Abstract
This study is motivated by a concern that the salience of compliance and enforcement in regulatory
action may lead companies to focus excessively on individual compliance in their safety management
efforts.A qualitative study of incident and accident investigation reports issued by the Petroleum Safety Authority
Norway (PSA) was carried out to shed light on (1) ways in which regulatory authorities can break out of
an individualized compliance-oriented discourse, and (2) ways in which compliance logic may intrude even
when the regulatory authority seeks to go beyond this logic. We found that event sequence descriptions were
mostly “de-individualised”, i.e. individuals did not figure as grammatical subjects. Nonconformitieswere framed
as deficiencies of the safety management system rather than individual violations. The PSA used asymmetric dialogue in a way that prompted the regulated companies to frame the findings in a similar way.
action may lead companies to focus excessively on individual compliance in their safety management
efforts.A qualitative study of incident and accident investigation reports issued by the Petroleum Safety Authority
Norway (PSA) was carried out to shed light on (1) ways in which regulatory authorities can break out of
an individualized compliance-oriented discourse, and (2) ways in which compliance logic may intrude even
when the regulatory authority seeks to go beyond this logic. We found that event sequence descriptions were
mostly “de-individualised”, i.e. individuals did not figure as grammatical subjects. Nonconformitieswere framed
as deficiencies of the safety management system rather than individual violations. The PSA used asymmetric dialogue in a way that prompted the regulated companies to frame the findings in a similar way.
