Collaborative research lives in the space between organisations, disciplines, countries, and incentives. In this space, management control alone is insufficient. What holds collaboration together, over time and under pressure, is governance.

Governance sets the conditions under which collaboration can succeed. Management control focuses on execution, compliance, and efficiency inside an organisation. Governance focuses on purpose, authority, accountability, and decision rights across organisations. In collaborative research, the latter determines whether management effort has any legitimacy at all.

Five reasons explain why governance matters more.

• Shared purpose precedes shared plans. Governance aligns partners around why the collaboration exists, what success looks like, and whose interests are being served. Without this, management control becomes transactional and contested.

• Authority must be negotiated, not assumed. In collaborations, no single manager holds formal authority over all actors. Governance establishes agreed decision rules, escalation pathways, and boundaries of autonomy.

• Trust is a governance outcome. Trust does not emerge from tighter controls. It emerges when roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities are explicit, fair, and consistently applied through governance arrangements.

• Risk is collective, not individual. Research risk, reputational risk, and ethical risk cross organisational boundaries. Governance provides the framework for shared risk ownership and collective response.

• Longevity depends on legitimacy. Collaborative research outlives project plans and individual leaders. Governance embeds legitimacy through transparency, stewardship, and continuity.

Management control helps deliver outputs. Governance determines whether collaboration is possible, credible, and durable. In collaborative research, governance is not an overhead. It is the operating system that makes management effort worth exercising.