Drawing from experience internationally, on recent and important developments in regulatory theory, and upon models and approaches constructed during the author's empirical research, this book addresses the question: how can law influence the internal self-regulation of organisations in order to make them more responsive to occupational health and safety concerns? In this context, it is argued that Occupational Health and Safety management systems have the potential to stimulate models of self-organisation within firms in such a way as to make them self-reflective and to encourage informal self-critical reflection about their occupational health and safety performance. This book argues for a two track system of regulation under which enterprises are offered a choice between a continuation of traditional forms of regulation and the adoption of a safety management system-based approach on the other. The book concludes with a discussion of the use of criminal and administrative sanctions to provide organisations with incentives to adopt effective Occupational Health and Safety management systems. The book proposes a wider range of criminal sanctions and sentencing guidelines to ensure employers receive sentencing discounts where they have introduced effective management systems.

... for me, this is the most sophisticated attempt thus far to develop a model of self-regulation for the current politico-economic conjuncture... Regulating Workplace Safety needs to be taken seriously * Steve Tombs, Risk Management, An International Journal, Vol. 4, No. 4, 2002 *
This new book uses many of the latest theoretical discussions of regulation... proposals are articulated clearly and defended with reference to practical examples drawn from around the world, but with special emphasis upon the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, and Denmark... the policy prescriptions laid out so clearly in the text are certainly worth considering and experimenting with. * Comparative Labor Law Policy Journal *

Neil Gunningham is Professor of Law and Director of the Australian Centre for Environmental Law at The Australian National University, Canberra. In 1997 he was Visiting and Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Centre for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley. He was previously a Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, Chicago. Richard Johnstone is Associate Professor at the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law, in the Faculty of Law at the University of Melbourne. In 1992 and 1996 he was a visiting scholar at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University. He is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria.