THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOUNTABILITY FORMS AND DISCOURSES

Description
Accountability is a cherished concept, sought akr but elusive. New models of admMsuxtive rcfwm promise
to provide heightened accolmtabiity through managerial controls lntetviews with 15 Chief Executives of
Australian public sector organiwons reveal the chamezleonq uality of accountabiity. Accoun*lbility is
subjectivelyc cmstructeda nd changesw ith context Five forms of accountabilityi dentifiedi n the interviews
are~o~oliti~public,mvllgaiaiprokssioruland~Twodiscoursesof~o

Pergamon
~,x ount @ ot ganf zdons and SO& ~. Vol 20, No. 2J 3. pp. 219-237. 1995
ELKvi er SCi Cml .k d
Ri nt c di nGr at Br i ui nAl l r i ght a-c d
0361~368245 19.50+0.00
0361-3682 (93)EOOO3-Y
THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOUNTABILITY: FORMS AND DISCOURSES
AMANDA SINCLAIR
Uniuersi~ of Melbourne
Accountability is a cherished concept, sought akr but elusive. New models of admMsuxtive rcfwm promise
to provide heightened accolmtabiity through managerial controls lntetviews with 15 Chief Executives of
Australian public sector organiwons reveal the chamezleon quality of accountabiity. Accoun*lbility is
subjectively ccmstructed and changes with context Five forms of accountability identified in the interviews
are~o~oliti~public,mvllgaiaiprokssioruland~Twodiscoursesof~ountabilityue
also identified: a structural and a perwnal disco&e. CEOs experience an accountabilitywbichenrompgscs
multiple and conflicting meanings. The paper argues for a new conception of accountability and new
approa&es to enhancing it hnposiq~ mvlagctial controls is less likely to be e&ctive than ikmning the
process by which admidmtors txmsxruct and enact a seme of being accountabie.
Nobody argues with the need for accountability, Hood, 1991; Christoph, 1992), and are seen to
but how accountability is defined, and seen to offer, among other benefits, enhanced account-
be provided, is far from resolved. This paper ability. Public servants now face extended fields
explores the way 15 Chief Executive Officers of accountability “beyond compliance . . . to
(CEOs)’ of Victorian Government agencies include issues of performance and effectiveness”
understand and practice their accountability. (Australian House of Representatives Standing
The research shows that accountability changes: Committee, 1990, p. 89). For managers in
it exists in many forms and is sustained and given the public sector, managerial conceptions
,extra dimensions of meaning by its context. of accountability have either replaced or
Accountability will be enhanced by recognising augmented traditional norms of democratic
the multiple ways in which accountability is accountability (Smith & Hague, 197 1; Metcalife
experienced, rather than by attempting to & Richards, 1987; Jenkins et al, 1988; Guthrie
override this chameleon quality. et al., 1990; Jos, 1990).
Much theoretical research has been forth-
coming on the changing nature of accountability
in the public sector (Romzek & Dubnik,
1987; Day & Klein, 1987; O’Laughlin, 1990).
Managerialism, New Public Management (NPM)
and “accountable management” are broadly
interchangeable terms for new models of
administrative reform which have been em-
braced in Australia, Britain and elsewhere
(Sinclair, 1989; Davis et al., 1989; Pollitt, 1990;
Despite the expectation of accountable
management, there remains confusion among
administrators about the implications for their
accountability. Do managerial forms of account-
ability supersede other forms and what happens
when they con&t? Hopwood has noted, for
example, that efforts to secure better internal
management accountability using accounting
technologies may not necessarily lead to greater
public accountability, instead giving “selective
’ Victoria is the second largest of the Australian States and the heads of State Government agencies hold various titles
including Secretary, Chief Administrator, Director-General and Permanent Head. Par simplicity we refer to all as Chief
Executive Officer or Chief Executive (CEO).
219
220 A. SINCLAIR
visibility” to some organisational outcomes
(1984, p. 179). The Australian House of
Representatives reported despondently that
management reforms in the Australian public
sector “rather than enhancing accountability. . .
have diminished it” (AHRSC, 1990, p. 89).
Reviewing the impact of recent public sector
reforms, Harman concludes “an urgent need to
untangle the problems of accountability” ( 1992,
p. 22).
Further, the requisite level of accountability
appears not to have materialised. The most
common contemporary response to an absence
of accountability has been to impose a more
rigorous form of managerial accountability. The
1968 British Fulton Inquiry, followed by
the Australian Coombs Commission ( 1976)
recommended that the means to more accoun-
table public management was to hold officials
“directly responsible for performance measured
as objectively as possible in terms of costs or
other criteria” (quoting the Fulton Committee,
Thynne, 1983, pp. 92-93). Yet no number of
carefully drafted performance contracts, control
systems or audits necessarily summon account-
ability up. Indeed, frequently reiterated is a
desire for accountability to “mean more” (More,
1990) and conferences continue to worry over
how to exact more of it. Accountability remains
elusive.
The focus of this research is not theorised
changes, but how CEOs establish their account-
ability, to themselves and to others. To increase
accountability, we need to understand how it is
constructed by, and extracted from, those who
are held accountable. The paper begins by
reviewing definitions of accountability, noting
the limitations of treating accountability as a
iixed and objective feature of structures
or positions. The way in which changing
administrative ideologies have constituted
accountability is discussed, providing further
evidence of the need to reconceptualise
accountability as a subjectively constructed
phenomenon. Two complementary methods
of exploring accountability are introduced: a
schema of forms of accountability and discourse
analyses. In the section on findings we show that
the experience of CEOs encompasses five
forms of accountability identified in theoretical
research: political, managerial, public, profes-
sional and personal. More importantly, two
discourses are revealed, the structural and
personal, which enable individual administrators
to hold, at the same time, opposing feelings
about accountability while constructing a sense
of themselves as accountable. The findings
indicate not only that accountability changes
but also that what CEOs see in it changes. The
paper draws several conclusions. It argues
the value of interpretive perspectives in
reconceptualising phenomena like account-
ability which have become so tightly enmeshed
in ideologies and language that we treat them
as givens. Further, the research concludes that
the current approach of externally imposing
managerial requirements and controls, a
singular form of managerial accountability, is
likely to add to its elusiveness. Rather, efforts to
improve accountability would be informed by
an understanding of the diversity of ways in
which managers construct, hold and enact a
sense of being accountable.
DEFINING ACCOUNTABILIT’Y
Accountability is central to the way the CEOs
in this research structure their understanding of
their jobs. CEOs feel accountable to the
government, to the thrust of government policy,
to their ministers, or other ministers, to
the community, to the Auditor-General, the
ombuds and, more nebulously but not less
compellingly, to their clients and the public.
CEOs are enmeshed in an elaborating web of
accountability, called to account by an expand-
ing and increasingly vociferous set of interest
groups (Painter, 1987) and weighed down by a
new “ethical burden” (Uhr, 1988). Yet CEOs
vary in how and in what context they use the
term; there is no clear consensus about what
accountability, finally, means, or how it is to be
delivered.
In its simplest sense, accountability entails a
relationship in which people are required to
THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOlJNTAF5lLlTY
221
explain and take responsibility for their actions:
“the giving and demanding of reasons for
conduct” (Roberts & Scapens, 1985, p. 447).
But it is rarely this simple. Some argue that
accountability should be daerentiated as one
form of responsibility (Jones, 1977; Thynne &
Goldring, 1981; Harmon & Mayer, 1986).
Certainly though, accountability is a more
fashionable term which benefits from the
association with the objective and scientific
connotations of accounting methodologies
(Gambling, 1977; Hopwood, 1984).
The search for an all-purpose definition
of public sector accountability produces a
legalistic prescription:
in the context of a relationship with an institution
or person which or who is in a position to enforce their
responsibility by calling them to account for what they
(and/or their subordinates) have or have not done
subject to an institution’s or a person’s oversight,
direction or request that they provide information on
their action or justify it before a review authority
(Thynne & Goldring, 1987, p. 8).
Important dimensions of meaning are sacrificed
in generic definitions of accountability, such as
Birkett’s “types of control that are operative
when there is some possibility of autonomy”
( 1988, p. 5). There is a desire to assert what
accountability in the public sector shoul d be
about. As O’Laughlin points out: “When we
speak about bureaucratic accountability, the
bottom line is that we are concerned about
whether government agencies are under some
control and oversight by us or our representa-
tive institutions” ( 1990, p. 281). Yet lurking in
this appeal to common-sense is a difference of
opinion as to whom the account is offered.
There is also a continuing desire to locate
accountability in enduring structures. For
example, in an Australian Government report it
is thus defined:
Accountability is a central feature of the Australian
democratic system. It ensures that those who have
authority over public resources provide an account for
the use of those resources in terms of compliance,
etliciency and effectiveness (Austrakn House of
Representatives Standing Committee. AHRSC, 1990).
Contributors to an Australian edited collection,
while arguing that accountability “involves
the fundamental [sic] of honesty, openness,
adequate disclosure and careful, effective
application of resources” (Greiner, 1990, p. 3 1 ),
also find that “the whole concept of
accountability gets reduced to a barren quest
for ministerial resignations” (Guthrie et al .,
1990, p. 14). As Dahl (1957) noted of under-
standings of power, accountability appears to
reside in a “bottomless swamp”, where the more
definitive we attempt to render the concept,
the more murky it becomes. Like power,
accountability can be understood as something
a person is or feels (a personal attribute or
affect), something a person has been granted
(an obligation bestowed or part of a job
contract), something a person exchanges for
authority (a property of a relationship), a more
abstract and impersonal property of an authority
structure, or an artefact of scrutiny.
How accountability is defined has changed,
underlining the importance of language as
agent of ideology in shaping understanding.
In theoretical research, accountability has
discipline-specific meanings, for example,
auditors discuss accountability as if it is a
financial or numerical matter, political scientists
view accountability as a political imperative and
legal scholars as a constitutional arrangement,
while philosophers treat accountability as
a subset of ethics. Securing accountability
involves shared agreement about how it is
manifested. An accountability relationship
“presupposes agreement about what constitutes
an acceptable performance (including) the
language of justification” (Day & Klein, 1987, p.
5: also Stewart, 1984). Accountability is shaped
by social norms or aspirations towards order
which Birkett calls social archetypes ( 1988) and
“involves the generation of a social consensus
about what counts a$ good conduct and
acceptable performance” (Day & Klein, 1987,
p. 64). How we define accountability is depen-
dent on the ideologies, motifs and language of
our times.
Managerial models of administrative reform
are making a strong claim in the definition,
222 A. SINCLNR
measurement and extraction of accountability.
Accountability defined within a managerial
model requires those with delegated authority
to be answerable for producing outputs or the
use of resources to achieve certain ends. It is
advanced by specification of outcomes, perfor-
mance or objectives by managers and their
superiors, accompanied by a relaxation of
formalised controls over inputs and processes
(Cullen, 1985; Jenkins et aL, 1988). The values
embodied in this sense of accountability are
cost effectiveness, efficiency and managerial
autonomy. Managerially defined accountability
is held to be superior‘to traditional understand-
ings. It is seen as more encompassing with
various subtypes: fiscal accountability, which
measures whether money has been spent
as agreed or according to a projected
budget; process accountability, which monitors
whether particular processes have been
deployed; and programme accountability,
which measures whether outcomes or defined
results have been achieved (Robinson, 1971).
Thus public sector managers might be held
accountable for meeting their budget (fiscal
accountability), for the processing of a pool of
clients or claims (process accountability), or for
the placement of institutional clients into
medium-term residential units (outcome or pro-
gramme accountability). Because it apparently
lends itself to such detailed specification,
managerial accountability is also seen to be
more readily extracted and delivered.
METHOD
Our initial research asked Chief Executives of
public sector agencies in Victoria about
their views on administration, leadership and
management (Sinclair et al., 1983). Data used
for the analysis of accountability were the
transcripts of semi-structured interviews with a
representative sample of 15 heads of Victorian
public sector agencies, from a total identified
population of 35. Eleven CEOs were from
government departments and directly respon-
sible to a minister, four were from major
statutory authorities. The agencies for which
CEOs were responsible varied in function and
scope, with staff numbers ranging from less than
200 to several thousands and budgets up to
thousands of millions of dollars. The sample
included three women, a slightly higher propor-
tion than in the population of CEOs. Between
March and October 1990, interviews of
approximately two hours duration were held
with CEOs, in some cases two or three times
with the same interviewee, and a comprehensive
checklist of issues was used to guide questions.
Initially, a content analysis of interview
transcripts was undertaken by scanning for
direct and indirect references to accountability
and related concepts, such as responsibility,
then aggregating all verbatim statements.
Yielding a large and diverse array of references,
the CEOs themselves provided the initial means
of differentiating concepts of accountability,
with their separation (and sometimes labelling)
of political or Westminster accountability, from
what they understood as managerial or financial
accountability and public accountability as a
more direct answerability to the community.
Certain contexts would clearly evoke one of
these three, for example, description of relations
with ministers or parliament prompted recita-
tion of understandings of political accountability,
while when the CEO talked about budgets and
autonomy, it was managerial accountability
which preoccupied them.
These three forms of accountability, political,
managerial and public, have been similarly
differentiated in theoretical research (Barker,
1982; Wettenhall, 1983; Stewart, 1984; Thynne
& Goldring, 1987; Corbett 1991). Traditional
public administration focused on “upward”,
political or parliamentary accountability.
New forms of more autonomous government
organisation, generated increasing emphasis on
“outward” or direct public accountability to
clients and the public. More recent theorising
of public-sector management has given much
more prominence to managerial or financial
accountability (Guthrie et a~!, 1990).
The remaining references to accountability
in the interviews centred around issues of
THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOUNTAE4IL.ITY 223
professionalism and personal conscience.
Although less frequently and confidently
discussed, these references were framed with
distinctively different words and ideas. Atten-
tion to the ethics of public sector officials
(Harmon & Mayer, 1986; Denhardt, 1988,199 1;
Uhr, 1990) has reinforced the notion that
managers have a duty to obey personal
conscience (Corbett, 1991). As well as this
“inward” or personal accountability, theoretical
research has identified “horizontal” or “outward’
accountability (Wettenhall, 1983; Corbett,
199 1). Professional accountability occurs
where administrators perceive a duty to adhere
to the standards of professional or expert groups
of which they are a member (Harmon & Mayer,
1986; Romzek & Dubnik, 1987; Bailey, 1989;
O’Laughlin, 1990).
Five f or ms of accountability were thus
recognisable in CEOs’ understandings, and
represented in research findings: political;
managerial; public; professional and personal.
Theoretical work identifies many other types of
accountability (for example Smith, 1980; Uhr,
1989). This research aimed for a typology
reflective of CEO understandings, though inevit-
ably also the researchers’ perspectives and
interests. The following findings section
discusses the way CEOs think about and
experience these five forms.
At the same time, the five form categorisation
left much of what was interesting, and proble-
matic, about accountability, unexplained. While
we had numerous examples of CEOs describing
each form, within each form there were
apparent contradictions and contrasts of stance
and language, attitude and atfect. These shifts of
affect and language seemed to be important
to each CEO’s construction of their self-
identification as accountable: they were serving
an important purpose.
In order to explain the link between talking
about accountability and being accountable, it
became apparent that we needed a more
interpretive method. In organisational research
(Weick, 1979a, b; Burrell 81 Morgan, 1979;
Morgan, 1983; Harmon 81 Mayer, 1986) in
social theory (Giddens, 1979) and in accounting
research (Roberts & Scapens, 1985; Morgan,
1988; Arrington & Francis, 1989; Boland, 1993 )
traditional methods of comprehending social
reality have been abandoned in favour of those
which put greater emphasis on subjects actively
creating meaning. Instead of attempting to map
“real” forms of accountability, an interpretive
perspective focuses on understanding how
accountability is derived linguistically and
interactively by individual actors (Smircich,
1983).
A second type of analysis, discourse analysis,
was used to capture the process of talking about
accountability, as doing (Gronn, 1983; Potter 81
Wetherell, 1987). This approach allows the
possibility that being accountable is an inter-
pretive act (Morgan, 1988) and it joins post-
modem efforts to conceive accountability as
more than “representation and control” (Nelson,
1993, p. 207). The contrasts, contradictions and
inconsistencies that lay within CEOs’ reflections
on their accountability, and which mitigated
comfortable categorisation in the form analysis,
became the focus of the discourse analysis.
While there is no ftxed method prescribed for
discourse analysis, there are common phases
and some validation tests (Potter & Wetherell,
1987; Hollway, 1989). We began by selecting
longer extracts from the interviews in which
CEOs were threading their way through to an
understanding of accountability. Of particular
interest were those containing contrasts of tone:
for example, from declamatory to confidential;
conflicts of emotion: from intense attachment
to dispassionate commentary; and shifts of
stance, from being in control of one’s account-
ability to being a victim. Within single extracts
of CEOs talking about accountability, such
inconsistencies and contradictions were
common. Firstly, we sought to identify these
“discursive patterns of meaning, contradictions
and inconsistencies”
(Gavey, 1989, p. 467)
highlighting “the revealing quality not just of
what is said, but rather of what is left out,
contradictory or inconsistent in the text” (Riger,
1992, p. 735).
The second stage of discourse analysis, after
identifying the discourses being expressed, is to
224 A. SINCLAIR
ask why they are being expressed in this way
or how the discourse reflects on those who are
talking (Hollway, 1989). Thus we attempted to
understand what functions these patterns were
serving. Why was such contradiction in ideas
and understandings about accountability not
only possible, but quite clearly an effective
reproductive strategy for interviewees? We
looked at the linking of words and the way
meaning was accumulated through the inter-
twining of content and context (Weedon, 1987;
Wetherell et al., 1987; Gavey, 1989; Calas &
Smircich, 199 1).
Discourse analysis can be used to accomplish
a range of theoretical undertakings. Discourses
can be understood as the “regimes of truth”
(Hollway, 1989, p. 39) which society and social
institutions offer to participants. Analysis of
discourses thus helps to reveal that theories of
accountability “are infused with unexamined
commitments to particular moral and social
orders” and “the ‘factual’ content of that story
is never separable from the duplicities of
language and the rhetorical strategies which
support it” (Arrington & Francis, 1989, p. 4).
Discourse thus provides a way of advancing the
wider interpretive project of understanding “the
historical and social contexts within which
social decisions and policies are made and
institutions created, sustained and transformed”
(Harmon & Mayer, 1986, p. 322).
How subjects locate themselves in relation to
discourses also reflects the socially sanctioned
dominance of certain ideologies and subjugation
of others. Because discourses vary in their
authority (Gavey, 1989, p. 464) at any time
one discourse, such as a view of managerial
accountability seems “natural”, while another
struggles to find expression in the way experi-
ence is described. Individuals also do not
necessarily operate with a consistent and
exclusive set of understandings, and exhibit
shifting allegiances to different conceptions.
Discourse analysis thus provides insights into
how individual actors constitute themselves, by
drawing consciously and unconsciously on the
language and meaning offered by their social
context.
Finally, discourse analysis offers a way of
rediscovering a concept that seems to have
become depleted of meaning. For the same
reason Calas & Smircich ( 199 1) used discourse
analysis to revisit leadership, it is used here to
illuminate meanings of accountability that are
unfashionable or obscured, censored by, or not
captured in, other forms of analysis.
In CEO’s descriptions of being accountable
are revealed at least two discourses, labelled a
structural discourse and a personal discourse.
These discourses were distinguished by dif-
ferent patterns of words and associations,
different emphases and ways of relating experi-
ence and understanding. Accountability in the
structural discourse is spoken of as the technical
property of a role or contract, structure or
system. Territories are clear and demarcated,
accountabilities uncontested. The language used
within this discourse is abstracted, detached and
rational. The structural discourse renders
accountability, whether political, managerial or
some other form, as something the CEO
works with and controls towards foreseeable
ends. Accountability is unproblematic, able to
be “delivered”, demarcated or exacted, in-
dependently of personalities, politics, or
fate.
