Introduction

1Better Regulation remains a core feature of the United Kingdom (UK) regulatory system, reaffirmed in the government’s updated Better Regulation Framework guidance in 2023 (Department for Business & Trade, 2023). More recently, the government has strengthened the political salience of this agenda through a renewed focus on burden reduction and growth-oriented regulation, including the Regulation Action Plan and growth-focused expectations for regulators (HM Treasury, 2025a; 2025b). This renewed emphasis prompts a closer examination of how Better Regulation is interpreted and enacted in practice.

2Focusing on the frontline, a key feature of Better Regulation is the expansion of regulators’ responsibilities beyond enforcement to include education and advice, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Existing studies examining inspectors’ approaches to businesses often emphasize the benefits of this shift, defining advice and support as tools to promote SME compliance, competitiveness, and growth (Vickers, 2008; Borley, 2022). This literature challenges the traditional view of regulation as a burden, instead presenting it as an opportunity for business development (see, e.g., Kitching, 2015). However, the focus on the positive outcomes of advisory work often overlooks the tensions and contradictions that arise when business advice – and the institutional logic that drives it – is embedded within regulatory institutions. The incorporation of business support functions into regulatory organizations, particularly at the frontline, raises critical questions about how inspectors balance enforcement duties with advisory roles. It also prompts reflection on what this transformation means for both SMEs and regulatory integrity. This article situates these organizational changes within policy implementation theory, contributing to debates on how frontline discretion, institutional logics, and Better Regulation reforms interact to shape policy outcomes and the practice of public administration.

3Under the influence of the Better Regulation agenda, the boundary between regulation and enterprise support has become increasingly blurred, with Mallett (2019) arguing that business advice forms part of the regulatory context. Policies framed around deregulation, efficiency, and growth have promoted a shift in regulatory practice, moving inspectors away from enforcement toward support and advice (Lanzano, 2024). These shifts reflect not only changing operational demands but also deeper institutional logics that redefine the purpose of regulation and the roles inspectors are expected to perform. Despite the widespread adoption of these principles, little is known about how enterprise-driven reforms – and the policy assumptions that underpin them – have reshaped the roles and everyday practices of inspectors. Although the expansion of inspectors’ advisory functions has been acknowledged (Vickers, 2008; Tombs, 2016), limited research has explored how enterprise logics embedded in policy agendas like Better Regulation have transformed the meaning, delivery, and institutional framework of regulatory advice.

4These developments have not occurred in isolation. The broader context of austerity and localism in the UK has significantly influenced how regulatory advice is resourced and delivered. Existing research acknowledges these financial and organizational pressures (Tombs, 2016) but has not yet explored how the logic of the enterprise integrates with the logic of the regulatory system to shape the work of inspectors under resource limitations. This limited understanding leaves a significant gap in academic and policy debates on how enterprise logic, austerity, and localism interact to influence frontline advisory practices. Without addressing these dynamics, the implications of Better Regulation for SMEs, regulatory fairness, and public trust remain unclear.

5Responding to debates on regulatory enforcement and the business advisory turn in regulation, and in light of the UK Government’s 2023 Better Regulation Framework (including its emphasis on proportionality, “recognizing what works”, and “leading from the front”) (Department for Business & Trade, 2023, p.3), this article examines how an enterprise logic has become institutionalized within Trading Standards (TS) and how it interacts with a residual but persistent enforcement logic under conditions of austerity and localism. It asks: How do TS inspectors navigate tensions arising from the interaction between enterprise and enforcement logics when regulating SMEs under Better Regulation, austerity, and localism, and what implications follow for frontline practice and the wider regulatory system?

6Drawing on institutional logics theory and concepts from street-level bureaucracy (SLB), this article examines how the enterprise logic of business support and advice interacts with the regulatory enforcement logic of sanctions, creating ambiguities and tensions in everyday regulatory practice. Based on 18 semi-structured interviews with TS inspectors in three UK regions, it offers a detailed empirical account of how Better Regulation reforms, austerity, and localism have reshaped inspectors’ roles, transforming both business advice provision and enforcement strategies within public regulatory organizations.

7This article argues that the Better Regulation agenda has introduced an enterprise logic into regulatory practice, transforming inspectors’ roles by embedding market-oriented practices in public regulatory services. In particular, while regulators historically offered business advice free of charge as part of their public duty, the institutionalization of paid – especially under conditions of austerity and localism – has commodified advice and redefined inspectors as income-generating consultants.

8These shifts create contradictions in regulatory practice, as inspectors navigate ambiguous roles that combine enforcing legal standards with supporting business compliance. This dual positioning generates organizational tensions and personal discomfort, producing a discretionary and uneven regulatory environment that blurs the boundary between public duty and business service. Such ambiguity risks undermining public safety and market fairness. This is particularly concerning when inspectors are pressured to prioritize supportive or revenue-generating activities over impartial enforcement. Policymakers should therefore be cautious about conflating regulatory oversight with business support, ensuring clearer boundaries to protect regulatory integrity.

9Using institutional logics theory integrated with concepts from SLB, this study reveals how enterprise and enforcement logics coexist, collide, and are negotiated in inspectors’ daily work. It contributes to a deeper understanding of how enterprise-driven policies shape regulatory practice and frontline implementation, revealing the paradoxes that arise when public institutions adopt market-oriented approaches. By extending institutional logics theory into the underexplored domain of regulatory implementation, the article offers a theoretical contribution to policy implementation and institutional theory, highlighting how competing logics structure frontline discretion and shape policy outcomes in public service delivery and provides critical insights for practitioners and policymakers engaged in revising the Better Regulation framework.

Better regulation

10Better Regulation reforms have reshaped regulatory systems across the European Union (EU), promoting efficiency, flexibility, and a more business-friendly approach to compliance. Despite leaving the EU, the United Kingdom (UK) continues to develop and reaffirm this agenda through its updated Better Regulation Framework guidance (Department for Business & Trade, 2023), and, more recently, through a renewed emphasis on burden reduction and growth-oriented regulation, including the government’s “regulation for growth” program and Regulation Action Plan (HM Treasury, 2025a; 2025b), and its strategic steers to regulators (e.g., the Competition and Markets Authority)(Department for Business & Trade (2025). These developments matter for frontline regulation because they reinforce expectations that regulatory organizations and inspectors should combine compliance assurance with advisory and partnership-based approaches, shifting emphasis from inspection and sanctioning towards advice, education, and business engagement; shifts recognized and examined in previous research (Vickers, 2008; Borley, 2022).

11The UK Better Regulation agenda also has a longer political lineage than the post-1997 label suggests. Kitching (2007) traces its origins to deregulatory initiatives under the Thatcher and Major governments that aimed to reduce the continuing importance of regulatory safeguards for consumers and the wider public. He also shows that, from 1997, the Labour party sustained a broadly similar substantive orientation but reframed it discursively as “Better Regulation” within a wider program of modernizing government, supported by evolving institutional infrastructure (including specialist units, business-led advisory bodies, and ministerial scrutiny arrangements) and by action plans emphasizing simplification, administrative burden reduction, risk-based inspection and enforcement, and consistency across local authority areas. In this regard, Better Regulation is best understood as an enduring reform trajectory that couples enterprise-oriented objectives with commitments to targeted enforcement and public protection, creating a persistent basis for tension in frontline regulatory roles.

12To understand how these reforms have been interpreted and applied, it is necessary to examine the conceptual foundations of Better Regulation. The literature emphasizes its conceptual ambiguity and strategic use. Baldwin (2005) notes that Better Regulation encompasses multiple objectives – deregulation, simplification, accountability, and efficiency – enabling actors to mobilize it for divergent agendas. However, this malleability risks undermining policy coherence and opens it to rhetorical manipulation. Similarly, Radaelli (2007) describes Better Regulation’s discursive flexibility as both a strength and a limitation. Although it facilitates broad political support, it can obscure ideological content and practical implications. Radaelli and Meuwese (2009) further characterize Better Regulation as a distinct policy domain with its own epistemic communities, institutional infrastructure, and procedural norms. Importantly, they emphasize that although Better Regulation presents itself as a technical and neutral reform agenda, it often embeds normative commitments to competitiveness and economic liberalism. This aligns with the argument of this article that better regulation is part of a larger institutional project that embeds enterprise logic in regulatory roles, particularly through the expansion of business advice and support functions. Empirical evidence confirms this embedding at the frontline.

13Building on critiques of ambiguity and normative bias, recent studies frame Better Regulation as a means of neoliberal governance. Lauber and Brooks (2023), focusing on public health, argue that Better Regulation imposes structural constraints on who can participate in policymaking and what evidence is deemed legitimate. Instruments like cost-benefit analysis entrench economic interests, sidelining public health, and preserving the status quo through procedural assumptions. By embedding these assumptions into procedures, Better Regulation preserves the status quo and maintains corporate influence over policy. Pedersen (2021), in a case study of Danish consultation practices, finds that although formal consultations appear participatory, they often function as ritual performances that reinforce existing administrative norms rather than enable substantive change. Although Denmark is regarded as a high-performing example of Better Regulation, Pedersen shows how consultations can reproduce prevailing power structures under the guise of participation, underscoring the gap between procedural legitimacy and actual influence.

14These critiques converge in recent work focusing on Better Regulation’s discursive power and institutional consequences. Radaelli (2023) argues that its discourse dominates regulatory debates, leaving little space for alternative conceptions prioritizing public values, social justice, or long-term planning. He underscores that the reform language is not neutral but delineates acceptable policy choices. Wiener (2006), reviewing the EU’s Better Regulation agenda, similarly highlights its reliance on economic tools such as cost-benefit analysis. While aiming to improve effectiveness, such a narrow focus risks institutional blind spots, particularly marginalizing social or environmental considerations. He advocates for a broader conception of regulatory effectiveness that incorporates legitimacy and equity alongside efficiency. White, Willmott, and Close (2022), studying end-of-life care regulation, add that simplification and streamlining have produced fragmented oversight regimes operating in silos. This fragmentation diminishes clarity, complicates accountability, and undermines public value in sensitive sectors. Their findings suggest that regulatory rationalization guided by abstract efficiency principles can cause tangible harm, especially in complex areas that demand coordination and sensitivity.

15Although extensive research has examined the institutional, discursive, and sectoral dimensions of Better Regulation, there remains limited empirical insight into how frontline inspectors experience and navigate these reforms. This gap is significant given the growing expectations that regulators support business growth while upholding compliance and public safety. Although the literature outlines the ideological foundations and policy instruments of Better Regulation, we know little about how these changes shape inspectors’ daily practice, particularly in their interactions with small and medium companies (SMEs). How do inspectors interpret and enact Better Regulation in their work with SMEs, and what institutional tensions emerge in the process?

16In the UK, Better Regulation is often examined through its impact on SMEs, indirectly illuminating pressures on local regulators. Kitching (2015) challenges the assumption that deregulation inherently benefits SMEs, showing that many firms value regulatory clarity, predictability, and access to guidance. Similarly, Kitching (2007) critiques initiatives narrowly focused on reducing administrative burdens, arguing that such assumptions overlook how regulation enables improvements in business performance. Although reforms emphasize easing burdens, they often do not consider whether and how small firms can adapt practices to enhance competitiveness and growth. Unless policymakers recognize these enabling tendencies, deregulation risks producing unintended consequences that do not support SME development.

17Building on this perspective, Kitching (2018) argues that regulation not only constrains but also enables entrepreneurial action, shaping market relations and stakeholder interactions essential for effective business performance. Similarly, Mallett et al. (2019), reviewing qualitative studies, show that SMEs engage with regulations in complex, varied, and embedded ways beyond simple compliance costs, highlighting opportunities, protections, and dynamic adaptations often overlooked. Their framework underscores the need to avoid treating SMEs as a homogeneous group uniformly burdened by regulation.

18Vickers (2008) extends this analysis by examining how Better Regulation principles were applied to Health and Safety in Britain. He points out the shift towards risk-based enforcement, removal of prescriptive requirements, and promotion of earned autonomy. While these reforms aimed to streamline oversight and promote an enterprise culture, they often weakened the regulator’s capacity to ensure compliance, especially in complex or sensitive sectors. Agencies were expected to do more with less, relying on provider self- assessment and reducing inspections amid increasing expectations and resource constraints.

19The institutional effects of Better Regulation have been compounded by broader political-economic conditions, particularly austerity and localism, which have reshaped the operational context of local regulators. Since 2010, austerity policies have imposed deep budget cuts on UK local authorities, severely eroding regulatory capacity. Services have been dramatically reduced, with some local teams reduced to just one or two officers (Tombs, 2016). As Vickers (2008) warned, austerity has amplified under-enforcement risks, making resource-based triage the default. Risk-based regulation, originally a strategic method for prioritizing harm, has become a reactive tool driven by necessity. This shift reinforces enterprise logic not only ideologically but materially, as regulators are expected to act entrepreneurially, ration their presence, and generate income wherever possible. Comparable patterns have been observed in other policy domains. Sabourin, Craviotti and Milhorance (2020) show how austerity-driven retrenchment in Latin America gradually dismantled family farming policies, beginning with incremental budget cuts before moving to institutional weakening. While their analysis focuses on agricultural policy, their framework helps make sense of the UK case, where austerity hollowed out regulatory enforcement while Better Regulation reforms strengthened enterprise-oriented functions.

20One prominent mechanism through which this shift is operationalized is the expansion of Primary Authority (PA) schemes, in which businesses partner with a designated local authority for tailored compliance advice. Dunlop, Kamkhaji and Radaelli (2015) analyze inspectors’ responses to the PA scheme and show that they largely absorbed the Hampton vision of burden reduction and risk-based regulation, irrespective of whether they received formal training. While their study does not frame these findings in terms of institutional logics, it nonetheless shows how the principles underpinning Better Regulation quickly became internalized within regulatory practice, supporting this article’s focus on the embedding of enterprise-oriented norms.

21While designed to enhance consistency and reduce burdens, PA also sits within a wider pattern of burden reduction and growth-oriented expectations directed at regulators, and it provides a concrete organizational channel through which enterprise-oriented priorities become embedded in local regulatory practice. PA schemes have also commodified regulatory advice, transforming inspectors into quasi-consultants (Lanzano, 2024). Fairman and Yapp (2005) found that SMEs often seek clear prescriptive guidance rather than self-directed autonomy, challenging assumptions that advisory models reduce enforcement burdens. The pressures introduced by localism compound these dynamics. As regulatory responsibilities devolve to under-resourced local authorities, discretion increases, leading to significant variation in implementation. Inspectors operating under diverse political and financial conditions must interpret Better Regulation principles in situ, frequently navigating tensions between advisory and enforcement roles.

22Research on implementation reinforces this point. Taylor, Zarb, and Jeschke (2021) show that ambiguity and uncertainty are ‘two sides of the same coin’ in policy implementation, shaping how local officials interpret mandates. Although their study focuses on post-disaster governance in the United States, the underlying insight resonates strongly with the UK case: inspectors confront contradictory signals that cannot be resolved simply through clearer guidance or additional information, leaving them to navigate persistent ambiguity in practice.

23These empirical developments can be interpreted through institutional logics theory, which illuminates the tensions inspectors face between competing regulatory imperatives. From this perspective, the growing formalization of enterprise logic prioritizes collaboration over deterrence and customer service over impartial enforcement. Regulators under pressure to reduce burdens and facilitate growth face tensions between compliance and competitiveness. While reforms primarily target SMEs, their implications for inspectors are clear: they are increasingly expected to adopt supportive advisory roles that may conflict with enforcement responsibilities. By foregrounding these frontline tensions, this article shows how enterprise-oriented reforms reshape regulatory roles and expectations, particularly under policies promoting economic development.

Theoretical Framework

24TS inspectors operate in environments shaped by multiple policies and organizational demands. To analyze these dynamics, this article draws on the concept of institutional logics, defined as socially constructed symbols and material practices patterns that structure how individuals and organizations interpret their roles, make decisions, and justify actions (Thornton et al., 2015). These logics operate within and across institutional orders – such as the state, the market, or the profession – and carry with them distinct norms, values, and assumptions about what constitutes appropriate behavior. As Glynn and Aunno (2023) note, the institutional logics perspective emerged as a response to earlier accounts of institutional theory that focused primarily on conformity and stability. In contrast, logics emphasize how actors are embedded in multiple institutional environments and must navigate competing expectations. This makes institutional logics particularly useful for understanding how inspectors manage ambiguity in regulatory work, where they are tasked with maintaining legal enforcement while also promoting business support and flexibility.

25In the context of UK TS, two institutional logics are particularly salient: an enforcement logic grounded in statutory enforcement and a market-oriented enterprise logic focused on business support and economic growth. The enforcement logic, associated with the institutional order of the state, prioritizes legality, public interest, and procedural fairness. It positions inspectors as enforcers of rules designed to protect consumers and uphold standards. In contrast, the enterprise logic aligns with the market order and promotes flexibility, responsiveness, and innovation. This logic is embedded in policy reforms informed by government’s commissioned reports such as Hampton (2005) and Macrory (2006), and consequentially in the Primary Authority (PA) scheme, which encourage regulators to act as facilitators of business growth and to provide chargeable advice services. Although both logics are central to the organizational field of local regulation, they often prescribe incompatible actions (Besharov & Smith, 2014; Thornton et al., 2014), especially when inspectors are expected to simultaneously generate income and enforce statutory requirements.

26The coexistence of enforcement and enterprise logics within TS generates tensions that reflect broader institutional complexity. As Besharov and Smith (2014) argue, such tensions become particularly pronounced when multiple logics are both central to an organization’s identity and operational mandate but prescribe incompatible behaviors. Greenwood et al. (2011) further conceptualize this as institutional complexity, pointing out how organizations facing conflicting logics engage in strategies such as compartmentalization or selective coupling to reconcile competing demands. In this case, inspectors are asked to maintain public protection through enforcement while also enabling business growth through supportive interventions. These demands do not merely compete for attention; they often rest on fundamentally different assumptions about the role of the regulator. This multiplicity of logic can lead to internal friction, inconsistent practices, and contested interpretations of what constitutes effective regulation.

