Leaving it to the Professionals: How IRBs Became Compliance Bureaucracies

• In Event: 3450 - Evaluating People, Work, and Organizations

Abstract

ABSTRACT: For decades, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) were managed by faculty volunteers, in charge of both research ethics and regulatory compliance. This paper uses mixed qualitative methods to trace how IRBs subsequently became “compliance bureaucracies,” run by paid regulatory experts. Why did organizations invest in paying administrators to carry out tasks that faculty volunteers had been performing on the cheap? I argue that the large-scale investment in human research protection bureaucracy at the turn of the century was driven by two urgent technical demands, both related to the management of complexity: for tight coupling with complex and intensely procedural regulations; and for efficiency. These technical demands were reflected in the dominant best practices of the emerging IRB profession. The story of the bureaucratization of IRBs suggests that ceremonial conformity to ambiguous mandates is not the only function of compliance bureaucracy. More attention should be paid to variations across different compliance realms.

Author

• Sarah Louise Babb, Boston College