure and implementation where they affect the arrangements and how they work;
• reflect on preferred governance arrangements and explain the reasons for preferring them, taking into account their purpose, nature, and risks and benefits.

Plain Governance helps to uncover unclear assignments, missing connections, conflicting requirements, and differences between the arrangements described and the practices followed.

Method

We explain each concept through a short definition and a model. The model identifies the elements and relationships involved in an action or situation. A sentence pattern or diagram can show these elements and relationships.

For example, accountability: Someone is answerable to someone for something. This identifies who must answer, to whom, and for what.

This approach draws on J. L. Austin’s work on ordinary language and on Charles J. Fillmore’s account of semantic frames. FrameNet defines a frame as “a description of a type of event, relation, or entity and the participants in it”.

The open places in a sentence pattern show which details need to be established in a particular case.

To visualise the models used in Plain Governance, we draw simple diagrams with nodes (also called vertices) and connections (also called edges). Nodes represent the elements of a model, e.g., a role or a responsibility. Connections show how these elements relate to each other, e.g., someone is appointed by a certain committee. Connections will have an arrow to indicate a direction where appropriate, e.g., a certain role is accountable to the Board. These diagrams complement sentence patterns by helping users describe a governance arrangement and analyse its structure.

You can use these structures to analyse a situation into its elements and connections, then combine suitable models to describe more complex arrangements or courses of action. This can assist with both examining existing arrangements and developing new ones.

We encourage you to apply Plain Governance to situations that matter to you professionally or otherwise. It is designed to help you understand what a specific governance arrangement is intended to achieve and how it operates to assess if it is appropriate in the circumstances. Plain Governance will help users develop an account of the arrangement and give reasons for it.

Importance

Governance arrangements determine who can exercise power, what conduct is required of them, and how their decisions and actions can be examined. The design of governance arrangements will directly affect what people can do and what others may expect of them. Making these arrangements explicit allows their purpose, operation, and consequences to be considered and their design to be questioned. This provides an approach to governance that is based on reasons, not on opinions or ‘box-ticking’ attitudes.

Benefits

Plain Governance supports analytical thinking, shared understanding, and reflection on professional practice.

Analytical and critical thinking

The framework provides a method for clarifying concepts, making distinctions, examining relationships, and comparing alternatives. These activities are central to critical thinking. The method supports users in identifying implicit or missing assumptions, analysing arrangements, and evaluating reasons.

Shared understanding

Simple, clear concepts provide a common and accessible starting point for discussion. The concepts provided help people clarify what they mean, check how expressions apply to a particular situation, and identify the grounds of agreement or disagreement.

Reflective practice

The framework provides simple models within contemporary governance practice. These models allow users to describe familiar arrangements, make their assumptions explicit, and compare different professional approaches on that basis.

An open-minded approach

The framework encourages users to consider alternative descriptions and situations. This may lead them to revise their views on the adequacy of certain arrangements.

Taken together, the framework and associated tools provide a practical basis for developing judgement in governance.