The treachery of supervision - white paper Sjarel Ex diagnoses but stalls on solution. 

On Friday 16 January, a team led by Sjarel Ex will present a long-awaited report on the future of supervisory boards in the cultural sector. With Jaap van Manen and Mark Michaëla, Ex conducted a year and a half of research and held dozens of interviews. This led to seven painfully recognisable scenarios in their ‘white paper’ ‘The treachery of supervision’. The diagnosis is rock-hard: ‘supervisory boards of cultural institutions are in practice untouchable’ and ‘Supervisory boards’ self-cleansing ability falls short'.’

Anyone hoping for a few peppery recommendations after 36 pages of analysis will come home from a cold shower. Nothing urgent. We read: ‘there is a need’ and ‘it deserves consideration’. Sharp observations evaporate into vague policy formulations. Someone here in the office shouted: ‘this is a band-aid on a broken leg'. 

In 17 years of Culture Press, we have seen it many times: hassles at cultural institutions where supervision, in particular, fails. Whether it was theatre boards with gift cards and Icelandic investments goes, a bankrupt theatre in Groningen, a opera in Enschede, a orchestra in eastern Netherlands, a devastated corporate culture in Amsterdam or a photography museum dismissing its director: invariably raised eyebrows. Not a common occurrence, but too common to keep the industry's reputation good. 

Perfect analysis

The pleasantly readable white paper has collected a few nice cases, all of which are treated in a reasonably anonymous manner. They are situations where the supervisory board, for example, does not properly understand its role as employer. We see members drawing powers to themselves without accepting managerial responsibility. Sometimes the supervisory board has taken the board's seat. So says the white paper: ‘why not build mediation into the code as a mandatory intermediate step, to avoid far too large irreparable steps?’

That is just not what the conclusions and recommendations say. There it says only that the sector should ‘reconsider’ separating employer and sounding board roles. How then? By whom? When? No more word on compulsory mediation.

Government as elephant in the room

Another: the role of government. Ex cs spend more than three pages on the ‘invisible hand’ of subsidy providers who operate outside the code but do exercise power. ‘An omission in the current code is that virtually nothing is said about the role and room for manoeuvre of the government either; this is a source of tension for both governance and supervision.’ That analysis, too, is crystal clear. But then, in the conclusions and recommendations, we read: ‘It is recommended that the responsibility of the government be given a place in the code.’

About the ‘how?’ you read nothing at all. The report is completely silent on what powers the government should or should not have. When is a municipality allowed to intervene in a theatre, and when not?

Opposition?

It seems that the authors encountered opposition during their research. Those who know Sjarel Ex a little will not recognise him in the moderate tone of the white paper. 

Appended to the white paper are seven scenarios, which have much sharper analyses than the conclusions are. Take scenario 3: a chairman of a supervisory board who does not tolerate dissent, where other members do not have the courage to object to his reappointment. Or scenario 7: a supervisory board that loses control after allegations of inappropriate behaviour and sees the only option as being to resign collectively.

Such examples cry out for concrete solutions. But they are not coming. We read: ‘A possible solution could lie in: professional self-evaluation with external guidance.'

Conclusion not included

Thus, the strongest conclusion of the entire report is also not in the conclusions at all. Tucked away in chapter 7, the authors write: ‘When developing measures for governance and supervision in cultural institutions, the risk of these institutions becoming a plaything of unreliable politics should be taken into account.’ I would have started the white paper with it. 

Three months ago, the Culture Council published its opinion ‘’Supervision in the cultural sector: an art in itself'. That was a lot more concrete. The Culture Council said: large organisations at least five members on the supervisory board. The white paper says: the legal minimum of three is insufficient for large organisations, five would be more appropriate.

Mumbling

The Culture Council says: a maximum of five supervisory positions per person, chairmanships count for two. The white paper mutters: ‘The council thinks the sector should mirror this legal regulation.’

The white paper appears three months after the SB opinion, but is thus more vague in its recommendations. Quite remarkable. 

On Friday 17 January, the authors will present their report in a meeting in Amsterdam. Then everyone will nod in agreement and say we need to talk about this further. In a year's time, there will be another report. Isn't it time to make choices? Those choices are already there, but they are strangely not explicit in the white paper. Let me kick-start the discussion on Friday with the following four statements: 

Mediation should become mandatory before a supervisory board can suspend a director. 

The question is not whether mediation is useful - the question is who organises it, who pays for it, and what happens if a supervisory board refuses.

Formalise the role of government.

Should there be a separate chapter in the Governance Code on the rules of the game for public authorities? Or will this remain a grey area?

Small institutions are required to move away from the supervisory board model.

There is a glaring shortage of supervisors and the checks and balances are disproportionately burdensome. The alternative is for several small institutions to share one supervisory board.

Provide monitoring committee with teeth. 

Question is just who and where. 

Time is running out

We have had a few years of political stagnation, and as long as the BBB is about culture, ‘delay’ and ‘research’ will be the strongest response there too. The ministry of OCW does need to come up with a response, because before you know it, we will be stuck with a new system to which nothing can be changed for eight years. Whatever cabinet is in place.

The white paper could have been a wake-up call. The authors invested a year and a half, they had access to directors and supervisors who are rarely so open, they collected scenarios that describe the pain points tangentially. But the vagueness of the conclusions makes it a report that anyone can endorse without changing anything.

Read the whitepaper here.

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