27These tensions materialize in inspectors’ daily decisions, particularly under austerity-driven resource constraints and local expectations. Reay and Hinings (2009) extend this understanding by showing that competing institutional logics can coexist within a field over extended periods without necessarily resolving into a dominant order. Hill and Hupe (2014) further argue that implementation is not a simple administrative stage but a complex, negotiated process shaped by multiple institutional layers and actors, highlighting the embeddedness of inspectors’ decisions within broader governance dynamics. This perspective underscores the discretionary space inspectors occupy, where they must weigh enforcement duties against advisory roles, often without clear guidance or consistent institutional support. Moreover, institutional logics do not operate as fixed scripts, but are interpreted, adapted, and selectively enacted by actors in context. For frontline inspectors, navigating competing expectations involves not only balancing priorities but also making situated judgments about what constitutes appropriate regulatory conduct. Van Mierlo and Totin (2014) describe this process as unfolding between script and improvisation, where actors engage with institutional structures through locally situated practices.

28Integrating institutional logics with the street-level bureaucracy (SLB) perspective enhances understanding of how inspectors’ discretionary practices enact, adapt, or resist institutional prescriptions in context. While institutional logics explain the broader rationalities shaping regulatory environments, SLB theory foregrounds the micro-level discretion through which these logics are realized or transformed in everyday practice. In this view, inspectors are active participants in shaping how logics are realized in practice. Their responses are mediated by available resources, internal organizational norms, and external pressures such as political priorities or business expectations. Lipsky’s (1980) concept of SLB reinforces this perspective by pointing out how frontline officials exercise discretion to interpret policy in ways that manage ambiguity and reconcile conflicting demands.

29Recent scholarship further develops the understanding of discretion by examining how street-level bureaucrats’ accountability relations shape their enactment of competing logics. For example, the Accountability Regimes Framework (ARF) by Thomann et al. (2023) suggests that inspectors, like other SLBs, are influenced not only by hierarchical oversight but also by horizontal and informal accountabilities to colleagues, political networks, and the wider public, creating accountability dilemmas akin to those described by Lipsky (1980). In contexts where enterprise and enforcement logics produce conflicting demands, inspectors’ decisions are shaped by how they prioritize these competing accountabilities, often navigating between professional standards, public interest, and organizational expectations. This perspective emphasizes that regulatory implementation is inherently political, as inspectors may exercise discretion to align their practices with perceived public values or professional ethics, reinforcing their role as informal policymakers within regulatory systems (Thomann et al., 2023).

30Building on these insights, Kang & Lee (2025) highlight how the discretion of street-level bureaucrats is also shaped by their judgments of client credibility, which are often influenced by implicit biases and dominant societal stereotypes. This perspective reinforces the view that inspector decisions are not only mediated by institutional logics and accountability dilemmas but are also value-laden and situated within broader social power relations. In regulatory contexts, such credibility judgments may affect how inspectors determine which businesses are deemed trustworthy or compliant, shaping the distribution of support and enforcement outcomes. Recognizing that Weberian ideals of bureaucratic neutrality often mask these embedded biases, this framework underscores the socially constructed and potentially inequitable nature of frontline discretion (Kang & Lee, 2025).

31By combining institutional logics with SLB, this article clarifies how the interaction between enterprise and enforcement logics is enacted in TS’ regulation of SMEs under conditions shaped by Better Regulation, austerity, and localism, and how inspectors navigate the tensions this interaction generates. It shows that inspectors are active agents who interpret, adapt, and sometimes transform regulatory practices through discretion, initiatives, and situated learning. Their daily decisions are shaped not only by institutional prescriptions, but also by accountability dilemmas, credibility judgments, and organizational capacities. This integration contributes to institutional theory and SLB scholarship by clarifying how competing logics are translated into routine regulatory practice, and by specifying how resource pressures and local priorities can reproduce and intensify system-level contradictions. It cautions against assuming that business support and statutory enforcement are complementary, highlighting dilemmas and equity risks when both are pursued simultaneously under resource scarcity and locally defined priorities.

Research Design

32This study adopts a qualitative and interpretive research design to examine how frontline regulatory actors make sense of and enact competing institutional logics, specifically, enforcement and enterprise logics, in their everyday work. The research is grounded in an interpretive epistemology, which assumes that meaning is socially constructed and best accessed through lived experiences and situated interpretations of those directly involved in the work (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012). In line with Yanow (2000), interpretive analysis is used here not to identify generalizable causal patterns, but to uncover the locally constructed meanings, categories, and interpretive practices through which inspectors understand their roles and responsibilities. Rather than seeking to test causal relationships, the study aims to explore how inspectors interpret and negotiate the tensions between enforcement and support, particularly as regulatory organizations are pressured to adopt more enterprise-oriented practices.

33The article draws on empirical material collected as part of a broader qualitative study on regulatory policy implementation in the United Kingdom (UK) (see Lanzano, 2024). It focuses specifically on local authority TS services, which represent a particularly rich case for examining institutional complexity. TS officers operate at the intersection of statutory enforcement duties and increasing expectations to provide business advice, especially in the context of the Better Regulation agenda. At the same time, TS services have undergone significant structural change: once more centrally coordinated, they now operate under the remit of local authorities in England. This shift makes them particularly relevant for exploring the implications of localism, as regulatory responsibilities are devolved to under-resourced local bodies with varying priorities and capacities.

34Initial contacts were made at the Harrogate Chartered TS Conference in 2017. Building on these initial contacts, the study generated empirical material through 18 semi-structured interviews with inspectors working in three English TS services: Peterborough and Cambridgeshire TS, Hertfordshire TS, and Buckinghamshire and Surrey TS. The interviews were conducted between October 2018 and May 2019 and included a mix of frontline officers, senior managers, and CTSI directors as represented in Table 1. Access was further facilitated through snowball sampling, as early participants referred to colleagues from the same or related TS services.

35The selection of the three organizations was purposive and theory driven. The article examines how enterprise-oriented expectations become enacted within TS and what tensions emerge when these expectations gain organizational traction alongside statutory enforcement responsibilities. Selecting services that were described within the professional community as comparatively advanced in providing business advice therefore created an information-rich setting in which the interaction between enterprise and enforcement logics would be most visible. This design is not intended to map national variation across TS services or to explain resistance to enterprise-oriented approaches, which would constitute a distinct empirical phenomenon. Rather, it offers a focused account of the dilemmas and contradictions that can arise even where supportive, advice-led approaches are relatively accepted and institutionalized. Therefore, the findings should be read as analytically informative about mechanisms and tensions under conditions of uptake, rather than as representative of all TS services.

36Also, Better Regulation has operated as a long-running reform agenda, and its core emphasis on proportionality, burden reduction, and risk-based, business-facing approaches to regulation was already established during the period of fieldwork. Therefore, the 2023 updated guidance (Department for Business & Trade, 2023), together with subsequent policy documents (HM Treasury, 2025a; 2025b; Department for Business & Trade, 2025), is treated as a reaffirmation and consolidation of this existing trajectory. For this reason, analyzing inspectors’ accounts from 2018–2019 remains relevant for understanding the institutional foundations and practical tensions that continue to shape growth-oriented, advice-led regulation in the current policy context. However, the article does not claim to evaluate post-2019 changes empirically; rather, it analyzes how inspectors experienced and enacted this agenda during the period studied.

37It is important to reaffirm that the unit of analysis is the individual inspector, located within their organizational setting, enabling a focus on how broader institutional pressures are interpreted and enacted in daily regulatory practice. However, three participants held dual roles as manager and operational inspector, contributing both from an organizational and frontline perspective. Also, two participants were members of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI). The CTSI is the professional body representing the field of TS and consumer protection in the UK. It is dedicated to supporting, promoting, and advancing the TS profession by providing training, setting professional standards, and influencing policy related to consumer protection and fair trade. CTSI interviewees provided perspectives on the roles and developments of TS, complementing the experiences of frontline inspectors. Their insights provide an informed perspective on developments within TS, complementing the experiences of frontline inspectors.

Table 1. Interview Participants.

