Governing the gap: Forging safe science through relational regulation
基于对一家组织创建和实施环境健康安全管理系统的六年民族志研究，识别了基层管理者用于治理法律与实践之间差距的关系性规制方法，包括四种实践和三个条件。
Abstract Designed to close the ubiquitous gap between law on the books and law in action, management systems locate the standard setting and implementation of regulation within the regulated organization itself. Despite efforts to more closely couple aspirations and performance, the gap re‐emerges because the exigencies of practical action exceed the capacity of system prescriptions to anticipate and contain them. Drawing on data from a six‐year ethnographic study of the creation and implementation of an environment, health, and safety management system, this article identifies relational regulation as the approach used by front‐line managers to govern the gap: keeping organizational activities within an acceptable range of variation close to regulatory specifications. We identify four practices – narrating the gap, inquiring without constraint, integrating pluralistic accounts, and crafting pragmatic accommodations – and three conditions under which actors may develop a sociological orientation to enact relational regulation. Overall, the article concludes that the mechanism for assuring compliance resides in the apprehension of relational interdependencies rather than the management system per se.