Policy Governance

Policy Governance, informally known as the Carver model, is a system for organizational governance. Policy Governance defines and guides appropriate relationships between an organization's owners (also with non-legal 'moral owners'), board of directors, and chief executive. The system is built on 10 principles, three of which are especially distinctive for the system. Firstly the clear distinction between policies that describe Ends (long term outcomes for the organization) and that describe Means (all other aspects of governing and operations), secondly the importance of executive limitations to control risk, and thirdly the board’s obligation to engage with its “moral owners” (the specific groups of stakeholders to whom the board wants to be accountable to, apart from the formal owners).

The Policy Governance approach was first developed in the 1970s by John Carver who has registered the term as a service mark in order to control accurate description of the model. The model is available for all to use without royalties or license fees and has been adopted by commercial, nonprofit, and public sector organizations.