Interviewee #	Role	Organization
1	Trading Standards Inspector	Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trading Standards Service
2	Head of Protection (Business)	Hertfordshire County Council, Community Protection Directorate
3	Campaigns and Policy Executive	Chartered Trading Standards Institute
4	Trading Standards Inspector	Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trading Standards Service
5	Trading Standards Inspector	Hertfordshire Trading Standards
6	Trading Standards Inspector	Hertfordshire Trading Standards
7	Environmental Health Inspector	Peterborough City Council (Environmental Health)
8	Trading Standards Inspector	Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trading Standards Service
9	Strategy Director	Chartered Trading Standards Institute
10	Trading Standards Inspector	Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trading Standards Service
11	Trading Standards Inspector	Hertfordshire Trading Standards
12	Trading Standards Inspector	Hertfordshire Trading Standards
13	Trading Standards Inspector	Hertfordshire Trading Standards
14	Trading Standards Inspector	Hertfordshire Trading Standards
15	Trading Standards Inspector	Buckinghamshire & Surrey County Council Trading Standards
16	Business Compliance Manager	Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trading Standards Service
17	Trading Standards Inspector	Hertfordshire Trading Standards
18	Lead Officer	Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Trading Standards Service

Source : the Author

38The interviews were conducted face-to-face, primarily at the facilities of the respective TS organizations. In line with the interpretive orientation of the study, the interviews were semi-structured and guided by a flexible topic list that covered enforcement practices, advisory roles, institutional change, and perceptions of regulatory work. The interviews ranged from 35 to 90 minutes in duration. All interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and anonymized. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to interviews.

39Data were analyzed using thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2017), grounded in an interpretive approach and informed by institutional logic theory (themes, sub-themes, and codes are represented in Table 2). The aim was to understand how TS inspectors interpret and navigate competing logics of enforcement and business support in their daily regulatory practice. The analysis followed an iterative multistage process that combined inductive and deductive coding strategies. Concepts drawn from institutional logic theory, particularly enforcement and enterprise logics, guided the initial coding phases, while remaining open to the emergence of new themes from participants’ accounts.

Table 2. Summary of themes, sub-themes, and codes.

Theme	Sub-theme	Codes
Institutionalization of enterprise logic in Trading Standards	Better Regulation as normative reorientation	Post-Hampton/Macrory reforms as consequential turning point; engagement preferred to confrontation; persuasion/problem-solving as default route to compliance; “old ways” enforcement as reference point
Institutionalization of enterprise logic in Trading Standards	External pressures and legitimacy constraints on enforcement style	Regulatory burden-reduction narrative shaping expectations; anticipated public criticism constraining “officious” behavior; weakened legitimacy of direct/authoritative interaction styles
Institutionalization of enterprise logic in Trading Standards	Organizational carriers of enterprise logic	Messaging, training, and professional networks diffusing expectations; internal “golden thread”/sourcing units redefining legitimate practice; reprioritization and marginalization of inherited enforcement expectations
Institutionalization of enterprise logic in Trading Standards	Managerial culture shift	Shift from tough inspection-led management to business-friendly expectations; supportive conduct treated as appropriate standard; enforcement retained but culturally marginalized
Institutionalization of enterprise logic in Trading Standards	Operational reorientation of frontline work	Fewer routine visits/inspections; advice-led model of delivery; time reallocated from inspections/investigations to advisory engagement; redefinition of legitimate regulatory work
Institutionalization of enterprise logic in Trading Standards	Residual enforcement logic as backstop	Enforcement/prosecution maintained as option; enforcement repositioned as legitimizing boundary rather than default; coexistence without full displacement
Institutionalization of enterprise logic in Trading Standards	Contextual conditions shaping enactment	Austerity-driven capacity contraction (budgets, staffing, collaboration); localism tying work to local authority corporate priorities; support framed as contribution to local prosperity; SMEs prioritized as locally salient
Institutionalization of enterprise logic in Trading Standards	HA-to-PA transition and reframing of advice	Home Authority advice as free public service baseline; Primary Authority associated with charging/cost recovery; commodification of advice linked to cuts; uncertainty over boundary between regulatory responsibility and income generation
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Advice-first compliance orientation	Advice as primary route to compliance; cooperation preferred over coercion; prosecution framed as exceptional/last resort; business-friendly stance as routine
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Enforcement as escalation boundary	Escalation triggered by sustained non-compliance or salient public risk; advisory investment has limits; reassertion of authority to preserve legitimacy
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Austerity as driver of advice pragmatics	Advice framed as less resource-intensive than court action; preventative “stop it at the source” logic; advising as most feasible compliance strategy under scarcity
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Hybridization of inspections and advice	Advice delivered through inspection encounters; inspection as compliance check plus support opportunity; blurred supportive/coercive boundary; ongoing interpretation of inspection purpose
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Performance/targets versus meaningful engagement	Pressure to deliver inspection numbers; tension between targets and time-intensive advice; accountability dilemma (quality support vs throughput); scarcity sharpens contradictions
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Reduced proactive support and constrained SME guidance	SMEs perceived as needing more advice but receiving less; constrained visit duration; decline of proactive advice visits; perceived reduction in quality of advice/support
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Role ambiguity and internal conflict over charging	“Fine line” between adviser and enforcer; charging expectations extending into compliance work; management pushing monetization of visits; conflict primarily internal rather than with businesses
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Ethical and identity discomfort in charging SMEs	Discomfort charging struggling/new SMEs; advice reframed from public service to transaction; charging risks undermining cooperative relationships; inspectors’ self-understanding as “a service” versus local authority charging policies
Inspectors’ responses to reordered logics	Selective charging and patchwork regimes	Difficulty justifying who is charged and why; sector-based exemptions versus cost recovery; DEFRA risk rationale shaping exemptions; anticipated policy drift towards broader charging; perceived inconsistency and fairness tensions
System-level implications for the regulatory system	Cost-recovery and consultancy-style organizational model	Cost recovery as organizational rationale; advisory time displacing routine inspections/investigations; Trading Standards positioned as consultancy-type provider; market-oriented priorities embedded in routine delivery
System-level implications for the regulatory system	Uneven access to advice across firm size	PA arrangements benefiting larger firms; SMEs face different charging dynamic; discretionary thresholds for limited free support; variability across cases/authorities; SMEs disengaging when advice becomes chargeable
System-level implications for the regulatory system	Stratification via private markets for regulatory expertise	Larger firms hiring ex-officers/consultants; regulatory knowledge treated as purchasable asset; “extra layer of defense” for well-resourced firms; SMEs exposed to informational disadvantage
System-level implications for the regulatory system	Inter-authority competition and procedural dependencies under PA	Competition between authorities for PA partners; advice provision resembling a market; formal PA processes structuring cross-jurisdiction intervention; risks to uniform oversight/consistency in commercialized landscape
System-level implications for the regulatory system	Consequences for fairness, prevention, and regulatory coherence	Commercialization transferring costs to businesses; preventative aims weakened by pay-to-access advice; fragmentation/unevenness across local authorities; frontline delivery caught between consistency expectations and commodified support

Source: the Author.

40Although the full data set consists of 18 semi-structured interviews with TS inspectors and managers, and CTSI directors, the thematic analysis presented in this article does not aim for equal transcript representation but for an interpretively grounded account of the themes most relevant to the research questions (Clarke & Braun, 2017). All interviews were coded and considered during the analysis. However, when presenting the findings, extracts that provided the most detailed, reflective, and information-rich accounts of the focal themes and institutional tensions examined were prioritized (Patton, 2015). This selective emphasis supports analytical depth, but it also carries the risk of under-representing dissenting or less elaborated views. To mitigate this risk, the full dataset was systematically checked for variation and disconfirming evidence during coding and theme refinement, and themes were retained only when supported across multiple interviews as indicated by Clarke and Braun (2017). Also, divergent and marginal perspectives were used to refine theme boundaries and specify the conditions under which tensions intensified. Moreover, even if not directly cited, the remaining interviews contributed to the broader contextual understanding of regulatory practice.

41NVivo 12 was used throughout the analysis to manage and organize interview transcripts, code excerpts, and memos. The software also facilitated the integration of field notes and reflections recorded during and after the interviews. Open coding was conducted on all 18 transcripts, followed by the refinement and grouping of codes into broader thematic categories. Particular attention was paid to the language of the participants, their definition of regulatory roles, and expressions of ambiguity or institutional tension. Analytical memos were written throughout the process to document evolving interpretations, capture emergent connections between codes and institutional logics, and support reflexive engagement with the data.

42In addition to manual coding, the study used ChatGPT-4.0 (OpenAI) as an exploratory tool to support theme identification and assist in the organization of initial codes. Selected transcript excerpts and code summaries were input into the model in segmented form. The AI-generated outputs were then compared with the researcher’s own interpretations to support reflexivity, broaden interpretive possibilities, and identify latent thematic connections between cases. Importantly, all coding decisions and final thematic interpretations remained under the full responsibility of the researcher. This approach aligns with emerging methodological discussions about the use of AI tools in qualitative research, where such systems are seen as analytical aides that must be used transparently, critically, and under human supervision (Morgan, 2023; Chubb, 2023).

43The final thematic framework reflected a combination of theory-informed categories and inductively generated insights. It allowed both cross-case comparisons and a deeper interpretive analysis of how institutional logics were enacted, resisted, and negotiated in daily practices. Attention was also paid to the material and spatial conditions described by the participants, which were later revisited in the findings as expressions of broader organizational and institutional pressures.

44This study received ethical approval from Anglia Ruskin University. All participants received an information sheet and were asked to sign a consent form prior to the interview, following the university’s approved template. The form informed participants of their right to withdraw at any time without providing a reason and included contact details to raise concerns about the research or its ethical conduct. The interview recordings were securely stored on a password-protected external hard drive, and the transcripts were anonymized and assigned random identifiers in the format ’interviewee#’ followed by a number (e.g., interviewee#1) as indicated in Table 1, without any link between participant names and identifiers.

Findings

45The structure of the findings section reflects the three themes identified through thematic analysis. The first sub-section identifies the enterprise logic, the enforcement logic, and how these logics become entangled with the consequences of Better Regulation reforms, austerity, and localism. The second sub-section examines inspectors’ responses to the tensions created by enterprise logic and its coexistence with enforcement logic in the context of austerity and localism. Finally, the third sub-section considers the implications of enterprise logic for the broader regulatory system, as experienced by TS inspectors.

Introduction of Enterprise logic

46This sub-section examines how enterprise logic became institutionalized within TS through shifts in the external policy environment and organizational change. It shows that more business-friendly approaches have become predominant, while elements of the enforcement logic remain present and at times sit uneasily alongside newer priorities. Also, the sub-section traces how enterprise logic reshaped managerial styles and expectations as well as operational practices, with advice becoming central to frontline work and routine inspections reduced in favor of advisory activities. It then situates these developments within a context of reduced resources and localism, where inspectors’ work is increasingly expected to align with local economic objectives and SMEs become a focal concern. In doing so, the sub-section shows how enterprise and enforcement logics are enacted in practice at regulatory frontline and how their interaction is conditioned by austerity and localism.

47Although Better Regulation entered the political scene with the Better Regulation Task Force in 1997, interviewees associate the most consequential changes for regulators with the reforms that followed the reports produced by Hampton (2005) and Macrory (2006), later consolidated through the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008. As interviewee#2 notes: “I think it was probably the Hampton Review that came out of government, this was around 10-15 years ago (interview took place in 2019).” Also, interviewee#12 explains:

Yes, there’s been a fairly noticeable shift over the last, say, ten years. Going back about ten years or so, the government started to focus on "better regulation”. This is not necessarily about specific laws but rather about the approach of regulators toward businesses and vice versa, aiming to encourage engagement over confrontation.

48These accounts suggest that Better Regulation was experienced as a normative reorientation in how regulators relate to businesses, with engagement positioned as preferable to confrontation. Within an institutional logic framing, this can be interpreted as a move away from a predominantly confrontational enforcement logic towards enterprise logic, which foregrounds persuasion and problem-solving as the default route to compliance.

49The perceived need for change is facilitated by external pressures that align with the narrative of reducing the regulatory burden on businesses - a narrative that has been challenged in a contested debate regarding the impact of regulation on businesses, particularly SMEs (Mallett et al., 2019). In the context of this study, these pressures are experienced as discouraging confrontational enforcement styles among regulators such as TS. As inspector#8 explains,

We’ve probably had to [be less officious] because you get criticized if you act that way now. I think it’s acceptable to ask, ‘Why isn’t this like this?’ But you can’t speak to people like that anymore.

50These reflections point to a weakening of the earlier enforcement logic, which normalized more formal and direct interactions. Also, anticipated public criticism functions as a constraint on how inspectors can legitimately enact authority.

51Moving away from earlier means of delivering regulation also entails the introduction, and institutionalization, of new ways of working. This shift is advanced through messaging, training, and professional networks that circulate shared expectations about “how” regulatory work ought to be performed. As interviewee#13 explains:

We hear about it through our training, various institute activities, media, and that sort of thing directly, and also through the "golden thread" from our sourcing units, which group things that way and ask: How do we do less of the stuff that maybe isn’t right in the old ways, and what do we need to change to make them a bit more reflective of the potential travel?

52This reference to doing “less of the stuff” associated with the “old ways” indicates that the earlier logic remains a salient point of comparison in inspectors’ thinking. It also suggests a mechanism through which this shift occurs. These networks – particularly internal channels such as sourcing units – act as carriers of enterprise logic by redefining what counts as legitimate regulatory practice and, in doing so, deprioritize and marginalize inherited enforcement expectations.

53The contrast with the earlier enforcement logic is also evident in shifts in management culture. Inspectors described how leadership styles have changed over time, signaling a move away from an approach that emphasized routine inspections and a tougher stance, towards expectations that prioritize support and advice. As interviewee#8 recalls: “My old manager was quite tough. We did inspections religiously [. . .] It was less business-friendly than we are now, definitely!”

54This account indicates that the reorientation associated with Better Regulation is enacted through managerial expectations as well as policy discourse, with supportive conduct increasingly treated as the appropriate standard of practice.

55The introduction of enterprise logic also produced concrete operational changes. Inspectors contrasted the earlier enforcement logic – characterized by frequent inspections and a tougher stance – with a more supportive, advisory approach that has developed over the past decade. As interviewee#9 recalls:

We used to do a lot and a lot of inspections in all areas, and we were much tougher, I think. We’ve become a lot more business-friendly, doing fewer visits and spending a lot more time giving advice.

56This extract evidences a shift from an inspection-led model aligned with an enforcement logic to an advice-led model characteristic of enterprise logic. Within an institutional logic framework, this is a redefinition of legitimate regulatory work: time is moved from routine visiting towards advisory engagement, and “business-friendly” conduct is treated as a sign of appropriate regulatory practice.

57Although the enforcement logic remains present, it is overshadowed by an enterprise-oriented approach that prioritizes support and guidance. As interviewee#6 explains: “I think the balance is more towards business advice than the investigation and prosecution side. The option for enforcement is there, but we tend to focus more on advising businesses”. Also, interviewee#9 observes: “It’s no longer just about enforcement; it’s about ensuring compliance through advice.”

58These accounts show how enforcement is repositioned. Indeed, it remains available as a legitimizing backstop, while advice becomes the dominant and more routinely legitimate route to compliance.

59Resource reduction linked to austerity constitutes a critical contextual condition alongside the introduction of enterprise logic, because it shapes what TS can prioritize and deliver. As interviewee#1 points out:

The lack of funding for local authorities has left them in dire straits. In the “good old days”, to coin a phrase, our safety budget, for example, was around £40–50,000 a year, and we worked closely with the test houses and other authorities because we had the money, the resources, and the staff to do so.

60This extract indicates a contraction in organizational capacity - budgets, staffing, and the ability to undertake proactive work and sustained collaboration. In turn, this resource constraint provides an important backdrop for how inspectors describe subsequent changes in practice, including what forms of regulatory activity become feasible and prioritized in day-to-day work, as the following paragraphs show.

61Against this backdrop of resource scarcity, the shift from Home Authority (HA) to Primary Authority (PA) also reshaped how inspectors understood the role of business advice. Under the HA model, guidance was routinely offered free of charge as part of inspectors’ public service function. Within this earlier arrangement – where enforcement logic remained influential – advice supported compliance but was not framed as a commercial activity. As interviewee#6 recalls:

One of the changes here has been in how we provide business advice. Traditionally, we always offered a business advice service – what used to be called "home authority" advice – where any business could come to us for free advice on compliance. But with the cuts, a decision was made to charge businesses for advice.

62This extract links the shift directly to resource pressures (“the cuts”). Interpreted through an institutional logic lens, charging practices further embed enterprise logic by commodifying an activity previously treated as a public good, generating uncertainty about where regulatory responsibility ends and income generation begins.

63Moreover, the principle of localism in the administration of public services intensifies how enterprise logic is enacted. Indeed, TS’s priorities are tied more directly to local authority agendas and locally defined economic objectives. Inspectors’ accounts suggest that regulatory work is increasingly expected to align with “local” priorities oriented towards business prosperity, with particular emphasis on local firms and SMEs. Interviewee#12 explains: “There’s been a shift toward ensuring our work aligns with the local authority’s corporate priorities. One key priority is helping businesses prosper [. . .].” Also, interviewee#6 says: “We’re here to help businesses, especially local businesses. If you’re contributing to the local economy, we want to support you.” Similarly, interviewee#11 notes: “With the training, I guess there’s been a focus on trying to be more supportive with small and medium enterprises.”

64These extracts indicate that enterprise logic is translated into expectations that shape both what counts as valued regulatory activity and which firms are prioritized for support. The practical implication is a reordering of attention and advisory capacity towards businesses perceived as locally important, with the potential for variability across authorities as local political priorities and financial pressures shape frontline regulatory style.

65The findings in this sub-section show how enterprise logic has become embedded within TS, pushing the enforcement logic to the margins without fully displacing it. Enterprise logic now provides the dominant rationale for frontline engagement, yet its predominance generates tensions that are compounded by the continued – if residual – presence of enforcement as an inherited and sometimes conflicting logic. These tensions are further intensified by austerity and localism. Indeed, resource constraints and locally defined priorities encourage a stronger emphasis on supportive, “business-friendly” approaches, particularly towards local SMEs, and can reinforce enterprise-oriented practices as a pragmatic response to scarcity. In this context, inspectors operate within a regulatory institution structured by competing logics under conditions that make reconciling support and enforcement especially difficult. The next sub-section explores how inspectors respond to this reordered landscape in their everyday practice.

Inspectors’ responses

66The previous sub-section traced how enterprise logic was introduced and institutionalized within TS. This sub-section builds on that by examining how the reordering of logics generates tensions that inspectors must navigate in their everyday regulatory work. It explores how inspectors respond to the dominance of enterprise logic while negotiating its coexistence with a now marginal but persistent enforcement logic. The findings show that inspectors increasingly rely on advice as an efficient, relational route to securing compliance, while retaining enforcement as a necessary escalation mechanism when advice fails. These responses reveal ongoing efforts to reconcile support for businesses with statutory enforcement duties under conditions shaped by austerity measures and the principle of localism.

67Inspectors increasingly accept advice as the primary means of securing business compliance, favoring it over investigation or prosecution in routine cases. Advice is framed as an efficient and relational route to compliance, while prosecution is treated as exceptional rather than routine. This negotiation is evident in inspectors’ preference for cooperation over coercion, as interviewee#8 explains:

You know, the aim is to get people to comply, but not by going through an investigation or prosecution, that’s always a last resort [. . .] If you can get people to comply without going down that route, I think it’s preferable.

68These comments indicate how inspectors respond to both logics simultaneously. Advice becomes the first-line strategy aligned with enterprise logic, while prosecution is repositioned as a residual option associated with the enforcement logic. This advice-first orientation reshapes when and how enforcement is used, reinforcing the idea of prosecution as a last resort in frontline practice.

69Accordingly, enforcement logic remains visible alongside the embrace of enterprise logic, particularly in how inspectors describe the point at which advice ceases to be a viable strategy. Enforcement features in inspectors’ reasoning not as a default posture but as an escalation triggered by sustained non-compliance or salient public risk. As interviewee#6 explains: “I’ve had cases where I spent 20 hours advising a business and they still didn’t listen, so we ended up prosecuting them.”

70The reference to “20 hours” signals that advisory engagement can involve substantial time investment, but that this investment has limits when cooperation is not forthcoming. In institutional logics terms, enforcement functions as a practical and legitimacy-preserving boundary, marking when persuasion is exhausted and regulatory authority must be reasserted.

71Building on this escalation point, resource pressure emerges as a central reason inspectors begin with advice rather than enforcement. When time and capacity are limited, advice becomes a more attractive and feasible route to compliance than pursuing investigations or prosecution. As interviewee#6 explains:

Advice is probably less labor-intensive in terms of overall impact [. . .] taking something to court is very resource intensive. Hopefully, we try to do it at the source, to stop things from going wrong in the first place.

72These reflections show how resource constraints associated with austerity can steer inspectors towards advice as a pragmatic and efficiency-oriented response to institutional pressures. Inspectors do not simply “choose” enterprise logic as a preference; rather, enterprise-oriented advising becomes the most viable way to secure compliance under organizational limitations, while enforcement is reserved for cases where advisory intervention fails or risks justify the additional resource commitment.

73Beyond relying on advice as an efficient route to compliance, inspectors also describe how advisory work is frequently delivered through inspection activity, particularly when dealing with SMEs. As interviewee#8 describes: “We’re advising new small businesses, and when we do inspections, part of that inspection includes giving advice.”

74This example shows how enterprise and enforcement logics intersect at the frontline operational level, with inspections functioning as both compliance checks and opportunities for support. This overlap can blur the boundary between supportive and coercive functions and requires inspectors to continuously interpret – and justify the purpose of an inspection in each case.

75Such continuous interpretation can be a source of strain for inspectors, particularly where inspection targets restrict the time available for what they regard as meaningful engagement with businesses. This is most noticeable under conditions of resource scarcity, as inspectors remain under pressure to perform their role as enforcers through inspection activity even as advisory expectations expand. As interviewee#7 explains: “There’s a lot of pressure on us to deliver a number of inspections. Therefore, you’re torn between achieving your target and spending enough time with that business.”

76This extract shows how competing organizational demands intensify the difficulty of enacting both logics simultaneously. The pressure to complete inspections reflects the continuing influence of an enforcement logic in which compliance is secured through monitoring. At the same time, enterprise logic encourages inspectors to provide guidance and support, which is often time-intensive. This produces an operational and accountability dilemma: spending time advising businesses can mean missing inspection targets, yet focusing on meeting targets quickly can undermine the advisory work that inspectors increasingly view as central to effective compliance. In this case, austerity – which takes the form of reduced resources – sharpens the contradiction between the logics by making the advice-first orientation harder to enact within performance structures still shaped by inspection imperatives.

77Another related tension concerns the expectation that inspectors should provide advice to SMEs while simultaneously limiting the time and frequency of business visits. Inspectors describe intense time pressures that constrain their ability to provide tailored support, particularly for smaller firms. Ongoing staff reductions and expectations to maintain inspection volume – often framed through performance and “value for money” considerations – reduce the time available for advisory work. This pressure is most acute in interactions with SMEs, which inspectors perceive as requiring more guidance but increasingly receiving less of it. As interviewee#7 explains:

Smaller businesses tend to want more advice [. . .] Whereas now, you’re very much trying to keep the time down.” This shift has also reduced proactive advice-giving: “We used to give advice visits-businesses would give us a call [. . .] Now, not so much. [. . .] We’re not providing as good quality advice and support as we once did.

78These reflections show how inspectors struggle to reconcile a commitment to supporting businesses – particularly SMEs, which the previous sub-section showed have become more salient within local regulatory priorities under the principle of localism – with organizational pressures to limit visit duration and contain resource use under austerity. The tension is therefore not only between “advice” and “enforcement”, but between the time-intensive work required to enact enterprise logic credibly and the efficiency demands embedded in inspection-led performance expectations. As a result, inspectors may endorse a supportive role in principle while being constrained in practice from providing the depth of guidance they consider necessary.

79There is also a tension related to role ambiguity. Inspectors are not always certain when they are acting as advisers and when they are acting as enforcers, particularly as charging expectations become more embedded in everyday practice. As the boundaries between compliance checks, advisory support, and consultancy blur, inspectors are increasingly required to decide what counts as enforcement (a public duty) and what counts as a potentially chargeable service. Interviewee#7 captured this ambiguity: “There’s a fine line between being the enforcer and being the adviser.” This tension becomes tangible when charging expectations extend beyond formal advice to routine inspection activity. As interviewee#1 recounts:

So I did ten visits [. . .] and my boss said, ‘Why did you do ten visits?’ [. . .] I said, ‘Because it needed it.’ [. . .] Then he said, ‘Should we charge for that as business advice?’ [. . .] I said, ‘No, because it’s compliance.’ [. . .] It does cause conflict occasionally, not with the person [referring to business owner and managers] but with our own management.

80These accounts show how enterprise logic reaches into core enforcement functions by framing even compliance work as a potential source of income. The managerial inclination to monetize regulatory activity conflicts with inspectors’ understanding of enforcement as a public duty and produces uncertainty about how particular interventions should be categorized.

81This ambiguity also raises a further question: why do inspectors have to charge SMEs? Charging for regulatory advice generates identity conflict for inspectors, particularly when charging is directed towards SMEs. This conflict is felt most acutely when advice is embedded within inspections and inspectors must decide whether such support should be chargeable. Interviewee#8 describes the personal discomfort such expectations can produce:

I would feel a bit uncomfortable charging for business advice if it was a small business and they were struggling, or if it was a new business. They’re already paying business rates, taxes, and all those other costs. That would make me feel uncomfortable. I’m wanting them to comply with the rules I’m enforcing, and then to say, ‘Oh, well, I’ve got to charge for this,’ [. . .] I would feel pretty uncomfortable.

82Interviewee#1 similarly explains:

We are a service, and some people are under the impression [. . .] that perhaps as a service you shouldn’t charge for that information. [. . .] There is a conflict there. I believe there’s a conflict there because we are a service. However, the policies of local authority are that we charge for business advice.

83These extracts show how pressures to charge for advice can clash with inspectors’ relational, compliance-oriented approach with SMEs. Charging reframes regulatory support from a public service grounded in prevention and relational compliance into a transactional exchange in which regulatory knowledge is treated as a commodity. The result is an ethical dilemma with accountability implications: charging may undermine the cooperative relationship inspectors rely on to achieve compliance, yet refusing to charge can conflict with organizational expectations in a resource-constrained setting. Interpreted through an institutional logic lens, the contradiction lies in competing definitions of legitimate practice. As charging becomes normalized – partly as a consequence of austerity measures that encourage local authorities to generate income through service provision – the distinction between advice and inspection becomes unsettled, reinforcing role ambiguity and the uneasy coexistence of public protection and income generation.

84Beyond the moral discomfort associated with charging, selectivity in charging creates further ambiguity for inspectors and adds a further layer to these dilemmas. Inspectors are required to distinguish between situations where advice should be offered freely and others where it should be charged, yet these distinctions can be difficult to justify in practice, particularly when they appear inconsistent across domains. The practical difficulty of determining who can and cannot be charged is evident where sector-specific exemptions coexist with cost-recovery expectations. As interviewee#14 explains:

We don’t charge for advice on livestock or farm management. But as soon as we’re dealing with something different, like labelling in a farm shop... we would charge for that. I believe DEFRA’s stance is that livestock advice is too important to impose charges on, because the risk of livestock disease is significant.

