- Title
- From premise to practice: strategic decision-making in risk-based regulatory agencies
- Creator
- Betts, Dorothea Lorraine
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- In a departure from the bulk of studies on regulatory decision-making, this study is an exploration of how the premise of a risk-based approach is put into practice through strategic decision-making processes. Current contemporary scholarship on regulatory decision-making explores enforcement of statutory requirements, such as activities of frontline or street level public servants (May & Wood, 2003) or impacts or outcomes of interventions with regulated entities (Gunningham, 1987; Parker, 2006). In contrast to these studies, this research considers the internal arrangements of regulatory agencies, that is, what actually occurs, and how, in strategic decision-making processes from interpretation of risk-based policy through to translation into strategies and actions. For many risk-based regulatory agencies, decision-making processes shape compliance outcomes such as the elimination or mitigation of public risk. Decisions made by these regulatory agencies thus have implications for individuals and entities affected by those decisions, as well as for the agency itself. In Australia, the work health and safety regulatory landscape has evolved since the 1980s from a prescriptive, or rule-based approach, to a more responsive risk-based regulatory framework. This framework encompasses principles of transparency, accountability and a focus on risk as a basis for compliance and enforcement interventions and actions. More recently, in a context of overlapping responsibilities and variations in enforcement and compliance practices, work health and safety regulators across Australia have attempted to harmonise the relevant legislation and in the process, reduce the regulatory burden on affected entities. This thesis examines the development and implementation of strategic decisions in four regulatory agencies in work health and safety jurisdictions in Australia. It presents an interpretive study of processes of decision-making in those regulatory agencies, and identifies ways in which decision-makers interpret harmonised policy and translate it into strategies and actions. Data were collected, compared and contrasted at jurisdictional, management and operational levels. The collection of data was undertaken at multiple sites over two discrete timeframes and obtained from a range of sources, including face-to-face and telephone interviews, questionnaires and analysis of documents. The findings conclude that the application of harmonised risk-based policy across the four regulatory agencies provides a uniform basis for regulatory decision-making that is predicated on risks and based on the use of evidence. Notwithstanding this uniformity, as decisions are made by top and middle managers, trade-offs are extracted in the decision-making process. This thesis finds that these trade-offs are in response to a range of factors. These factors include tensions between harmonised risk-based regulatory strategy and the application of problem-solving methods; the influence of stakeholders in framing the development and implementation of strategic decisions; limited resources, as well as limitations in discretion that reduce the ability to develop and deploy effective approaches to identified problems. The application of risk-based policy approaches in decision-making processes, despite being uniformly adopted by Australian work health and safety regulatory agencies, does not wholly delineate where those agencies tolerate risk and which approaches to apply to identified problems.
- Subject
- risk-based regulation; strategic decision-making
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1353421
- Identifier
- uon:31093
- Rights
- Copyright 2017 Dorothea Lorraine Betts
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Abstract | 452 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |