Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how regulation is reformed through experimental projects. Organizations can become resilient by experiments that are inherently unpredictable, is this the case for regulatory organizations too? How does a regulatory organization, that has to be predictable, justify experiments?

Paper long abstract:

In the past three years the Dutch Healthcare Inspectorate (DHI) has experimented with new forms of supervision: 1) the use of Mystery Guests, 2) System Based Regulation, and 3) inspection of Good Governance. The experiments were followed through a formative ethnographic research aimed to better understand the established value systems and technologies of regulation in order to reform and re-conceptualize them. The use of mystery guests enacted a softening of the reports of the DHI and led to a more nuanced conceptualisation of healthcare quality. System based regulation had to cope with a 'bad image' whilst the project on Good Governance focused on public-private co-regulation and introduced narratives of culture. The experiments, due to the combination with the reflections from ethnographic research, worked as spaces of theoretical productivity. They helped the DHI to reconsider its tasks, to make room for situated interventions (Zuiderent-Jerak 2015), and to open up space for more regulatory resilience. The experiments pointed at regulatory interventions to go beyond the trap of being only punitive. Walshe (2015) noted this as 'Developmental regulation' in which the interventions of the regulator are focused on improvement and development of regulates. However, being flexible and changeable as a regulator can be interpreted as a diminishing of predictability, hence be considered as an undesirable consequence. How does the DHI justify this consequence of regulatory resilience?