Topping up or watering down? Sustainable development in the privatized UK water industry
基于对英国水务行业从业者的访谈，研究正式监管是促进还是阻碍了可持续实践的采纳与实施，发现监管结构倾向于以经济为中心重新定义可持续性，从而削弱了其丰富内涵。
Abstract Increasingly in the UK regulators and industries are taking on duties towards sustainable development. Governance procedures, which include regulation, are evolving to accommodate this in a manner that is reflexive of existing institutional structures. Governance provides an organizing framework for ordered rule and collective action, not reliant on coercive sanction. It is characterized by a web of actors from across government, industry and civil society with both intentions and outcomes being negotiated and reinterpreted. With respect to sustainable development this can be seen at work within the regulation of the water sector. This paper, based on a series of interviews situated from within the water industry, investigates whether the formal regulation of the industry helps or hinders the adoption and implementation of sustainable practices. The regulatory structure encourages an approach that mediates relationships through the redefinition of sustainability in econocentric terms, thus losing the richness of the concept. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.