PhD defence L.A. (Leonie) Schakel

Dissertation in short:

Many organizations in the Netherlands are supervised: by external supervisors - public regulators that supervise their regulatory compliance - and often also by internal supervisors – the members of the supervisory board that advises and supervises the executives. Remarkably, there is little contact between these external and internal supervisors, and they are barely familiar with each other's tasks and responsibilities, even though they often seem to have objectives in common. This begs the question: can external and internal supervisors complement, reinforce or substitute each other in their goal of supervising organizations? 

‘External and Internal Supervision - In search of a connection’ studies the possibilities and pitfalls of collaboration between external and internal supervisors, with a focus on supervision on good governance in the health care sector. The study presents and discusses findings from interviews with external and internal supervisors, as well as from ethnographic fieldwork at the Dutch Healthcare Authority. The study reveals how the choices made about the way in which the external supervisor makes good governance, a new object of regulation, inspectable influence the relationship between the external supervisor and the internal supervisors. Relational work is required in shaping a new regulatory object. This relational work consists of the pursuit of a shared reality between the external supervisor and the internal supervisor, both with regard to the public interests at stake and with regard to their (lawful) translation into regulatory objects and instruments. The thesis therefore concludes with a number of practical ideas on the basis of which external supervisory organizations and individual external and internal supervisors can shape this relational work.