In contrast, the personal discourse is con-
fidential and anecdotal. In this discourse,
accountability is ambiguous, with the potential
to be something that is feared or uplifting.
Accountability here is about exposure and
vulnerability and is very close to the CEO’s sense
of who she or he is. The personal discourse
functions to admit the risks and failures,
exposure and invasiveness with which
accountability is experienced.
FINDINGS: FORMS AND DISCOURSES OF
ACCOUNTABILITY
Our findings are discussed under the headings
of the five forms of accountability. Each is
prefaced with a brief definition derived horn
administrative and other research: political (or
democratic or Westminster); public; managerial
THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOUNTABILJTY 225
(or financial); professional and personal
accountability. This is followed by examples of
CEOs talking about each form of an analysis of
the discourses they use to construct their
understanding. There are overlaps, connections
and tensions between these forms for CEOs
as they emphasise different, and sometimes
conflicting values (Hood, 1991), and the pattern
of contradiction and consistency within the
structural and personal discourses reveals how
discourses function for CEOs.
Pol i ti cal accountabi l i ty
The concept of political accountability stems
from Athenian democratic and Westminster
traditions of vesting responsibility in the public
servant. This officer exercises authority on
behalf of elected representatives, who are held
directly accountable to the people (Day & Klein,
1987). A direct line or chain of accountability
links the public servant with the Permanent
Head (or CEO), in turn accountable to the
minister, to the executive or cabinet, to
parliament and hence to the electors. This
“straight-line relationship” of political account-
ability (Harman, 1992), though widely cited, is
recognised to bear little resemblance to what
actually happens. Australia’s previous Prime
Minister, R. J. Hawke, described the link as
“far-fetched” and mitigated by the “greater
complexities of modern political and admini-
strative realities” (AHR~C, 1990, p. 9 1).
This research reinforces that, despite its poor
resemblance to reality, political accountability
retains remarkable salience and currency among
Chief Executives of public sector agencies.
Political accountability is understood not as a
chain, but as a legitimating bulwark against
interference by the minister in agency
administration and as a brake on the
agency straying into political affairs. It affords
administrators protection from politics and
“hands on” ministers. In the words of one CEO:
“ministers tend to get involved in matters which
I would regard as administrative or managerial,
and I am probably more resistant to that than
most Victorian Chief Administrators”.
Political accountability also demarcates for
the CEO sensitive political territory: “I would
never seek to abrogate the political choice
role of the Minister”. CEOs invoke political
accountability as a safety net for administrators
when politics threatens to intrude: “At the end
of the day, [the minister] determines policy,
this one here [self] determines administrative
activities.” “[The minister] is the one who’s
responsible. He’s the one who has got to stand
up in Parliament and take the kicks”. “He handles
the political side and I run the business.”
From within the structural discourse, political
accountability is a clear division of labour
and an uncontestable administrative principle,
upheld at all costs. Within the personal
discourse, political accountability is an utterly
difTerent experience:
The theory is that the chief administrator is given a policy
decision, a platform, and it’s up to him or her to then
implement it in the most cost-efficient way it’s a piece
of mythology that really doesn’t bear any substantial
investigation because there is never it’s very rarely
that you get a policy decision that is coherently or
consistently thought through. and the very choices of
implementation that you’ve got to face themselves
involve a policy relationship. The difficulty for the
Permanent Head or the Chief Administrator is that in
reality he has to practice being a quasi-politician but if
he takes that too far and indulges in it too much, he runs
the risk of getting his fingers chopped off, or perhaps
even his head. But he’s got to do it. And there are no
guidelines: there’s no one draws a barrier that says this
is where you should stay and this is where you shouldn’t
(CEO1 ).
In this extract, as in many others, tribute is paid
to “the theory”, before the personal discourse
intercepts and political accountability meta-
morphoses into a terrifying abyss of account-
ability, in which the costs of “indulgence”
include decapitation. Describing one of his
peers, another CEO notes: “here’s a fellow who’s
had his head chopped off for doing precisely
what government policy required him to do. It
seems to me there’s no justice in that at all”.
Publ i c accountabi l i ty
Public accountability is understood as a more
informal but direct accountability to the public,
interested community groups and individuals
226 A. SINCLAIR
(Thynne & Goldring, 1987). Public account-
ability involves answering, through various
mechanisms from newspaper reports to hear-
ings, public concerns about administrative
activity. In the structural discourse political
and public accountability are treated as comple-
mentary parts of the same process: ‘You must
be supportive of the government of the day, but
also responsible to the community.” In the struc-
tural discourse CEOs use the acceptable concern
of costs to vent frustration and a sense of being
pursued by public accountability: “if I were to
calculate the resources which we consume on
Ombudsman inquiries and the annual reporting
process . . . and the Audit Act, Treasury regula-
tions . . .‘I. Another speculates:
. how far do you go and how many dollars do you
spend to make sure the public are getting a fair go with
their money? I am not just thinking about all of us
having auditors, and the Auditor-General, but of all the
other mechanisms, the committees, the reviews . the
systems that you have to pursue and follow, and report
back to Treasury and everybody else, on what is
happening (CEO6 ).
In these extracts, the structural discourse
recognises accountability as a process with a
rationally calculated price. One CEO defends
the importance of upholding this accountability,
arguing that the solution is not “letting
government agencies run as businesses [because]
they wind up doing more and more projects and
being unaccountable, without any concern for
the legitimate concerns of citizens and group”.
Another CEO similarly asserts that the “Auditor-
General has made it quite clear that we have to
have a very tight rein and control and knowledge
of what happens to the monies that are allocated
through us by the government”. A recitation
of the structural discourse is sometimes
accompanied, as in the next excerpt, by the CEO
distancing him or herself from the dilemmas and
speaking of the self as a role:
Although the structural discourse provides
well-drilled defence of public accountability,
the personal discourse reveals the pain it
causes many CEOs. Proliferating public account-
ability mechanisms such as “FoI (Freedom of
Information) and very open reporting” come to
represent a trap, a plight of “being held
personally responsible” for the wrong-doing of
a single employee. Some CEOs speculate on
where or whether their accountability will end:
the absolutely exponential growth in accountability
mechanisms.. . there were absolutely no bars.. . public
servants are now being called to account in myriads of
ways the blowtorch applied to the belly and very
personally and openly I’ve had to be accountable in
[several different forums] public hearings, the press,
parliamentary committees There’s no invisibility any
more - you’re out there and it’s rough (CE05).
Another CEO sees politicians and political
accountability colluding to increase the risks
and exposure of public accountability he feels
and he feels on behalf of his stti
can blow up very quickly Because if it’ll get
publicity, the minister then wants to know what the
position is We’ve had the gamut, you might say, of
ministers and their policies and their perceptions. And
it has been a gamut the politicians are pandering to
what “The Sun” is going to do with any item. And if”The
Sun” doesn’t like it, then you have got to cut your cloth
to make sure that it can be, either you’ve got to have
good supportive staff so that you can stand up to the
onslaught, or you’ve really got to cut your cloth so that
you don’t get ripped apart (CE06).
