Views from Below: Inspectors’ Coping with Hybrid Accountabilities

Abstract

Regulation of long-term care service provision is a case of hybrid accountabilities. How do inspectors who are responsible for the implementation of regulations handle the uncertainties arising from hybrid accountabilities? While the prevailing scholarly consensus is that hybridity creates tensions that have a negative impact on the quality of regulation, this article shows that different accountabilities can reinforce each other. However, situations in which inspectors can develop a positive stance toward hybridity and integrate competing logics are rare. Hybrid professionalism among inspectors requires training, education, and resources as well as a joint regulatory culture with inspectees—preconditions that are hardly present in recent institutional settings of long-term care regulation.