A Dynamic Life Cycle Approach to Regulatory Simplification

Dr. Yılmaz Argüden

Chair of the Governance and Regulatory Policy Committee

Business at OECD

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Dr. Yılmaz Argüden

Chair of the Governance and Regulatory Policy Committee

Dr. Yılmaz Argüden is the Founder and Chairman of ARGE Consulting, a globally recognised management consulting firm who served as B20 Knowledge Partner (Governance & Sustainability), as EFQM Advisory Organization, and IFRS Integrated Reporting Training Partner. ARGE is the first Turkish signatory of the UN Global Compact and has been recognised at the European Parliament as one of the best three companies “Shaping the Future”. Dr. Argüden is also the Chairman of Rothschild & Co. Türkiye and served on the boards of more than 70 companies in different jurisdictions. He is a columnist and an author of numerous books and served as an adjunct Professor of Strategy at Bogazici and Koç Universities, and Military Academy. As a renowned governance expert, he serves as the Chairman of the Governance Committee of the Business at OECD, Chairman of the Trustees of the Argüden Governance Academy, and a member of the IFC’s Corporate Governance Advisory Group. As a social entrepreneur, he has founded and led numerous NGOs and initiated the National Quality Movement. As the elected Global Chair, he represented the National Networks on the Board of the UN Global Compact. He graduated from Bogazici University with the Top Academic Achievement Award and the President’s Prize for Student Leadership; received his PhD in policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School with General Distinction; and as a playmaker, won three National Basketball Championships during his High School and University years. He serves as the Vice-Chair of Turkish Basketball Federation. Dr. Argüden is an Eisenhower, Fulbright, NATO, and TUBITAK fellow, and was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum (1999), received the Distinguished Citizenship Award for his efforts in the development of Turkish-American relations (2008), and the Distinguished Industry Leadership Award from the International Industrial Engineering Society (2022).

The OECD’s “Simplifying for Success” (S4S) initiative builds on thirty years of work to improve regulatory governance. It aims to enhance regulatory effectiveness by reducing burdens, streamlining implementation and administrative processes, and simplifying legislation.

These actions are important and can contribute to reducing the cost of regulation, particularly for SMEs. Alone, however, they provide an incomplete set of regulatory tools for understanding the full impact of regulatory interventions, particularly on the business community. This note argues that factoring dynamic life cycle impacts into the regulatory equation should be included within the S4S initiative. Introducing this lens could shape a new frontier in regulatory policy.

Regulatory policy has become quite sophisticated over time, but there is room to develop approaches to ensure that the benefits of regulation justify costs. Past regulatory simplification programs across OECD countries have focused on direct compliance costs, with a narrow view on paperwork requirements and with insufficient qualitative statements of benefits.

At times, these past measures have successfully removed many “low hanging” regulatory barriers to doing business and public service delivery. However, that approach has not fundamentally influenced the way we think about regulating to consider the dynamic life cycle costs and benefits in developing regulatory policy options. Regulatory impact assessments often overlook long-term enforcement costs, administrative burdens, growing public sector expenses, and secondary effects such as reduced entrepreneurship or unethical actors exploiting uneven enforcement.

The OECD’s S4S initiative is a strong response to the shortfalls of past regulatory simplification initiatives. Yet a key piece of the puzzle remains missing: the dynamic life cycle impacts of regulation. An excessive focus on direct impacts is incomplete and potentially misleading, and integrating technological tools will not be sufficient to simplify regulation. The dynamic life cycle impacts on businesses include unintended consequences, such as ‘risk-risk’ trade-offs, stigmatisation, long-term oversight burdens on the public sector, and the diversion of resources away from investment toward safer, more sustainable alternatives.

For example, regulatory restrictions on technology usage in consumer product applications erode performance, undermine brand equity, and divert resources from innovation to sustain functionality. These dynamic impacts appear in most industrial sectors and, taken in sum, can have widespread economic consequences.

Regulators have found these micro-economic impacts difficult to identify and manage. Here, the S4S initiative can make a marked difference compared to past simplification efforts. The assessment of dynamic life cycle impacts helps maintain an outcome-oriented focus, pivoting regulatory analysis and simplification around actual legislative goals.