85The same interviewee also notes: “Interestingly, DEFRA has started charging for some services, and perhaps that’s a sign of the future. [. . .] Honestly, I wouldn’t be shocked if that policy comes in eventually.”

86These extracts show how charging practices become uneven as enterprise logic intersects with sector-specific regulatory priorities and risk-based exemptions. The tension arises because advice is increasingly treated as a revenue-generating service, while simultaneously being protected as a public good in areas framed as high-risk or strategically important. The result is an ethical dilemma alongside operational trade-offs. Inspectors must implement a patchwork of charging regimes and communicate shifting boundaries to businesses, while also interpreting, and at times compensating for, policy inconsistencies that undermine the coherence and perceived fairness of regulatory support.

87These findings show that inspectors respond to the dominance of enterprise logic by prioritizing advice as a first-line route to compliance, frequently embedding guidance within inspections, and managing their work through time-saving strategies and selective targeting, particularly towards SMEs. Enforcement remains available as an escalation mechanism, but its repositioning means inspectors must continually calibrate how they present and enact authority, weighing the risks of appearing overly punitive against pressures to sustain cooperative, business-friendly relationships. Under conditions of austerity and localism, these micro-level negotiations intensify as inspectors are expected simultaneously to protect public safety, support local economies, meet inspection volume expectations, and – at times – contribute to income generation through chargeable advice. In practice, their responses both absorb and reproduce the tensions between enterprise and enforcement logics, as supportive approaches are treated as the most workable route to compliance under scarcity while charging imperatives can undermine the very relationships on which advice-led regulation depends. The next sub-section considers what these practices mean for the broader regulatory system.

Implications for regulatory system

88This sub-section examines the broader implications of enterprise logic for the regulatory system, as reflected in TS inspectors’ everyday experience. It shows that the commercialization of advice produces uneven access to regulatory support across business sizes and reorients organizational priorities towards cost recovery. It also highlights how the expansion of Primary Authority under a chargeable model introduces competitive dynamics that reshape enforcement across local authorities.

89Inspectors describe how the use of chargeable advice services has reshaped TS by encouraging consultancy-style models of delivery and embedding cost recovery into routine practice. As interviewee#1 explains:

Because of the funding, or the lack of funding, to the local authority, we’ve got to be seen to be businesslike, so we sort of run on what we call now a cost-recovery basis. So, if you’ve got an officer who spends two or three days giving advice, then that officer is not actually doing his job in respect of other things - you know, the routine inspections that we do, the investigations that we have to do, etc., etc. So, we are being used as a consultancy-type body. So, when the Primary Authority scheme was introduced through the government, it basically gave the option for the local authority to charge for that advice, and we charge – like I say – on a cost-recovery basis for the advice that we did.

90This account indicates how cost-recovery models position TS as providers of paid advisory services alongside statutory enforcement, while also redirecting officers’ time away from “routine inspections” and “investigations”. In doing so, it embeds market-oriented priorities within day-to-day regulatory organization.

91A further implication of chargeable advice is that this consultancy-style approach is experienced as more problematic for SMEs and can generate unequal access to regulatory support. Inspectors often contrast larger firms with smaller businesses to explain how cost recovery reshapes who benefits from advice. As interviewee#6 notes:

For larger companies, through Primary Authority, this works fine, and it generates income [for the local authority]. But for SMEs, there’s a different dynamic. We offer a certain amount of free advice to get them going, but after a point, particularly if we’ve spent significant time working with them, we need to charge.

92This extract shows how enterprise logic reframes advice as a revenue-generating service, while requiring inspectors to manage the distributive consequences of charging. It also points to an organizational mechanism – discretionary thresholds – through which limited free support is provided before charging is triggered, potentially protecting some SMEs while introducing variability in access across cases and authorities.

93Pressures for efficiency and the resulting commercialization of advice intensify inequalities in access to regulatory support across business sizes. In this context, where advice is increasingly chargeable, larger firms are more likely to benefit from formal paid advisory arrangements (notably PA), whereas smaller firms depend on discretionary local provision constrained by time and resources. As interviewee#9 explains: “A lot of the bigger businesses have PA relationships, so they tend to get much of their advice through that relationship.” By contrast, interviewee#14 notes: “It’s not being taken up by smaller businesses as much, which is unfortunate.” These accounts indicate how the structuring of advice provision can privilege larger firms with formal arrangements while disadvantaging SMEs that rely on limited local capacity. Charging practices can discourage SMEs from seeking regulatory advice, even where they would benefit from guidance. Inspectors describe smaller firms withdrawing from regulatory conversations once support becomes chargeable, with consequences for preventative compliance work. This suggests that enterprise logic, enacted through cost-recovery mechanisms, can disadvantage SMEs by making access to advice contingent on ability to pay. The broader implication is a regulatory environment in which market-based access to advice produces uneven opportunities for compliance support.

94Inspectors also contrast larger and smaller businesses in terms of preparedness and capacity to manage regulatory expectations, noting how better-resourced firms can internalize regulatory expertise through private markets for advice. As interviewee#14 explains: “Some [big] businesses are starting to hire former officers or consultants to navigate these complexities. It’s almost like they’re building an extra layer of defense.”

95This extract suggests that commodification shifts regulatory knowledge from a shared public resource towards an asset that can be purchased and strategically deployed, contributing to a more stratified pattern of access in which larger firms reduce uncertainty through bought expertise while SMEs face greater informational disadvantages.

96Beyond firm-level inequalities, inspectors describe how the expansion of PA under a chargeable model introduces competitive dynamics between local authorities, further embedding enterprise logic into the regulatory system. As TS services are encouraged to generate income, the provision of business advice increasingly resembles a market in which authorities compete to attract and retain commercial partners. As interviewee#9 notes: “This opened up competition between authorities to be the best at providing PA advice, which is now a paid service.” A related shift is visible in how formalized PA relationships structure intervention across jurisdictions. As interviewee#9 explains: “Primary Authorities provide business advice. If a different local authority wants to take action against a business that’s part of the scheme, there’s a process they have to go through.”

97Taken together, these extracts show how a mechanism introduced to support consistency can also reshape the governance of enforcement by creating procedural dependencies and incentives, raising questions about how uniform oversight is maintained within a more commercialized landscape.

98These findings suggest that the regulatory system shaped by Better Regulation, austerity, and localism has become increasingly commercialized, reshaping how TS deliver regulatory support. The costs of regulatory advice and related services are increasingly transferred to businesses through chargeable arrangements, producing uneven access to compliance support: larger firms can benefit from paid partnerships and specialist advice, whereas SMEs may disengage when support becomes chargeable or unaffordable. In this respect, commercialization risks undermining the preventive and fairness-oriented aims that supportive regulation is meant to advance.

99At the same time, PA and cost-recovery incentives introduce competitive and differentiating dynamics between local authorities, contributing to a more uneven and fragmented regulatory landscape. Inspectors consequently operate at the frontline of these contradictions: they are expected to deliver supportive, proportionate, and consistent regulation while working within a system that commodifies advice and makes access to guidance increasingly dependent on organizational capacity and ability to pay. This constrains consistent support – particularly for SMEs – and reshapes the meaning of regulatory work as public service obligations become increasingly entangled with market-oriented expectations.

100In conclusion, the coexistence of enterprise and enforcement logic, within conditions shaped by austerity and localism, generates structural contradictions that reshape how regulatory work is defined, prioritized, and delivered. These dynamics show how institutional logics reconfigure regulatory delivery at system level, creating tensions as inspectors attempt to reconcile public service commitments with market-oriented expectations with detrimental consequences for businesses, particularly SMEs.

Discussion

101The findings show that Better Regulation market-oriented reforms extend beyond rhetorical shifts to materially restructure regulatory practice. While previous studies in United Kingdom (UK) have examined aspects of frontline regulatory practice and SME engagement (e.g. Fairman & Yapp, 2005; Vickers, 2008; Kitching, 2015; Tombs, 2016), and broader research has highlighted Better Regulation’s conceptual ambiguity (Radaelli, 2007) and its embedding of economic liberalism (Lauber & Brooks, 2023; Radaelli, 2023), this study shows how these commitments are operationalized at the frontline. Specifically, Better Regulation institutionalizes enterprise logic not only by promoting business-friendly discourse, but by commodifying advice through chargeable services thereby creating parallel systems that fragment provision and introduce inequalities in access.

102These findings also speak to Better Regulation as a meta-policy that reshapes implementation by specifying what counts as “good” regulation and by reorganizing the conditions under which regulation is delivered. Enterprise logic has consequences not only for inspectors’ conduct at the frontline, but also for the wider regulatory system, because organizational arrangements translate enterprise-oriented premises into routines, priorities, and resource allocations. At the same time, the findings reinforce the importance of examining how frontline actors respond to such reforms: inspectors’ discretionary judgments are integral to how competing prescriptions are reconciled in practice, and therefore to how Better Regulation’s trajectory is enacted and stabilized at the point of delivery.