In the following quotes, a CEO considers
political, public and managerial accountability.
The contrasts that emerge as most interesting
though, are not those between these forms, but
within forms and between discourses. The first
paragraph is a discussion of political and
managerial accountability in the structural
discourse, the second covers managerial and
public accountability in the personal discourse:
1 am very conscious of the fact that I am charged, with I certainly see myself as a public servant in the traditional
others, with the expenditure of a very large amount of sense of the word. So therefore I see myself serving an
public money And I believe the public has the right elected representative to deliver certain services,
to expect that proper accountability mechanisms will that elected representative is part of government to
be put in place and used (CE04). determine what should lx delivered. So that my
THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOUNTABILITY
227
responsibility is to make sure that the Minister’s and
Government’s wishes with respect to what should be
delivered in this portfolio are actually delivered . I
inherited a particular legislative framework that implies
certain goals. That is constantly refined so if you look at
the way I do it personally, I have a process every year
of looking at the Ministry’s goals and objectives, refining
them if necessary, if there have been changes in
Government policy, if there have been changes in
constituencies that the Government serves that demand
a change in the objectives of the Ministry. But that
process is always cleared with the Government’s
representative which is the Minister.
I think there is a very large difference between the
accountability of a private sector manager to his board
and the shareholders. compared with the public sector
where you are accountable to any human being that
cares to complain you have fo be able to explain if
it’s on government business or not on government
business. And that is just in case Mrs Bloggs out there
wants to know how her tax dollar is being spent. Now
shareholders don’t have that same interest I’m ah-aid in
their money . and they are not as interested in the
same sort of detail I think there is that complexity
in public accountability that doesn’t exist in the private
sector. . government organisations are trying fo balance
a range of competing interests so that it is not as easy
to work out how you are going as a public sector
manager. It’s a much more complex task to work out
whether you are being successful or whether you are
failing The other difference is that all of your
mistakes, if you make any, are on show so regularly if
you think about the private sector manager again and if
they do take a risk and it goes wrong, then it will be
treated as a risky investment. But something that a public
sector manager does that goes wrong is seen as sort of
the death knell to their career basically. Because there
is so much scrutiny. It’s in Parliament, it’s in the papers
(CE03).
In the first paragraph, accountability relation-
ships with the minister and government
are described as de-personalised and non-
problematic, a set of procedures to be followed.
In the second paragraph CEO3 describes what
accountability feels like. From being in charge
of the process, the CEO is now at the mercy of
“any human being who cares to complain”
having “to be able to explain. . . just in case Mrs
Bloggs out there wants to know”. The discourse
shift is signalled by a move from technical and
abstract words to emotive ones and it functions
to enable the CEO to justify fears and
frustrations, to contrast with the easier task of
a private sector counterpart and establish that,
in the public sector, no mistakes are permissible.
Accountability here can sabotage, be the “death
knell” and not just when a public sector manager
takes a risk, or does something wrong, but when
something “goes wrong”. The juxtaposition of
the two discourses enables the CEO, on the one
hand, to preserve a sense of the structure, logic
and scope of the job, while on the other, admit
the risks. Being an accountable CEO is both
achievable and simultaneously unpredictable
and uncontrollable.
Manageri al accountabi l i ty
Administrative, bureaucratic and managerial
accountability are sometimes construed as the
same thing as all three arise by virtue of a
person’s location within a hierarchy in which a
superior calls to account a subordinate for the
performance of delegated duties. However,
recent managerial reforms in most Western
public sectors have imparted difTerent values to
administrative accountability, on the one hand,
and managerial accountability, on the other. In
particular, managerial accountability is seen to
focus on monitoring inputs and outputs or
outcomes (Alford, 1992), while administrative
accountability is concerned with monitoring the
processes by which inputs are transformed.
Although it might be expected that managerial
accountability is considered only from within
the safe and uncontested terrain of the structural
discourse, this is not the case. The following
CEO’s description spans political, public and
managerial accountability:
My task is to be responsible to the minister for the
delivery of a range of objectives within time and within
budget. increasingly [there is] a greater expectation
by the government that monies made available to us will
be used to achieve government policy objectives. It
seems to me to be a perfectly sensible thing for the
government to want fo do. And I have the normal
organisational structure under me to deliver those sorts
of outcomes. I am, by my nature a delegator. And then
out of it all. of course, to keep the finger on the pulse
of what’s going on, so that you’re about one step ahead
of the bushfire when it breaks out. Sometimes we’re not
nearly that clever and sometimes we’ve got a raging fire
before we know it (CE04).
228 A. SINCLAIR
There is a terrible trap in all that when you are running
something like this. Because for the [policy area] to have
any validity, there must be an element of risk-taking . .
It’s a very difficult area for us to come fo grips with
because it’s very difficult for us to assess at any moment
in time what the public’s interest might be . In this
game you are never right . . And the papers were full
of it and the mail was full of it - you go, oh-oh, this is
an area of some sensitivity, has to be handled sensitively.
But I think that at the end of the day one has to be very
accountable for the public money - I don’t think that
in this day and age we can tiord to be anything other
than aware of the role that we have, have policies that
are scrutinised by appropriate people and to have an
open process that enables people to know what’s
going on, fo feel that they are part of the decision-making
process (CE04).
This CEO begins a description of managerial
accountability with the structural discourse, a
direct, formal statement of “perfectly sensible”
structural arrangements. The CEO, as a
“delegator” judges that he is able to deliver and
further derives reassurance in invoking the
touchstones of accountability for funds and
observance of due process. The recognition of
these touchstones in the structural discourse,
then liberates the CEO to simultaneously
recognise a “terrible trap”, when you are
“running”, “one step ahead” of the inevitable
“bushfires” of public accountability, in a “game”
when “you are never right”. By the end of the
extract, the structural discourse is reasserted,
what was Russian roulette is transformed back
into “the decision-making process”, populated
by “roles”, “policies” and “appropriate people”.
The language of the structural discourse of
managerial accountability is consistent among
many CEOs, with common words and phrases.
Another CEO asserts that “The Auditor-General
has made it quite clear that we have to have a
very tight rein and control and knowledge of
what happens to the monies that are allocated
through us by the government.” Managerial
accountability from within this discourse is
about cold, hard “outputs”, like “delivering the
budget” and the language reinforces the CEOs
sense of its feasibility: “The essence for me is to
produce an outcome and live with my budget.”
CEOs idealise the lot of the private sector chief
executive: “on the whole allowed to go off and
do it, within the constraints of finance and
overall strategy”. There is a belief expressed in
the structural discourse that if it’s possible for
these private CEOs to achieve managerial
accountability, then it must also be so for them.
