Filling the Gap: Developing an Industry Self-Regulation Higher Ed Curriculum

What does SRO stand for? Standing room only? Single room occupancy? How about self-regulatory organization (SRO). Industry self-regulatory organizations play a crucial yet under-utilized and often overlooked tool for solving complex modern business challenges via "soft law" standards and accountability mechanisms. BBB National Programs’ foundation, the Center for Industry Self-Regulation (CISR), aims to change that by developing a curriculum on industry self-regulation and other forms of "soft law" for law, business, and public policy school programs, filling a significant gap in current higher education.

This new curriculum will seek to foster a comprehensive understanding of industry self-regulation’s potential benefits, including enhanced private-sector accountability and addressing gaps in government regulation and legislation. By incorporating industry self-regulation coursework into law, business, and public policy schools, future leaders can be better prepared to navigate the complex terrain of compliance and innovation. 

CISR is collaborating with the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University’s Center for Law, Science and Innovation to help develop and pilot the coursework, which will focus on the conditions that allow industry self-regulation to thrive and case studies of its successful applications. In addition, academics at 11 other graduate programs at institutions of higher education across the country initially will help develop this new curriculum.  

As noted by Gary Marchant, Regents Professor and Faculty Director at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, “While traditional regulation has been extensively studied and taught in professional schools, self-regulation has essentially been ignored, and this CISR project seeks to remedy that deficiency and help address areas of emerging technologies that are too complex for traditional regulation to effectively govern.” 

The curriculum will cover: 

• Types of industry self-regulation, such as soft law, co-regulatory models, certifications, and codes of practice. 
• Conditions under which self-regulation can work, compared to corporate compliance and government regulation, and when it is less likely to succeed. 
• Case studies of self-regulatory programs across various industries.
• Interaction between self-regulatory programs and government.

Business and policy leaders, as well as lawyers advising clients, often see a binary choice: government regulation or no regulation. Or perhaps they think self-regulation just means a company’s own internal compliance efforts. But the reality is more nuanced and sophisticated. Businesses within industries and across industries have long collaborated to help solve problems, whether through codes of conduct, standards, certifications, or guidelines. These “soft law” efforts help drive better practices and increase accountability.

With the generous support of the John Templeton Foundation, CISR is embarking on creating a new law school curriculum and a graduate business school curriculum on industry self-regulation to increase understanding of what self-regulation is and how it does or does not work. Supplementing these courses will be:

• Course modules for inclusion in existing law school, business school, and public policy courses.
• A visiting lecturer series incorporating elements of the class modules available to interested professors either in conjunction with adoption of developed class modules or as an independent supplement to existing course work.

The ultimate goal of the curriculum development project is to raise awareness and understanding of the variety of industry self-regulation models, the work of existing SROs, and the benefits – and limitations – of these models so that when future leaders are considering how to address shared problems, industry self-regulation is routinely considered as a potential solution. 

Given the many difficult business and social problems we face today, we need to use every tool in our toolbox to solve them. 

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