Responsible governance: challenges and prospects in Lithuanian rural areas

• Published in: Social responsibility journal 2024-11, Vol.21 (2), p.391-409
• Main Authors: Lankauskienė, Rita, Gedminaitė-Raudonė, Živilė
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1747-1117; 1758-857X
• DOI: 10.1108/SRJ-06-2024-0371

Purpose This research aims to define the novel attitude toward social responsibility phenomena from a multi-level governance perspective and, based on the Lithuanian case, to illustrate the territorial perspective concerning the needs and challenges for future responsible governance in rural areas. Design/methodology/approach This research is organized according to qualitative research principles. The seven-step Delphi technique was applied to reach the aim. The expert selection was done using the two criteria, based on the Quadruple Helix approach (Carayannis & Rakhmatullin, 2014; González-Martinez et al., 2023) and the Stakeholder Salience model (Mitchell et al., 2017). The complementary expertise was accumulated by involving experts from the ministry (government helix) as holding the highest level of legitimacy in the field of building responsible governance in rural areas; business helix representatives hold high urgency attributes; power attributes varied among the experts in different helixes. In total, 15 experts were selected to implement the necessary Delphi steps, where experts’ involvement is relevant. The research work lasted for four months, starting from December 2022, and finalizing in March 2023. Technical support and funding for this research were organized in parallel with part of the activities of the Horizon 2020 programme’s project “SHERPA – Sustainable Hub to Engage in Rural Policies with Actors” (2019–2023). Findings The number of recently observed issues while realizing the increasingly complicated application of multi-level governance mechanisms, both scientific discussions and practical implementation evidence call for a novel attitude in governance. In particular areas, where imperfections are very sensitive and most evident, scientific elaborations are more demanded from the very top, i.e. from the EU. Throughout recent years, the European Commission started employing cocreative consortiums (e.g. SHERPA), which, as found much earlier in scientific discourse, represent the joint multi-level power, involving the most powerful, urgent and legitimate stakeholders, representing the four helixes – government, society, business and academia, in building innovative cocreative and collaborative policy formation and implementation practices in multi-level governance. However, the core component that might add to future responsible governance is the social responsibility phenomenon. In conjunction, the multi-level governance and social res