b. At the level of Acts of Parliament:

• Laws are restricted to setting the scene:
  • defining the national system;
  • establishing governing bodies and the division of labour between them (the boxes of the organogram);
  • designing the process of governance in terms of communication (the lines/arrows in the organogram);
  • ensuring democratic security (elections, academic freedom); no decision making powers in the hands of few.
• Ensure that public accountability and academic integrity are kept in balance, without confusing ex ante steering at system level, institutional governance, and ex post control.
• Ensure that governing bodies concentrate on the quality of the primary processes (innovative teaching and research in the case of higher education institutions).
• Create transparency: maximum three levels of responsibility inside an organisation; controlled frequency of meetings; limited number of intermediaries with a legal role.
• Avoid double caps (decision making by the same person on the same issue in two different positions). This is for good reasons a fundamental value in public administration.
• Avoid the 'devils' matrix', this is when the same responsibility is attributed to more than one body. A mistake that often appears where line- and project management are found in combination (matrix organisations), hut not only there.
• Avoid double binds, a situation that de facto or de iure obliges an individual to respond to contradictory impulses or orders.
• Protect other legitimate State interests (open access, tuition fees, loans & grants).

c. At all levels, regulations should include self structuring elements:

• Regulations should not develop policy; visions to education should not be laid down in by-laws. This would petrify the institutions.
• The frame for the process of strategic management (dialogue, organogram, budgeting procedures, market-orientation, external impulses, external advice, cyclic management).
• A 'flat hierarchy' and contractual working relations (agreements instead of orders).
  
• It is essential to have a legal framework for:
  • prevention of conflict (preparation of decisions through an on-going dialogue between stakeholders);
  • conflict- and problem-solving (avenues of arbitration and appeal for students and staff), for when conflicts arise.
• Top-down regulations are replaced by iterative processes of innovative behaviour (with respect to strategic management, research planning, curricula development, financing, staff management etc)
• Output-oriented control reduces overhead, and provides opportunities for corrective action. At the strategic as well as operational level this implies: regulating guidance ex-ante; regulating control ex-post.
• Limited number of bodies and number of administrative layers. This reduces the number of obligatory meetings. Every additional level of governance multiplies the number of interfaces all causing friction. The Hogeschool van Enschede and the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (NL) have abolished the institutional meso-level, now having a central level and departments only. Professional units prepare the central policies, assist implementation in the departments, and provide other logistic services. Similar operations will be more difficult in a traditional university where the faculty is the focus of the discipline. The trend of reducing layers of management is very strong in big business. Companies like Shell, Daimler-Benz and Philips have drastically reduced white collar jobs at medium and top level.

d. Guidance that protects diversity without atomisation at the institution:

• Each member of the academic community is invited, not obliged, to participate in strategic thinking and decision-making.
• Decentralise responsibility if possible; centralise if necessary. No one can be against centralisation of logistical services if this saves time and money.
• Regulation by objectives if possible; by tasks if inevitable. Staff and students need discretionary space and excellent logistic assistance to be creative and productive.
• Agreements on results as a rule; operational management above work-face-level as exception. Input and throughput regulation is an obstacle, also for financial management.
• Motivation is friendly. Demotivating regulations are deadly. This implies: coaching where possible, orders where crucial, sanctions as exception, not too many incentives, reduction of pressure and internal planning.
• Regulations must recognise the psychology of the constituency. The type of regulations that stimulate natural scientists can be different from what make medical doctors, lawyers or economists tick.
• A space for exceptions for limited irrational behaviour and social cases. Rigidities do not serve general objectives.

6 Conclusion

'Legislation should utilise the self-regulating potential more than in the past. Selfsteering necessitates leadership by inspiration, not only the use of methods of pricing and costing, planning and evaluation. The governance of universities in the next century will be characterised by hybridity and diversity, and new cultural patterns will emerge to ensure that universities remain the most attractive organisations in the world' (in 't Veld, 1996, p. 90). Principles that govern the drafting of legal frameworks seem easy to list. However, applying them to drafting regulations with a view to the specificities of the higher education system in its national and international context, requires not only the right skills, hut also the right time, place and management and professional perseverance: prerequisites that are not always available. Major events like mergers, transitions as in central and eastern Europe, change of legislation, and financial crises provide opportunities to redraft the regulatory system. However, it is advisable that regulations on governance are redesigned under more stable conditions if that is possible.
We are back at the start: who is responsible for a decision; where in the organogram; which are the cheeks and balances), but we have re-created the frame for the answers by rearranging:

• public law and contract law;
• governance and management;
• regulating norms and values, contents, results, in the light of decision-making processes.