Based on qualitative research primarily carried out in the Netherlands, this article describes corporate investigations within the private sector in terms of investigators’ operational autonomy, which, in only a minority of cases, involves contact or cooperation with governmental law enforcement agencies. It is argued that, given this de facto public–private separation, theoretical concepts within the literature that take the nation-state as the imagined historical origin and/or continuing partner of corporate security—concepts such as privatization, responsibilization, or multilateralization—fail to capture the autonomy of corporate investigations. Furthermore, such concepts are politically distracting and potentially dangerous for public policy, since they imply that corporate security is effectively surveilled and supervised by the state within a framework of public–private cooperation. Nothing could be further from the truth; indeed the limited liaisons that do occur are initiated by the private sector.

中文翻译：

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公司调查：超越公私关系的概念

本文基于主要在荷兰进行的定性研究，根据调查人员的操作自主权描述了私营部门内的公司调查，其中仅在少数情况下涉及与政府执法机构的联系或合作。有人认为，鉴于这种事实上的公私分离，将民族国家视为企业安全的想象历史起源和/或持续合作伙伴的文献中的理论概念——诸如私有化、责任化或多边化等概念——失败了争取企业调查的自主权。此外，这些概念在政治上分散注意力，对公共政策有潜在危险，因为它们意味着国家在公私合作的框架内对公司安全进行有效的监视和监督。没有东西会离事实很远; 事实上，确实发生的有限联络是由私营部门发起的。