Exploring how professionals interpret and enact responsibility when rules, judgement, organisational expectations and human consequences conflict
Status: Protocol development
Preparatory phase: January to June 2027
Pilot implementation: September to December 2027
Main research: January to June 2028
Final report: September 2028
Working protocol for scientific and ethical review
RESC Protocol 02 establishes a phased empirical investigation into how professionals understand, negotiate and enact responsibility in situations where formal rules, professional judgement, organisational expectations, technological mediation and foreseeable human consequences do not point towards the same decision.
The protocol does not assume that professionals share a single definition of responsibility, that formal compliance is sufficient evidence of responsible conduct, or that individual agency can be examined independently of organisational structures and power. It begins from an open empirical question and treats responsibility as a culturally and institutionally mediated human capacity whose meaning must be investigated rather than presumed.
Protocol 02 is designed as a distinct but complementary inquiry to Protocol 01. Protocol 01 examines impact and responsibility in women-led enterprises. Protocol 02 focuses on professional decision making across roles and organisational contexts. Findings from one protocol will not be used automatically to confirm the other.
How do professionals interpret and enact responsibility when formal rules, professional judgement, organisational expectations and human consequences come into conflict?
The principal unit of analysis is the professional interpretation of responsibility in a concrete decision context. The study is not designed to rank professions, organisations or countries as more or less responsible. It investigates the reasoning through which conduct becomes recognisable as responsible or irresponsible, the conditions under which professionals believe they can act, and the consequences they consider relevant.
For this protocol, a professional is provisionally understood as a person whose work involves specialised knowledge, discretionary judgement, recognised duties towards others and accountability for decisions or recommendations. The preparatory phase will refine this definition and determine whether regulated and non-regulated professional roles should be analysed together or through separate comparative strata.
Initial inclusion may consider professionals working in areas where decisions have identifiable consequences for individuals, organisations or communities, including education, project and programme management, public administration, social services, health, law, technology, organisational leadership and research. Final sectors will be selected through theoretical relevance and feasible comparative logic rather than breadth alone.
The study will use a qualitative, interpretivist and comparative design. It will combine accounts of lived professional experience with responses to carefully constructed decision scenarios. The design will allow participants to explain not only what they would do, but how they define the relevant responsibility, whom they consider affected, which constraints they recognise and how they justify their decision.
The pilot will use purposive maximum-variation sampling. Selection will seek meaningful contrasts in professional role, organisational setting, decision authority, cultural background and exposure to AI-mediated or procedurally constrained decisions. Diversity will be analytically justified; it will not be treated as statistical representation.
A provisional pilot sample of approximately 15 to 20 professionals is feasible for the September to December 2027 period. The final number will depend on the quality and depth of the interviews, variation across the selected strata, information power and the ability of the sample to test the research instruments. Recruitment targets may be revised transparently during the pilot.
Individuals will not be recruited solely because they are readily accessible. Existing professional contacts may be approached only within an approved recruitment process that addresses power relations, confidentiality and voluntariness. Direct reports, persons whose funding or evaluation depends on the researcher, and participants facing unmanaged conflicts of interest will be excluded or handled through additional safeguards.
The analysis will use reflexive thematic analysis within an interpretivist orientation. It will examine patterned meanings while preserving contextual difference and the researcher’s active role in interpretation. The analytical process will not claim mechanical objectivity or inter-coder reliability unless the final design adopts a different epistemological position.
Protocol 02 is not designed to demonstrate that RESC is correct. The framework may assist interpretation, but the evidence must remain capable of challenging its definition, dimensions and assumed relationships. Particular attention will be paid to data that show responsible conduct without conscious deliberation, constrained agency, collective or distributed responsibility, unintended consequences, harmful forms of responsibilisation, and situations in which formal compliance protects rather than weakens human dignity.
Findings may support, qualify, contradict or require the removal of elements of the framework. Absence of evidence for a proposed dimension will be reported rather than interpreted automatically as a deficit in participants or organisations.
No empirical data collection will begin before the applicable academic ethics and data-protection requirements have been reviewed and, where required, approved. Participation will be voluntary and based on informed consent. Participants will be able to decline questions and withdraw within the limits explained in the information sheet.
The pilot will be considered successful if it establishes whether the study can generate interpretable evidence, not if it confirms RESC. The review will examine the following criteria.
At the end of December 2027, the research team or designated scientific reviewers will make an explicit decision to continue, revise, narrow, pause or discontinue the main study. Continuation will not be automatic. The decision will consider methodological feasibility, ethical risk, analytical value, resource requirements and the extent to which the pilot produces a defensible basis for comparative research.
Outputs will be sequenced according to evidential maturity. Public communication will distinguish protocol, pilot findings, full empirical findings and theoretical development. The study will not be described as validating RESC unless a later and methodologically appropriate programme justifies that claim.
The protocol is developed within RESC, an evolving international research initiative founded by Ines Caloisi. Scientific credibility requires that protocol review, ethical oversight, analysis and publication are not controlled solely through RESC-owned channels. External academic review, independent publication routes and transparent disclosure of the researcher’s relationship to the framework will therefore form part of the research process.
This document defines the research architecture for Protocol 02. It does not constitute ethics approval, a final sampling plan or authorisation to recruit participants. Definitions, sectors, languages, sites, sample logic and instruments will be finalised during the preparatory phase and documented through dated versions.
It must be examined through judgement, context, agency, power and human consequences.