Coerced Confessions: Self-Policing in the Shadow of the Regulator

Short, Jodi L.; Toffel, Michael W.

doi:10.1093/jleo/ewm039

Cited by 129 publications

(103 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Successful self-regulation likewise results from a complex set of motivations. Research has shown that organizations will not reliably self-regulate without the pressure of deterrence (Rees, 1988;Sigler and Murphy, 1988;Ayres and Braithwaite, 1991;McCaffrey and Hart, 1998;Parker, 2002;Short and Toffel, 2008). At the same time, and by defi nition, meaningful self-regulation requires a certain amount of intrinsic organizational motivation.…”

Section: Law Organizations and Self-regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Self-Regulation More Than Merely Symbolic: The Critical Role of the Legal Environment

Short

Toffel

2010

Administrative Science Quarterly

308

230

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Using data from a sample of U.S. industrial facilities subject to the federal Clean Air Act from 1993 to 2003, this article theorizes and tests the conditions under which organizations' symbolic commitments to self-regulate are particularly likely to result in improved compliance practices and outcomes. We argue that the legal environment, particularly as it is constructed by the enforcement activities of regulators, significantly influences the likelihood that organizations will effectively implement the self-regulatory commitments they symbolically adopt. We investigate how different enforcement tools can foster or undermine organizations' normative motivations to self-regulate. We find that organizations are more likely to follow through on their commitments to self-regulate when they (and their competitors) are subject to heavy regulatory surveillance and when they adopt self-regulation in the absence of an explicit threat of sanctions. We also find that historically poor compliers are significantly less likely to follow through on their commitments to self-regulate, suggesting a substantial limitation on the use of self-regulation as a strategy for reforming struggling organizations. Taken together, these findings suggest that self-regulation can be a useful tool for leveraging the normative motivations of regulated organizations but that it cannot replace traditional deterrence-based enforcement.

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Section: Law Organizations and Self-regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Self-Regulation More Than Merely Symbolic: The Critical Role of the Legal Environment

Short

Toffel

2010

Administrative Science Quarterly

308

230

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“…Specifically, we examine (a) whether claims of self-policing made in connection with Audit Policy disclosures prompt regulators to re-target their enforcement resources; and (b) whether self-reporters who claim to be self-policing actually improve their regulatory compliance and performance outcomes. This significantly extends existing research on the Audit Policy that has addressed the types of violations that are voluntarily reported (Pfaff and Sanchirico 2004), the way the EPA's adoption of the Audit Policy has altered aggregate enforcement and compliance patterns (Stafford 2004), and the factors that predict self-reporting (Short and Toffel 2008;Stretesky and Gabriel 2005).…”

Section: -66712)mentioning

confidence: 54%

“…Short and Toffel (2008) demonstrate that facilities "voluntarily" self-reported violations and committed to self-policing only after regulators had invested a disproportionate amount of enforcement resources to inspect and prosecute them, potentially cannibalizing any ex post gains that might be realized. Moreover, even ex post gains can be elusive in a complex regulatory state, where legal violations are often chronic and result from either technological or compliance management deficiencies.…”

Section: Literature Review: Self-reporting and Self-policingmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…We do this based on the logic that a matched group of disclosers and non-disclosers that look similar before voluntary disclosure occurs would have continued to look similar in the ensuing years had voluntary disclosure not occurred. In developing a matched sample, we seek to replicate a randomized experiment that compares "treated" and "control" facilities that do not differ systematically from each other at the time the treatment occurs (Shadish, Cook and To develop our matched sample, we implement case-control matching based on several factors which empirical studies have shown to be associated with facilities' decision to voluntarily disclose to the Audit Policy (Short and Toffel 2008;Stafford 2007;Stretesky and Gabriel 2005). We consider for each voluntary discloser its industry (3-digit SIC code) and its annual inspections, violations, and enforcement actions during each of the two years before it disclosed.…”

Section: Matched Samplementioning

confidence: 99%

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Coming Clean and Cleaning Up: Does Voluntary Self-Reporting Indicate Effective Self-Policing?

Toffel

Short

2011

The Journal of Law and Economics

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Administrative agencies are increasingly establishing voluntary self-reporting programs both as an investigative tool and to encourage regulated firms to commit to policing themselves. We investigate whether self-reporting can reliably indicate effective self-policing efforts that might provide opportunities for enforcement efficiencies. We find that regulators used self-reports of legal violations as a heuristic for identifying firms that are effectively policing their own operations, shifting enforcement resources away from voluntary disclosers. We also find that firms that voluntarily disclosed regulatory violations and committed to self-policing improved their regulatory compliance and environmental performance, suggesting that the enforcement relief they received was warranted. Collectively, our results suggest that self-reporting can be a useful tool for reliably identifying and leveraging the voluntary self-policing efforts of regulated companies. * The authors are grateful for insightful comments from

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“…Brehm and Hamilton 1996;Magill 2009): not only is it a cheap tool and thus one that is compatible with both the dire state of public finances in many countries and the neo-liberal agenda of rolling back the state; it fits also the broad "new governance" agenda and its growing reliance on private actors to take regulatory goals on board (e.g. Coglianese & Lazer 2003;Kaplow and Shavell 1994;Potoski and Prakash 2011;Pfaff and Sanchirico 2000;Short and Toffel 2008). Advocates of self-reporting rules have generally argued that they could achieve a good flow of information, provided that incentives were offered to firms: ideally in the form of public commitments not to prosecute self-reported violations, and promises of reduced regulatory oversight for transparent firms (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Detection in Business Regulation

Étienne

2014

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

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Detecting non-compliant behaviors is an important step in the enforcement of regulations. The literature on the subject is vast yet also narrow in its approach, in the sense that it has built on the assumption that regulators would always want to maximize information quantity and quality, while acting under two fundamental constraints: the regulator's resources, and the information asymmetry between regulator and regulatee. This article argues that regulatory agencies might not always want to maximize information: rather, other bureaucratic goals and concerns might shape detection preferences and toolsof detection in what might seem to be unexpected and irrational ways. To support this argument, the article presents a case study of the regulation of industrial risks in France, which focuses on the detection of incidents -small losses of control -taking place in high hazard sites. The study presents a rich set of observations. It finds regulators sharing with regulatees a restrictive interpretation of incident reporting obligations. It identifies also a range of third party informants -employees -who have been 2 neither solicited by regulators to contribute to detecting incidents, nor have been particularly well received by them when they have done so. The motives of regulators that can account for these detection preferences are mixed, but an overarching one appears to be their concerns for reputational risk. Seen through such a lens, certain types of incidents and certain tools of detecting them appeared either unimportant, or on the contrary as deserving attention and effort. On the basis of the case study and other empirical illustrations found in the literature, the article then offers a more general argument about how bureaucratic reputation may shape detection practices in business regulation.

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Coerced Confessions: Self-Policing in the Shadow of the Regulator

Cited by 129 publications

References 56 publications

Making Self-Regulation More Than Merely Symbolic: The Critical Role of the Legal Environment

Making Self-Regulation More Than Merely Symbolic: The Critical Role of the Legal Environment

Coming Clean and Cleaning Up: Does Voluntary Self-Reporting Indicate Effective Self-Policing?

The Politics of Detection in Business Regulation

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