Led by Professor Christopher Hodges, this Programme examines the way in which regulation is delivered to achieve its intended outcomes. We work closely with various governments and many regulators across the world, and especially with Graham Russell and his colleagues at HM Government’s Office of Product Safety and Standards, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). We have established an International Network for Delivery of Regulation (INDR), comprising experts from many countries. We also champion the concepts of Ethical Business Practice (EBP) and Ethical Business Regulation (EBR): see C Hodges and R Steinholtz, Ethical Business Practice and Regulation (Hart, 2018).
This work builds on growing recognition that that the challenge of operating a regulatory regime that is both appropriate and effective is wider than just the question of enacting well-designed regulations, and that questions of how regulations are received by businesses and others whose behaviour they seek to control, and the manner in which they are enforced (‘regulatory delivery’ or ‘regulatory practice’) are of equal importance.
The programme builds on extensive research by Professor Hodges on why people obey rules, or break rules, and hence best practice in ensuring compliance and maximising performance and innovation, both internally within companies and externally in public regulatory and enforcement systems. The core substantiation for this model is set out in C Hodges, Law and Corporate Behaviour: Integrating Theories of Regulation and Enforcement (Hart Publishing, 2015).
A Conference on 4 May 2018 presented the concepts of EBP, EBR and Cultural Values Assessment, and contributions were given on a series of applications of these concepts across an extremely wide range of sectors. A note of the conference is here.
