[governance] individuals

[Meryem Marzouki]

Hi,

Le 26 avr. 06 à 04:47, Bram Dov Abramson a écrit :

> ... as are Meryem Merzouki's re accountability.  Which, I suspect,  
> goes
> also to an organisation's nature as a thing formed for a specific
> purpose, unlike people who are, one hopes, eclectic.

Right.

> But the CNRS' leadership must nonetheless feel that it must steer it
> some direction as opposed to another, and that certain policy  
> directions
> help and hurt those directions.  The wide availability of Internet
> connectivity to research institutions, perhaps.  Opposition to any
> policy which significantly hindered the use of the Internet as a
> research tool, probably.

Yes. A well known example is the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access  
to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities", which has been signed  
by many universities and research centers all around the world,  
including the CNRS. However, there is certainly a difference (in  
scale as well as in nature) between taking a position on a particular  
issue, directly relevant to the missions, and engage in general  
public policy process (specially at the UN level, specially on an as  
broad and as not well defined issue as "internet governance").
And, to come back to the original point: in any case, the position of  
a university or research center is never represented in such  
circumstances by any of its professor/researcher (except, obviously,  
when duly mandated for this).
The point would be made clearer if we replace "university" by "big  
company": the fact that a person is working for this or that company  
certainly doesn't give her, without specific mandate, any authority  
to speak in the company's name (and the person would be soon fired if  
she claims that:)).

Meryem
_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance