The inbetweeners: Reflecting on the ordinary life of risk managers between regulation and operation

In view of the importance of risk management in regulation, this article focuses on a vital but still underexposed element in regulatory governance studies: the role of risk managers and their influence on regulatory effectiveness. Risk managers occupy a unique position between regulation and operation.This paper provides an overview of how this linking-pin role of risk managers is perceived according to classic organization and regulation literatures. Literature and empirical research reveal four roles of risk managers: risk managers as supporting staff, risk managers as professionals, risk managers as boundary spanners, and risk managers as agents in regulatory communities.Each type of risk manager has his own strategies to manage the coupling, i.e. translating policies to practices, tailoring policies to practices, explaining and framing policies and practices, and joint (re)interpretation of policies and practices. The results of an empirical study on risk managers in two Dutch sectors illustrates these roles play a role in ordinary life.