Organizational policy setters need many types of knowledge. Proponents of management
hegemony—public or private—use the argument that organizational insiders
have better sources of information and more time to research decisions than any other
people and thus their decisions are likely to be superior. But unless we argue that
organizations should be run for the convenience of managers, a key type of information
needed to make responsive decisions involves owners’ expectations. Whatever
their deficits in accessing other data, surely owners are likely to best understand this
piece of the puzzle. Thus managers need their participation even in cases where
agents are doing all they can to further the principal’s agenda.
In the real world, however, agents do not always work to further the principal’s
agendas. Agents can develop their own interests for personal wealth, status or tenure.
Proxy access debates are a critical case to show that in such instances simply allowing
principals a legal right to monitor and intervene can prove insufficient to protect their
interests. The controversies show the importance of convenient and low cost monitoring
and intervention mechanisms even for sophisticated principals. Institutional
investors rarely contest elections if they have to solicit votes at their own cost.
Convenience is likely to be at least as important to large groups of citizens
monitoring and intervening in public policy development. To mandate public hearings
or a right to participate in deliberative sessions is a sham step to foster
participation unless the meetings are at a convenient time and place. If governments
schedule forums at unreasonable times or locales, it is misguided to cite citizen
apathy as a necessary reason for low attendance. Few people say that institutional
528 H.L. Schachter
investors are apathetic when they do not hold proxy contests on their own dime. The
availability of such convenience factors as child care and food at public meetings
seem trivial issues until you have a child and no baby sitter on meeting night, or you
can only attend the meeting straight from work with no time to stop for nourishment.
Halvorsen (2003, 537) spoke highly of a deliberative session in Minnesota sponsored
by the U. S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service where participants ate dinner
together while discussing policy issues which did “provide a comfortable setting that
was an efficient, convenient use of time.” How many agencies structure involvement
opportunities to be that convenient? Not many forums are scheduled in that way.
In addition, it is important to remember that institutional investors favor proxy
access because they know that such access can alter concrete organizational outcomes;
their action must influence the board election if their candidate gets a majority
of votes. Often citizens have no idea what will happen if they make a case for or
against certain actions at a public hearing or deliberative session. A number of studies
suggest that even when agencies solicit citizen input, they do not use the resulting
comments to construct policy (e.g., Kettering Foundation 1989; Adams 2004).
In structuring forums, governments need to let citizens know how agencies will
use the information offered. They must let citizens see that their involvement can
make a difference. After one set of planning sessions, the Florida Department of
Transportation, for example, put online all citizen comments. It indicated which
suggestions the department used in constructing policy and how these suggestions
were used (Komatsusaki and Schachter 2008). Such feedback signals to citizens that
participation matters; it can help achieve concrete outcomes.
The proxy access movement is the critical case to spotlight the need for convenient
low cost intervention mechanisms to hold agents accountable to principals along with
the need for principals to understand how their use of these mechanisms affects change.
This need spans private and public sectors. A call for convenience may seem a narrow
change banner until we remember how important numbers have been in the quest to
change SEC regulations. Congress only became involved as the number of people
vocally requesting change grew. Radically change the number of citizens involved in
policy development and outcomes will change as well. If political officials want to
heighten accountability in governments, one step is to offer citizens convenient participation
forums that have an impact on policy.