103The study further indicates that the regulatory settlement produced by Better Regulation, austerity, and localism is difficult to implement coherently because it asks frontline regulators to hold together partially incompatible premises. Inspectors are expected to sustain statutory enforcement responsibilities while also delivering business support through advice, often under reduced capacity and heightened organizational pressures. This combination exposes limits in what organizations and individuals can deliver at the frontline when policy objectives are internally conflicting and when implementation is expected to compensate for resource constraint. Rather than resolving enforcement and support into a seamless model, the findings show how their coexistence becomes a practical problem that inspectors manage through sequencing, prioritization, and selective escalation. In this sense, inspectors’ experiences extend scholarship on Better Regulation beyond policy design and ideological critique by making visible the practical contradictions, organizational tensions, and ethical dilemmas that emerge through implementation.

104These dynamics generate two theoretical implications. First, the findings extend institutional logics theory by showing how enterprise and enforcement logics coexist within frontline regulatory practice but prescribe incompatible actions, creating institutional complexity (Besharov & Smith, 2014). Although prior studies have highlighted the discursive embedding of enterprise logic within Better Regulation (Radaelli, 2023; Lauber & Brooks, 2023), this article shows how enterprise logic is also materially institutionalized through policy instruments and organizational arrangements that commodify regulatory advice and create unequal access to support. This interpretation resonates with evidence that inspectors had already absorbed the Hampton vision of burden reduction and risk-based enforcement, irrespective of formal training (Dunlop, Kamkhaji & Radaelli, 2015). While Dunlop, Kamkhaji & Radaelli (2015) do not use the language of institutional logics, their findings help explain how Better Regulation principles became embedded in frontline practice, reinforcing this article’s argument that the institutionalization of enterprise logic has implications for professional identities and raises questions about regulatory legitimacy.

105Second, the article contributes to street-level bureaucracy (SLB) theory by integrating it with institutional logics to reveal how frontline discretion mediates the enactment of competing logics. Inspectors’ discretionary decisions – whether and how to charge for advice, how to balance support and enforcement, and how to prioritize under resource constraints – suggest that they are active agents navigating institutional contradictions. Their practices are shaped by accountability dilemmas and ethical judgments, extending SLB theory by showing how inspectors adapt, resist, or reconfigure institutional logics in daily regulatory work. This aligns with implementation research emphasizing that ambiguity and uncertainty are persistent features of policy delivery. Taylor, Zarb, and Jeschke (2021) argue that these dimensions are “two sides of the same coin”, shaping how local officials interpret mandates. Their findings help explain why inspectors’ discretion remains indispensable in navigating the contradictions between enforcement and enterprise logics under Better Regulation.

106Bringing institutional logics and SLB perspectives together, therefore, offers a more nuanced understanding of how policy reforms such as Better Regulation and austerity are implemented in practice. Frontline regulatory practice is shaped not only by institutional prescriptions but by situated discretion, professional values, and material constraints, which position inspectors as central actors in the institutionalization and transformation of regulatory logics. In this context, austerity-caused resource constraints fundamentally undermine the effectiveness of relational and risk-based regulatory models by reducing inspection capacity, limiting proactive advice, and pressuring inspectors to prioritize income generation over public protection. Similar patterns of retrenchment have been observed in other policy sectors. Sabourin, Craviotti, and Milhorance (2020) show how incremental budget cuts and institutional weakening in Latin America dismantled family farming policies, gradually eroding state capacity. By analogy, austerity in the UK has undermined regulatory enforcement in TS, reinforcing the organizational dominance of enterprise-oriented services provision.

107The interview accounts also show how inspectors reframe their role as expectations shift towards business support alongside statutory enforcement duties. Inspectors narrate and justify the expanding advisory turn while seeking to preserve the legitimacy of enforcement. Across accounts, advice and prevention are articulated as competent and appropriate regulatory practice, particularly under constrained capacity, whereas enforcement is retained as a necessary escalation when support fails. In this sense, the tensions documented in this study are not only practical but also identity-laden: inspectors make sense of competing expectations by redefining what counts as “proper” TS work and by drawing boundaries around when supportive and coercive interventions are warranted.

108Finally, these identity tensions are sharpened where advice is commodified. The issue is not advice per se, but the way commodification alters the meaning and accessibility of regulatory support. Where compliance guidance is treated as a paid service, questions arise about who can access support and on what terms, with SMEs particularly exposed to uneven provision. This reframes the relationship between regulation, compliance, and fairness by linking access to advice to organizational capacity and firms’ ability to pay, thereby sharpening the legitimacy questions raised by the advisory turn in public regulation.

Conclusion

109This article argued that Better Regulation, implemented under austerity and localism, has not simply encouraged a more supportive regulatory stance; it has embedded an enterprise logic within TS in ways that reorganize regulatory delivery and generate practical and systemic contradictions. A central expression of this shift is the commodification of regulatory advice – expanded through paid advisory arrangements – which repositions inspectors as income-generating consultants within public services. Enterprise-oriented reform elevates advice as the primary route to compliance while repositioning enforcement as a residual escalation mechanism, thereby reshaping what inspectors prioritize, what becomes organizationally feasible, and how regulatory effectiveness is understood.

110The findings show that this institutionalization is material as well as discursive. Instruments such as the Primary Authority scheme commodify regulatory advice, introduce market dynamics into regulatory services, and create unequal access to compliance support. Inspectors increasingly use advice as a preventive and resource-efficient strategy, yet they face tensions between their roles as business supporters and statutory enforcers. Resource constraints, organizational pressures, and fragmented structures further limit their capacity to deliver consistent and fair oversight. In this context, a cultural shift towards support can reframe regulatory effectiveness around trust-building rather than deterrence, with implications for inspectors’ professional identities and for perceptions of regulatory legitimacy.

111These dynamics raise policy risks associated with conflating business support and regulatory enforcement within Better Regulation. Although enterprise logic frames advice-based regulation as conducive to economic growth, commodifying advice services creates structural inequalities, leaving smaller firms with reduced access to essential compliance guidance. If regulation not only constrains but also enables business performance (Kitching, 2018), advice can be understood as a public good that supports market integrity and fairness. Policy responses should therefore: 1) maintain public funding for business advice, to mitigate the inequalities in access to guidance associated with chargeable and commodified provision; (2) strengthen inspection capacity, given the findings that reduced staffing and time pressures limit proactive work and weaken deterrence, increasing reliance on triage and selective escalation; (3) clarify enforcement–support boundaries, in light of the role ambiguity and identity conflict inspectors describe when advice becomes embedded within inspections and is treated as chargeable; and (4) design Better Regulation reforms that explicitly recognize inspectors’ discretion as central to implementation outcomes, reflecting the finding that frontline judgments mediate how competing logics are reconciled and how accountability dilemmas are managed in practice.

112Without such measures, Better Regulation risks undermining its own objectives by embedding enterprise logic in ways that weaken regulatory capacity, exacerbate inequalities, and erode professional legitimacy within frontline regulatory services.

Limitations and future research

113Although this study provides rich insights into how TS inspectors navigate tensions between enforcement and support, it draws primarily on inspectors’ perspectives within specific local authority contexts. This sampling strategy provides depth but also limits the scope of inference. Indeed, the accounts reflect the organizational conditions and implementation arrangements of the participating authorities and should not be read as representative of TS practice across the UK. There is also an inevitable time-lag between the 2018–2019 fieldwork and publication. However, Better Regulation has operated as a long-running reform agenda, and its core emphasis on proportionality, burden reduction, and risk-based, business-facing approaches to regulation was already established during the period studied. Later guidance and policy documents are therefore treated as reaffirmation and consolidation of this existing trajectory. For this reason, analyzing inspectors’ accounts from 2018–2019 remains relevant for understanding the institutional foundations and practical tensions that continue to shape growth-oriented, advice-led regulation. At the same time, the article does not claim to evaluate post-2019 changes empirically; rather, it analyzes how inspectors experienced and enacted this agenda during the period studied.

114Given the focus of this study on regulators, future research should investigate how businesses experience these evolving regulatory practices, particularly among SMEs without access to commodified advisory services. Extending the analysis to businesses would help clarify why and how differential access to advice occurs, and how such differential access to advice shapes business compliance, trust in regulation, and perceptions of fairness. Comparative research contrasting SMEs operating with and without commodified advice arrangements would be especially valuable in assessing how the supportive regulatory regime is experienced in practice and with what implications for perceived legitimacy.

115The findings also point to the importance of occupational identity and role reframing. Inspectors describe shifts in professional expectations towards business support, alongside continuing enforcement responsibilities and managerial performance pressures. Further research could examine how these identity dynamics interact with organizational performance regimes and Better Regulation objectives, including tensions between flexibility and accountability. In addition, closer attention to the transformation of inspectors’ occupational identities would illuminate the cultural and normative changes within public regulatory services, and how frontline actors reconcile professional ethics with enterprise and market logics embedded in contemporary governance.