Towards an Effective Multi-Stakeholder Consultation Process: Applying the Imagine Method in Context of Abu Dhabi’s Education Policy

Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. Abstract This paper is concerned with the many interleaving issues that emerge when engaging multiple stakeholders in decision-making. Whilst recognising the intrinsic value of group work and keeping in mind the numerous issues that obstruct group work (including multiple roles for participants, bias due to domination and distortion emerging from uneven group inputs), we applied the Imagine method to propose a new framework-the 'Multiple Formation Consultation Framework' (MFCF)-for organising effective multi-stakeholder consultations along the Policy Sciences Framework. Our proposed framework was applied in the context of education policy in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, where 24 small group formations were tasked and assessed in a systemic manner. Evidence from the exercise suggests that: (1) when moving participants from heterogeneous to homogenous groups, the working of the groups became more focused and the outcomes gained greater clarity in terms of the thinking of group members. (2) Yet, when groups moved from homogenous formations to heterogeneous, they became more inquisitive and explored broader aspects of the tasks at hand. (3) A repeat of the process over two-day period where different members of the groups experience both homogenous and heterogeneous formations back and forth (in order to capture the unique value emerging from each composition) have led to more efficient and effective working and outcomes of the groups. 1. Introduction Engaging multiple stakeholders in decision-making has gained more prominence in recent years. Enhanced by a customer-oriented public sector management philosophy and participatory approaches to planning and policymaking, stakeholder participation has been perceived to add value and improve the quality of public decisions (Abelson et al. The rise of collaborative governance as an approach to decision-making and policy formulation has further contributed to the propagation of multi-stakeholder engagement processes involving both multi-sectoral state and non-state actors (Ansil & Gash, 2008). In this context, the concept of a 'Collaborative Governance Regime' has been proposed as a " system in which cross-boundary collaboration represents the predominate mode for conduct, decision-making and activity " (Emerson et al., 2011:10). Around the world, there has been a growing interest in moving public policymaking (pertaining to education, health, environment, among other policy areas) in a more participatory direction. Indeed, the OECD, in …