In response to political questioning and regulatory policy debate, the ATO adoptedseveral measures intended to make it more open and sensitive to the concerns oftaxpayers. The most important of these measures, unquestionably, was its decisionto develop and implement a program of responsive regulation for taxadministration. This took the form of the ATO Compliance Model, which theCommissioner of Taxation publicly announced on 22 April 1998 (see Braithwaite,Chapter 1, this volume for further description of the Compliance Model). In theweeks preceding the announcement, face-to-face training sessions were conductedfor all senior ATO staff to explain the Compliance Model, and in September 1998,a team of four ATO staff was established to raise awareness and understanding ofit for all ATO personnel. As a member of this team, the senior author helpedconduct formal training throughout the ATO for a twelve month period.Eventually, approximately 3000 ATO staff received face-to-face training in theCompliance Model by this team.Objectives and MethodAlthough environmental pressures of the kind sketched here may help to createpolicy change in organisations, often they are not sufficient to ensure these will beinstitutionalised and become significant constraints on organisational direction anddecision-making (Mitchell and Larsen, 1987). As Douglas (1986, p. 45) has noted,the ‘entrenching of an idea is a social process’, the outcome of which may beunpredictable. In the remainder of this chapter we examine some of the earlychallenges that adoption of the ATO Compliance Model posed for field level ATOstaff whose work brings them into contact with taxpayers.Between December 1998 and July 1999, the senior author conducted semistructuredtelephone interviews with a sample of ATO staff who had completed theCompliance Model training course. These interviews explored the attitudes andperceptions of ATO staff towards the Compliance Model in the nine to eighteenmonth period following its introduction. They also explored the degree to whichthe Compliance Model and its underlying assumptions were gaining acceptanceand use within the organisation. More specifically, answers were sought to thequestions: (a) did staff see the Compliance Model as relevant to taxationadministration generally and to their work in particular?; (b) were staff using itsprinciples in their work, and did they think it was finding acceptance in theorganisation?; (c) what changes, if any, had they seen in staff perspectives andpractices?; and (d) what are some apparent sources of both support for, andresistance to, use of the Compliance Model?
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