IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/reggov/v5y2011i1p70-89.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relational regulation in the Brazilian Ministério Publico: The organizational basis of regulatory responsiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Salo V. Coslovsky

Abstract

Recent research on regulatory enforcement has been showing that the best way to enforce protective regulations is to thoroughly adapt the remedy to the problem at hand. Unfortunately, this is far from easy, as organizations and work environments all too often encourage street‐level bureaucrats to standardize and simplify their practices. In an attempt to bridge this gap, many scholars equate responsiveness to preprogrammed escalation. This article analyzes how the Brazilian Ministério Público (MP) promotes a more ambitious form of responsiveness, here called relational regulation. While most of the formal features of the MP encourage routinization, groups of reformist prosecutors identify important cases, recruit external allies, and jointly devise innovative and context‐specific solutions to problems of non‐compliance. Crucially, this mode of action is not an anomaly, the result of individual proclivities or specific and formal job assignments. Rather, it is systematically produced by a mostly parallel and covert organization that operates within and expands beyond the MP itself. These two logics – routinized and custom‐made responses – compete, cooperate, interpenetrate, and find common ground within the same organizational umbrella, and through their interaction they create an enforcement agency that is more robust, reliable, and responsive than allowed by current theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Salo V. Coslovsky, 2011. "Relational regulation in the Brazilian Ministério Publico: The organizational basis of regulatory responsiveness," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(1), pages 70-89, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:reggov:v:5:y:2011:i:1:p:70-89
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1748-5991.2010.01099.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-5991.2010.01099.x
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1748-5991.2010.01099.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James G. March, 1991. "Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 71-87, February.
    2. John Paul MacDuffie, 1997. "The Road to "Root Cause": Shop-Floor Problem-Solving at Three Auto Assembly Plants," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(4), pages 479-502, April.
    3. Salo Vinocur Coslovsky, 2008. "Respeito às Normas e Crescimento Econômico: Como Promotores Públicos Garantem o Cumprimento das Leis e Promovem o Crescimento Econômico no Brasil," Discussion Papers 1355, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.
    4. Scholz, John T., 1991. "Cooperative Regulatory Enforcement and the Politics of Administrative Effectiveness," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 85(1), pages 115-136, March.
    5. Christina Fang & Jeho Lee & Melissa A. Schilling, 2010. "Balancing Exploration and Exploitation Through Structural Design: The Isolation of Subgroups and Organizational Learning," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 625-642, June.
    6. Sebastian Raisch & Julian Birkinshaw & Gilbert Probst & Michael L. Tushman, 2009. "Organizational Ambidexterity: Balancing Exploitation and Exploration for Sustained Performance," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 685-695, August.
    7. Susan S. Silbey & Ruthanne Huising & Salo V. Coslovsky, 2009. "The Sociological Citizen : Recognizing Relational Interdependence in Law and Organizations," Post-Print hal-02311931, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stephen Mustchin & Miguel Martínez Lucio, 2023. "The fragmenting occupation of labour inspection and the degradation of regulatory and enforcement work inside the British state," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 44(2), pages 526-546, May.
    2. Valeria Biffi Isla, 2022. "Community‐level bureaucrats conserving the Peruvian Amazon," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(1), pages 44-54, February.
    3. Gokce Basbug & Ayn Cavicchi & Susan S. Silbey, 2023. "Rank Has Its Privileges: Explaining Why Laboratory Safety Is a Persistent Challenge," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(3), pages 571-587, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carolina Rojas-Córdova & Amanda J. Williamson & Julio A. Pertuze & Gustavo Calvo, 2023. "Why one strategy does not fit all: a systematic review on exploration–exploitation in different organizational archetypes," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 17(7), pages 2251-2295, October.
    2. Jan Ossenbrink & Joern Hoppmann & Volker H. Hoffmann, 2019. "Hybrid Ambidexterity: How the Environment Shapes Incumbents’ Use of Structural and Contextual Approaches," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(6), pages 1319-1348, November.
    3. Sasanka Sekhar Chanda & Bill McKelvey, 2020. "Back to the basics: reconciling the continuum and orthogonal conceptions of exploration and exploitation," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 175-206, June.
    4. Jan Ossenbrink & Joern Hoppmann, 2019. "Polytope Conditioning and Linear Convergence of the Frank–Wolfe Algorithm," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 44(1), pages 1319-1348, February.
    5. Sunkee Lee, 2019. "Learning-by-Moving: Can Reconfiguring Spatial Proximity Between Organizational Members Promote Individual-level Exploration?," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 467-488, May.
    6. Ioniţă Cătălin Gabriel, 2022. "Exploration vs. Exploitation: How Innovation Strategies Impact Firm Performance and Competitive Advantage," Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, Sciendo, vol. 16(1), pages 31-46, August.
    7. Christine Chou & Steven O. Kimbrough, 2016. "An agent-based model of organizational ambidexterity decisions and strategies in new product development," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 4-46, March.
    8. O'Reilly, Charles A., III & Tushman, Michael L., 2013. "Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present and Future," Research Papers 2130, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    9. Wang, Yuandi & Sutherland, Dylan & Ning, Lutao & Pan, Xin, 2015. "The evolving nature of China's regional innovation systems: Insights from an exploration–exploitation approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 140-152.
    10. Filippini, Roberto & Güttel, Wolfgang H. & Nosella, Anna, 2012. "Ambidexterity and the evolution of knowledge management initiatives," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 317-324.
    11. Juha Uotila, 2018. "Punctuated equilibrium or ambidexterity: dynamics of incremental and radical organizational change over time," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 27(1), pages 131-148.
    12. Shuxin Zhong & Xiaoyang Zhao & Juan Song, 2023. "MNEs’ Ambidexterity Strategies and Moral Conflicts: The Case of Google in China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 186(4), pages 781-796, September.
    13. Lennerts, Silke & Schulze, Anja & Tomczak, Torsten, 2020. "The asymmetric effects of exploitation and exploration on radical and incremental innovation performance: An uneven affair," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 121-134.
    14. Sunkee Lee & Philipp Meyer-Doyle, 2017. "How Performance Incentives Shape Individual Exploration and Exploitation: Evidence from Microdata," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(1), pages 19-38, February.
    15. Stefanie Gschwantner & Martin R. W. Hiebl, 2016. "Management control systems and organizational ambidexterity," Journal of Management Control: Zeitschrift für Planung und Unternehmenssteuerung, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 371-404, November.
    16. Linda Argote & Ella Miron-Spektor, 2011. "Organizational Learning: From Experience to Knowledge," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(5), pages 1123-1137, October.
    17. Arman Avadikyan & Gilles Lambert & Christophe Lerch, 2016. "A Multi-Level Perspective on Ambidexterity: The Case of a Synchrotron Research Facility," Working Papers of BETA 2016-44, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    18. Zhang, Feng & Jiang, Guohua & Cantwell, John A., 2015. "Subsidiary exploration and the innovative performance of large multinational corporations," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 224-234.
    19. Chang, Kuo-Hsiung & Gotcher, Donald F., 2020. "How and when does co-production facilitate eco-innovation in international buyer-supplier relationships? The role of environmental innovation ambidexterity and institutional pressures," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(5).
    20. Jesse Shore & Ethan Bernstein & David Lazer, 2014. "Facts and Figuring: An Experimental Investigation of Network Structure and Performance in Information and Solution Spaces," Harvard Business School Working Papers 14-075, Harvard Business School, revised Jun 2014.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:reggov:v:5:y:2011:i:1:p:70-89. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1748-5991 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.