Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

en Staatssecretaris, 2013). Our Minister and State Secretary suggest far reaching
measures for supervision of these institutions. They suggest that future members of
the board should swear an oath on being austere in service of a public cause. Moreover,
the Minister and State Secretary will develop rules for organizations to be used to
evaluate the scope of an institution. A scope that should fit to human needs. And they
plead for stimulating the presence of constructive dissenting voices. According to
them a quality of a responsible member of the board has to be to stimulate dissent. By
them dissent is seen as a correcting mechanism against mismanagement.
More Ministerial rules to solve problems which partly evolved because of the many
rules people have to deal with, Paul and I agreed upon, would be a paradox. But with
this letter the importance of our discussions about reflexivity and dissenting opinions
had grown and got a more or less a formal character. These Ministerial suggestions
will become governmental policy, so we concluded that we still had a chance to do
things in our own way. Paul already had discussed the letter with his colleagues in the
board and invited me to write my own assignment how to deal with the letter and our
ideas up till now. Given the letter of the Minister and State Secretary my project
became about encouraging dissenting voices.
In my assignment I wrote that I will develop ideas and proposals about stimulating
dissenting voices together with some colleagues in a yet to form think-tank. I proposed
to do it in such a way that the ideas would set out beyond a prototypical managerial
approach of risk management, governance or resilience, and beyond a prototypical
social democratic approach of institutionalizing dissenting voices in all kinds of
regulations. What would lie beyond is unknown. The board would communicate about
my assignment in a confined way to offer as much elbow-room as possible.
Then a period of calm around dissent took off. The months of May, June, July and
August obviously there was little time to discuss. Examinations, the preparing for next
academic year and holidays have the upper hand in daily organizational life.
September – March: reflexive activities
Back from holiday I found an e-mail of Paul Broersen in which he reports about the
discussion in the board about my assignment. There are hesitations. I can go on,
however I will be invited for an in-depth discussion with the board, because they have
different perspectives on what is meant with dissenting voices. Especially at a moment
in which the board wants to foster the motto “a deal is a deal” as they experience that
made agreements with deans or directors are not a guarantee that the agreements
will be observed. “Organizing dissenting voices” almost sounds as stimulating organizing
disobedience. At the same time they acknowledge the importance of the subject,
in my view dominantly from the perspective of risk management. Risk management
with the aim to control that things develop as agreed and to prevent being confronted
with unwanted surprises. I stipulate that in my opinion dissenting voices is not about
choosing between right or wrong, but about trying to learn something about the way
6. A case of consent about dissent | 149