GOVERNING GOVERNANCE:
ORGANISATION LAW and NETWORK-PROCESS-DESIGN

CHAPTER 1, THE ART OF GOVERNANCE, para 1.1, Organisation law

More and more, education is the difference between employability and obsolescence. Consequently, on the one hand it is an economic necessity that public authorities take a political interest and considerable financial and legal responsibilities in education. They should, however, not assume this for the contents. Of that public authorities know very little and it remains debatable if quality councils and accreditation organisations are fit to assess more than minimum quality. The State has a responsibility for the main structure and the managerial system, as well as for the appropriate funding of education. In doing this it should attentively respect the academic freedom, as well as the freedom to design the educational system and the freedom to manage education. A wise and democratic State will apply modern, effective, efficient, therefore decentralised, management instruments and methods that provide for ex post quality assurance and avenues of multiple accountability to the public. On the other hand, it seems that many managers, bad managers in particular, do not value the necessity of a solid organisational structure or acknowledge this too little too late. Also good managers often put this aside. After they have left, the chaotic situation inside the institution becomes visible.
This is why the following chapters on the issue of “governing governance”, treat a new and not yet well defined field of law which is: organisation law.

Organisation law should be defined as:
The administrative, economical and juridical aspects of:

• how an organisation - public or private - is internally structured and governed;
• how it develops strategy and policy and translates these into action;
• how it is legally embedded in its working environment or/and its operational system;
• how it co-operates and communicates with external parties.

Organisation law belongs neither to public nor to private law, and even only partially to the field of law. It is usually regarded - if it is considered at all - as subtypes of public administration or of administrative law, not even as a mix of this. Organisation law, in public as well as in private organisations, should be considered as an archetype of a hybrid mode. Organisation law is a cross-fertilised field of economy, public and business administration as well as the art of policymaking, based on law. It is the backbone of good governance: a specialisation on general issues in different disciplines. A profession for which there exists no university study. In the following we elaborate on this.

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