Culture, Knowledge, and Regulation: Improving Compliance through the Power of Norms, Practice, and Technique (or Something Like That)

The idea that cultural knowledge affects the performance of organisations exists since, at least, the early-1990s. In short, organisational culture, defined as the norms, practices, and techniques shared by many (or all) people at an organisation, acts as an informational backdrop that shapes behaviour at the said organisation. Theoretically, thus, regulators can foster compliance through initiatives aimed at shaping their regulatees’ organisational culture. In practice, however, such efforts are challenging (and rare). This manuscript ‘process-traces’ progress at one such initiative currently underway at a major regulator in the United Kingdom. Uniquely, the process-tracing builds on ethnographic/participatory research by the author, in the context of collaboration between the said regulator and the London School of Economics.