Christine Parker’s primary research interests focus on regulation and regulatory theory, internal corporate responsibility systems, and lawyers’ ethics and regulation. Her work on the legal profession has particularly addressed issues of ethical culture and compliance, the development of ethical infrastructure in law firms, and on the design of ethics indicators for legal professionalism. Her books include The Open Corporation (2002, Cambridge University Press) on corporate social responsibility, business compliance systems and democratic accountability of companies; Inside Lawyers’ Ethics (with Adrian Evans, 2007, Cambridge University Press); and Explaining Compliance: Business Responses to Regulation (with Vibeke Nielsen, 2011, Edward Elgar), an edited collection of the leading practice and policy oriented empirical research on how and why businesses do and do not comply with the law.
Parker has a deep interest in both conceptualizing and communicating how law and regulation can help individuals and especially businesses live more sustainably well in our ecological systems. She is developing an academic research project in this area and has helped develop and show a live multi-media eco-music performance, Music for a Warming World, on our individual, social and political responses to climate change.