OASIS Reference Architecture Foundation for SOA 1.0 docs.oasis-open.org/soa-rm/soa-ra
- includes a useful comment on the relationship between governance and management:
Governance is concerned with decision making. Management is concerned with execution.
Governance is about making decisions that are aligned with the overall organizational strategy and culture of the enterprise. It specifies the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behaviors towards realizing the strategy and defines incentives (positive or negative) towards that end. It is less about overt control and strict adherence to rules, and more about guidance and effective and equitable usage of resources to ensure sustainability of an organization’s strategic objectives.
To accomplish this, governance requires organizational 2718 structure and processes and must identify who has authority to define and carry out its mandates. It must address the following questions:
1) what decisions must be made to ensure effective management and use?
2) who should make these decisions?
3) how will these decisions be made and monitored?
4) how will these decisions be communicated?
The intent is to achieve goals, add value, and reduce risk.
Within a single ownership domain such as an enterprise, generally there is a hierarchy of governance structures. Some of the more common enterprise governance structures include corporate governance, technology governance, IT governance, and architecture governance. These governance structures can exist at multiple levels (global, regional, and local) within the overall enterprise.
Relationship to Management
There is often confusion centered on the relationship between governance and management. As described earlier, governance is concerned with decision making. Management, on the other hand, is concerned with execution. Put another way, governance describes the world as leadership wants it to be; management executes activities that intends to make the leadership’s desired world a reality. Where governance determines who has the authority and responsibility for making decisions and the establishment of guidelines for how those decisions should be made, management is the actual process of making, implementing, and measuring the impact of those decisions. Consequently, governance and management work in concert to ensure a well-balanced and functioning organization as well as an ecosystem of inter-related organizations. In the sections that follow, we elaborate further on the relationship between governance and management in terms of setting and enforcing service policies, contracts, and standards as well as addressing issues surrounding regulatory compliance.
Management is the control of the use, configuration, and availability of resources in accordance with the policies of the stakeholders involved.