But the personal discourse portrays their own
managerial accountability to be both more
open-ended and constrained by hidden strings.
Public service employment conditions create
obstacles in demanding accountability from
their own managers, yet CEOs try to keep the
pressure on: “we sheet home accountability and
responsibilities” and “. . . get them to come face
to face with their accountability”. The “risk
management” that is part of the structural
discourse of managerial accountability purports
to remove the “risk”, yet in the personal
discourse this becomes “an element of risk-
taking . . . a very difficult area for us to come to
grips with”. Another CEO referred to the flimsy
protection offered by managerial accountability
when public accountability “parameters [are]
based on the exceptions”: “some person not
getting into a hospital for a particular operation
is tantamount to a statement on the whole of
the health system”.
Managerial accountability is also autonomy.
In the structural discourse CEOs defend
managerial accountability as “space” demanded:
I demand space to operate here and in return I believe
1 should keep ouf of the political space . . . 1 expect fo
be left alone to deal with my own Industrial
matters, with personnel matters, operational stuff, with
investment or lack thereof in systems (CE07).
Often, though, personnel or industrial matters
become political. The space becomes a war zone
and intruding ministers become embroiled:
Once (ministers) start fo interfere and start telling me
what the inputs are going to be, I would wash my
hands of the accountability. I’m very clear about my
accountability (CE08).
In this admission, the CEO begins in the
structural discourse, treating managerial
accountability as part of a contract, which he
will abdicate if the political side of the contract
THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOUNTABILITY 229
is breached. But managerial accountability can
become a curse, of which it is more dii3icult to
rid oneself than “washing” hands. Doomed to a
ritual of handwashing, CEOs often feel forced to
become the “meat in the sandwich’ or the
sacrificial lamb for a decision that can be judged,
with the expediency that hindsight brings, as
either political or administrative. This CEO
neatly resolves this dilemma by contrasting
two forms: “the accountability” and “my
accountability”, implying that even when
the former managerial accountability, as the
property of a contract, is dispensable, there is
always personal accountability to fall back on.
Professional accountability
Professional accountability invokes the sense
of duty that one has as a member of a
professional or expert group, which in turn
occupies a privileged and knowledgeable posi-
tion in society. While professional account-
ability values expertise and professional
integrity, the enactment of “professionalism” is
given widely different expression by CEOs. For
one CEO enacting professional accountability
means being the top professional in an agency
dominated by a particular professional group,
for another it means being a professional
administrator in the public servant sense, and
for another, being a professional manager. Being
professionally accountable also involves repre-
senting the professional values of an agency
workforce to a sceptical government or
community. The very divergence of meanings
of “being professional” and the varying
diaculties perceived in meeting this account-
ability indicate that despite the managerialist
agenda of replacing traditional professional or
administrative values in public agencies with
generic management values, professionalism
remains the subject of claims by competing
ideologies.
One CEO sees his job performance primarily
in terms of adherence to his original profession
and its codes of conduct. When a parliamentary
committee asked ‘You were an engineer?“, he
corrected them with the retort “I am an
engineer”. Similarly unusual among this sample
is the view of a central agency CEO who talked
of the professionalism of being an administrator:
‘When I was interviewed for this job, I asked the
Premier ‘Are you looking for a political appoint-
ment or for a professional administrator? ‘.”
Professionalism in the public sector for
him means respecting traditional Westminster
principles such as a commitment in public
service to “permanency”, “invisibility” and “the
merit principle”, but also an “integrity in
decision making”. “The quality of the advice has
to be impeccable, not ideologically based
and not narrowly political, but sensitive to
community concerns and to politics”. “( L)etting
the managers manage”, produces agencies
which are “unaccountable” to “the legitimate
concern of citizens and groups of citizens”. A
third CEO advocates professional management
as the solution to corrupted professionalism, and
he sees himself, and is seen in the service, as an
effective generalist manager. His aim is “a much
more business like framework. . . at the moment
my effort is to, if you like, professionalise
the department and turn it into a well-run,
reasonably highly-focused organisation”.
Although the content of the path to profes-
sional accountability in these three cases
varies and CEOs prescribe different patterns of
allegiance, each is described, in the structural
discourse, using language which is signposted
by the assertion of touchstone values and
uncontestable ideals like probity. In contrast,
professional accountability becomes much
harder to uphold when CEOs are required to
defend the professional status of agency
“members”. While this role is accepted as part
of the job, the language portrays a more
ambivalent stance, borne of defending a profes-
sional group who may be perceived as
intransigent or self-serving: “they expect me to
publicly represent their interests, to be seen to
be supporting them publicly. To be prepared to
do battle with the government and with the
critics, and defend them. I think that’s fair
enough.”
In contrast to others set on introducing
management discipline into a professionally
“captured” organisation, one CEO sees a
230 A. SINCLAIR
resuscitation of embattled or corrupted profes-
sional identity as an important component of
his own accountability. Although a “civilian”,
his vision for his organisation includes restruc-
turing “the profession in a very fundamental
way”, ensuring his successor is “the chief
(professional) officer” and getting officers “to
be more professional”. In the following extract
this CEO begins in the personal discourse with
a colloquial understanding of what he does. He
elaborates his “task” in the structural discourse,
but reverts to the personal when, with his wife
as audience, he wonders whether he has done
anything at all. The romanticised vision of
establishing a special sort of professionalism
seems invisible, perhaps non-existent, and there
are risks if the government doesn’t meet its part
of the bargain:
the real pointy end is the officers in one sense that’s
all I’ve done, for three years. In a deeper sense that’s
what I’ve regarded my task as being - to keep
the profession pointing towards the function of the
organisation I see my task as quite simply to keep
the organisation running in the creative tension between
the policies of government, which mainly refer to
financial administration, and our mission statement
which is the prevention response to emergencies. So,
when my wife and I were driving down to Warmambool
the other day and she said “What do you actually do,
love?” I said “I actually don’t do very much at all, I don’t
do anything”. Because that’s what I see my task as being,
to make sure that we keep moving in the direction of
being responsive to government policy and part of the
government family, and at the same time representing
to that family very strongly our own professional role.
It is a two-way thing. We are not only part of the family
and responsible to them, in a sense they are responsible
to us (CEO9).
When professional solidarity is just a shield for
“bad behaviour or bad practice”, another CEO
admits his fears that the right sort of pro-
fessionalism may not be allowed to surface:
“In the very negative sense, there’s the
brotherhood, closing ranks if there’s trouble and
hiding things that go wrong . . . We are having
some success . . . that came to light by one of
our young fellows putting up his hand and saying
‘Excuse me, but I think we’ve got a problem’.”
