Admitting Noncompliance : Interview Strategies for Assessing Undetected Legal Deviance

Abstract: One of the core challenges in compliance measurement is to assess and analyze undetected instances of illegal behavior. This chapter discusses interview strategies to best capture such deviant conduct and the factors of influence on it. It discusses two core approaches. First is the informant approach, where multiple rounds of interviews with key informants with deep knowledge of the regulated organization are combined and triangulated to construct a case study of what happened in the organization and what influenced it. Second is the respondent approach, where the same interview is held once with a larger group of similar actors in regulated organizations to understand and compare how these individual actors see compliance and the forces that shape it. The chapter discuses for what purposes each of these approaches is best suited, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how they can best be conducted. Here it shows the importance of a pilot study, proper interview design, and thorough preparation in interview techniques used during the actual interview