Regulatory Compliance and the Ethos of Quality Enhancement: Surprises in Nuclear Power Plant Operations¹

The relationship of regulatees to regulators is expected to be characterized predominantly by either efforts to co-opt, to resist, or to comply minimally. The object of regulatees, it is assumed, is to reduce the strictures of regulatory constraints. This research monograph reports an unexpected relationship in which regulatory constraints have become incorporated within a broader ethos of quality enhancement and regulatee self-imposed processes of endless analysis, watchfulness, and search for root cause of errors. We outline the salient features of this situation and the conditions that sustain these processes, and we propose a typology of regulatory responsiveness.