Professional accountability is thus given
divergent meaning and professionalism is being
actively constructed in new and hybrid forms
by these CEOs - from the upholding of a
besieged public service ethic (Uhr, 1990;
Harmon & Mayer, 1986) to the assertion of
the need for “business-like” professional
management, from making-over old values to
taking hard or unpopular decisions: “having
the guts to weed out and report problems”.
Professionalism in the structural discourse is a
virtue, reassuringly simple to assert. In the
personal discourse, the dilftculties of wrestling
with the intransigent professionals of others is
admitted. Examining the personal discourse
reveals the obstacles in a straightforward
implementation of “a more professional
approach”. Professional accountability is often
lonely, with CEOs upholding professional
standards to government but still isolated from
the professionals so defended:
There are times when I’m sure I do things that the
Government don’t particularly like. There are certainly
times I do things when some of the workforce are not
happy. I hope there are not too many times when I do
things where the majority of the public are unhappy -
I think that would be unlikely (and later) I’m really just
expected to represent the general interests of the
members and to act as a barrier between them and what
they see, at least, as unfounded criticism. To fight hard
for the kind of resourcing they believe they need to do
the job. To fight for things . . And they expect me to
do the best I can to advance the interests of members
and the organisation (CE02).
Personal accountabi l i ty
Personal accountability is fidelity to personal
conscience in basic values such as respect for
human dignity and acting in a manner that
accepts responsibility for affecting the lives of
others (Harmon & Mayer, 1986). It rests on the
belief that ultimately accountability is driven by
adherence to internal&d moral and ethical
values. Because it is enforced by psychological,
rather than external, controls, personal account-
ability is regarded as particularly powerful and
binding. Personal accountability can also be
reinforced by an organisational culture where
“the articulation of shared values and beliefs . . .
THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOUNTABUT’Y 231
can truly become a way of being” (Denhardt,
1991, p. 30).
CEOs consider their personal accountability
as a self-imposed allegiance which comes into
play as an ultimate limit: “the quality of people
measured in their acceptance of responsibility”.
Perhaps, unpredictably, this form of account-
ability is considered within both discourses. In
the structural discourse, there is a reassuring
detachment in CEOs’ remarks, as in government
documents: “Permanent Secretaries have direct
personal accountability for financial propriety”
(Jenkins ef aZ., 1988, p. 17). Personal account-
ability is an element in a much grander scheme
of things, fidelity to a higher cause, and values
such as honesty and the public interest are
invoked. It is “doing what’s right because it is
right and living with the consequences”. This
accountability is beyond personality or debate,
and the structural discourse removes from
consideration the awesome emotional impacts
of being “personally accountable”.
In other circumstances, personal account-
ability is more “idiosyncratic”, the product of
an upbringing or personal voyage of discovery:
“I’m a very plain blunt man, I put things right
up front.” It “comes through taking a few knocks
. . . We work in a highly irrational environment
and you have to accept that.” Being personally
accountable includes applying “the test of
common sense” and living and working accord-
ing to “squeaky clean” standards. A matter of
judgement, CEOs are not sure when or why
personal accountability asserts itself, they just
know that it does:
My father was always in management. He had a very old-
fashioned kind of philosophy from where I stand but a
very, if you like, highly moral philosophy, and one of
personal responsibility. If something happens. it’s your
fault. And he underlined, I think, the instinct for positions
where you determine the outcome and are seen to
succeed or fail. That came in part from just a family
traditional influence individual responsibiliry and all
those kinds of things. And I would define correct
behaviour in those terms (CE07).
In the structural discourse, personal account-
ability requires a matter of fact recognition of a
bigger scheme of things. In the personal
discourse asserting this accountability is an
inescapable process only partially in one’s
control but where the risks are high. It is
interceded by judgements which only the CEO
can make: “I’ve got to find out or assess where
that balance lies.” “ Ultimately, of course, if the
government insists, I either implement their
policies or step down. One would hope it
doesn’t come to this - but I guess that’s the
bottom line.” Personal accountability can haunt
like a ghost or overpower like a higher being:
“We have to understand there is a time when
you run out of places to hide.” Those who
exhibit personal accountability are “regarded as
difficult to manage. In other words they won’t
do what’s required of them, if they think it’s
required for the wrong reasons” and the
penalties lie in shabby ignominy: “it’s not
hard to think of people who’ve been shuffled
sideways into oblivion”.
DISCUSSION
Chief Executives describe a chameleon-like
accountability towards competing constituencies:
the public and client groups, the minister and
cabinet, the Auditor-General and parliament, to
a shifting professional peer group and to
themselves. They feel accountable for many
different things: for implementing government
programmes and interpreting policy, for
budget delivery, for ensuring due processes are
observed and interest groups are consulted, for
defending colleagues and being true to them-
selves and their upbringing. This research also
confirms that accountability is multiple and
fragmented: being accountable in one form
often requires compromises of other sorts of
accountability.
Perhaps more importantly, though, this
research suggests that accountability is
continually being constructed. Drawing on
fading administrative and imported managerial
ideologies, CEOs interweave their own
experience, to produce and reproduce varying
conceptions of accountability, identified here as
structural and personal discourses. Within
232 A. SINCLAIR
the structural discourse, CEOs produce
accountability as an objectified feature of a
contract or position, through the use of rational,
non-emotive language and the articulation of
understandings about the way things work,
derived from prevalent ideologies and the
language that accompanies them. Within this
discourse, accountability is not problematic, but
can be “delivered” to, and extracted from,
others by following procedures. Within the
other personal discourse, CEOs claim account-
ability as something they uphold and fear,
something about which they feel both anguish
and attachment as a “moral practice” (Schweiker,
1993).
The analysis of discourses make visible
and explicable the layers of meanings, the
contradictions and tensions, when CEOs
talk about each form of accountability.
Accountability is not what is seems. Political
accountability in the structural discourse is a
division of labour, an assurance of space that
can be turned to advantage. In the personal
discourse it is experienced as chasm-like, where
“there are no guidelines” but the costs of
crossing them are high. Public accountability is
a determined but, on occasion, martyred stance
of openness; it is a prison or “trap” in the
personal discourse, but a necessary one in the
structural discourse. Managerial accountability
is autonomy in return for accepting managerially
defined controls and discipline, although it
often doesn’t provide the freedom it promises.
Managerial accountability in the personal
discourse is also difficult to extract from others;
not the straightforward delivery of a contract,
as the structural discourse implies. Professional
accountability is a defence of shared values, a
collegial and supported process of invoking
professional ideals, but in the personal discourse
a lonely process of “weeding out” internal
miscreants. Personal accountability is a philo-
sophy of constancy to unassailable principle, but
when inspected in the personal discourse,
proves to be more idiosyncratic. Each form of
accountability can be both oasis and abyss.
What are the implications of these findings?
