Regulation and the role of trust: reflections from the mining industry

Gunningham, Neil and Sinclair, Darren 2009. Regulation and the role of trust: reflections from the mining industry. British Journal of Law and Society 36 (2) , pp. 167-194. 10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00462.x

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

The role of prosecution in achieving compliance with social regulation is a highly contentious issue, nowhere more so than with regard to work-related injury and death in the New South Wales mining industry. Following a mining disaster, political pressure prompted the mines inspectorate to abandon its traditional ‘advise and persuade’ approach in favour of a much tougher, deterrence-oriented approach. Our field-work suggests that while the former approach can result in regulatory capture, the latter can be equally counterproductive. In the mining industry, interactions between inspectors and the regulated industry are frequent and ongoing and trust is central to constructive relations. When those relations break down (as under an inappropriate prosecution policy) then dialogue ceases, information is withheld rather than shared, in-firm accident investigation, prevention, and remedial action are inhibited and both sides retreat to a form of adversarialism that undermines regulatory effectiveness. Through a 20-year case study of the mines inspectorate, the article demonstrates the centrality of trust to regulatory effectiveness, how it can be lost, and how it can best be regained.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Law
Subjects:	K Law > K Law (General)
Publisher:	Wiley-Blackwell
ISSN:	0306-3704
Funders:	Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, Australian Coal Association Research Program
Last Modified:	19 Mar 2016 09:40
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/52743

Citation Data

Cited 24 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item