Managers operate in a myriad of relationship structures that are used for making decisions, implementing policy, and identifying public priorities.
These relationships give shape, pose constraints, or present opportunities for the way public policy is pursued.
Inclusion involves active boundary spanning across differences in perspectives, institutions, issues, and time, which may or may not be founded upon work to integrate socioeconomically diverse participants.
The inclusion part of the idea is perhaps best encapsulated by the "50/50 rule", a term used by public managers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to invoke a variety of meanings.
From the perspective of the 50/50 rule, things like process and outcome or task and community are not in a trade-off relationship, and indeed are not even separable.
Keeping process and outcome, newcomers and old-timers, and past and present in play are ways of creating connections across individuals, groups, interests, and issues.
[27] Quick and Feldman's[27] distinction between inclusion and participation addresses the place of diversity in civic engagement.
[28][29] Dichotomies or boundaries – such as government/non-government, expert/local, internal/external, process/outcome, flexibility/accountability, participation/control, and the temporal or issue scope of a problem – are distinctions that inclusive managers often bring into play.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Charlotte, North Carolina are cities where inclusive practices have been documented.