There are both methodological and substantive
implications, as well as practical recommenda-
tions for those seeking to improve the account-
ability of administrators. Firstly, the research
supports the importance of using alternative
analytical tools where traditional methods leave
fields fallow of insight. Discourse analysis alerts
us to the role of subjectivity, language and
power in coming to an understanding of
phenomena (Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Arrington
& Francis, 1989). Prevailing conceptions
and discourses of accountability, such as
the structural discourse of managerial account-
ability, are the reflection of the hegemony of
particular languages and distributions of power
in society. Our analysis reveals that such
conceptions are not simply nor comfortably
embraced. More fruitful for future research than
recognising different forms of accountability,
may be plotting discourses to find what
accountability counts for whom and why. While
this research has limited itself to exploring CEO
constructions of their accountability, there is
scope to speculate on wider social and political
discourses, on how, for example, these CEOs’
reflections reinforce “the prevailing political
discourse (in which) a value and legitimacy is
seemingly being set on accounting itself”
(Hopwood, 1990, p. 405). To understand
accountability better we need to recognise that
“knowledge production is always a political act”
(Arrington & Francis, 1989, p. 4).
In this research the personal discourse is
inconspicuous but persistent. In spite of the
managerial& preoccupation with supplanting
political debate with technical expertise and
the legacy of accounting legitimacy giving a
“calculative priority” (Hopwood, 1990, p. 395)
to the economic rather than the social, these
CEOs showed a desire to keep, in their calculus
of accountability, a connection with private sites
for its construction and moral motives for being
accountable.
The second set of implications of this
research are thus substantive ones, about how
accountability is to be defined and enhanced.
These findings introduce some components of
accountability that have not previously been
considered. With a few exceptions (Weick,
THE CHAMELEON OF ACCOUNTABILITY 233
1985) the subject of emotion in organisations
has not been studied. In political science, Davies
( 1980) noted that the study of affects has been
neglected, which is curious when one considers
how strongly people feel about politics. Fear,
vulnerability and fealty are some of the emotions
that contribute to a “feeling” of accountability.
Acknowledging emotions as ingredients is an
important step to enhanced accountability.
Finally, much of the discussion of account-
ability in public management quarters advocates
the imposition of increasingly stringent forms
of managerial accountability. There is no evi-
dence from our research that efforts to delineate
or impose tighter requirements for managerial
accountability will “solve” the problem of
accountability which these CEOs face. Such
efforts assume that accountability can be
“delivered”, like a product batch.
Argyris notes how performance evaluation, a
key plank in many systems of managerial
accountability, is “tailor-made” toprevent leam-
ing (1991, p. 104). One of the reasons is
that such imposed systems of accountability
discourage managers from confronting failure
and learning from it. The demand for account-
ability thus stimulates a set of responses in which
the manager evacuates via defences leaving an
empty shell of procedures and numbers, where
a sense of accountability might have been
(Argyris, 1990). Roberts observes “the anxious
preoccupation with how one is seen by others,
which hierarchical accountability induces,
seems wholly antithetical to the creation of self-
knowledge and the embrace of failure as an
opportunity for learning” ( 1991, p. 366). This
reduces accountability to “the management of
expectations” (O’Laughlin, 1990). The pursuit
of accountability through this route ofproliferat-
ing management controls can in fact produce
its opposite. An edifice of defences, designed
to repel any challenge, stands where a
commitment to openness and embracing
responsibility should be.
Accountability is not independent of the
person occupying a position of responsibility,
nor of the context. Defining accountability, the
way it is intemalised and experienced should
be our focus, not retreating to ever more
desperate calls for audits or tougher controls.
This argument is consistent with a finding of
British research on public authority members,
who “tended to detine accountability in terms
of their . . own sense of what was sensible or
proper: they intemalised accountability, as it
were, as a general duty to pursue the public
good according to their own criteria of what
was right” (Day & Klein, 1987, p. 229). This is
not to suggest that administrators should only
be accountable to what they decide; a course
described as “solipsistic subjectivity” (Harmon,
1986, p. 216). Rather it is to argue that
prescriptions of accountability will remain
unrealised if they ignore the “variety of
other possible experiences of accountability”
(Roberts, 1991, p. 361) and how they are
encouraged.
Accountability is a responsiveness and owner-
ship of outcomes which “goes beyond the idea
of just holding to account. It requires the public
manager to find ways of giving account” (Pollitt,
1990, p. 151). The management of one’s own
and others’ accountabilities requires strategies
tied to an understanding of language and
ideology, values and ethics, emotion and
motivation. Understanding forms and discourses
of accountability can improve administrators’
capacity to explore the tensions, gaps and
contradictions that reside in constructing a
sense of accountability. Experiencing account-
ability from within the structural discourse is “a
defense against anxiety” (Menzies, 1984) and
serves an important purpose for administrators,
allowing them to steer through a quagmire of
contesting claims. At the same time, the personal
discourse provides a vehicle to admit fears and
doubts. It was this very shift between discourses
that enabled CEOs to feel themselves
accountable: neither overwhelmed by vulner-
abilities, nor so detachedly an agent of structure
that they were unable to feef accountable.
Meaning is thus produced through the shift from
one discourse to another, through “difference”
(Hollway, 1989, p. 40). Because the structural
and personal discourses, “offer competing,
potentially contradictory ways of giving meaning
234 A. SINCLAIR
to the world” (Gavey, 1989, p. 464), they are,
for CEOs, an essential device in the process of
actively constructing and renegotiating their
accountability.
CONCLUSION
Researchers of public management note that
“old formulas of accountability will prove less
and less appropriate” as the scale, diversity and
complexity of public organisations create
new pressures and problems for those held
accountable in public administration (Metcalfe
& Richards, 1987). Managerial models of
administrative reform have framed the search
for ways to make administrators more accoun-
table: asserting accountability is a matter of
imposing programme budgeting, performance
monitoring and tighter audits, “leaving man-
agers free to manage” (Jenkins et al, 1988,
p. 11).
In contrast, this research reveals CEOs
constructing accountability by “managing
meaning” (Gowler & Legge, 1983) through
subjective and linguistic, interactive and political
processes. Called to account in different ways
and from different quarters, a repertoire of forms
and discourses enables CEOs to accommodate
and deal with the anxiety involved in being
accountable. Accountability was assessed from
the evidence of social exchanges: with the
public and the press, with ministers and
managers. And CEOs are also evidently attached
to their accountability; the sense of themselves
as accountable was derived via a reflexive
process of moving between discourses. A belief
in accountability as an attainable structural
property or political relationship was important
alongside admitting the risks and fears of
accountability as a sense of openness and
ownership.
For the designers and reformers of admini-
strative systems the solution is not to institu-
tionalise one form of accountability, legitimised
according to a single ideology, Instead of
encouraging administrators to surrender to an
imposed and partial measure, efforts to enhance
accountability should recognise and build on
the processes which enable the construction
of a more robust and privately anchored
experience of accountability.
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