Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Role attribution in public sector accountability processes

Role attribution in public sector accountability processes PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how actors take on and ascribe the role of accountor and constituent in the process of giving and demanding of reasons for organisational conduct.Design/methodology/approachThe on-going interactions in supervision meetings between the supplier of outsourced elderly care in Sweden and a local government administration were examined through a longitudinal study.FindingsThe paper proposes the concept of role attribution to characterise a strategy for handling complexity in public sector accountability processes. This complements previous research, which has described three main strategies for handling competing accountability demands: decoupling, structural differentiation and compromising. Role attribution was found to involve the supplier and purchaser of public services pursuing a specific resolution to an accountability demand by positioning themselves as jointly aligned with certain prospective constituents in the environment. Thus, while inter-organisational relationships can be a source of complexity for accountors, as already documented in prior research, the findings of this paper show ways in which the dynamic and situation-specific accountor and constituent roles can serve as a resource. The two organisations moved back and forth between cooperating to handle accountability demands from actors in the environment and assuming different accountor and constituent roles within their relationship.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper discusses the need to move beyond the taken-for-granted roles of accountor and constituent in analysing outsourced public service relationships. Specifically, the findings suggest that researchers interested in public sector accountability processes would benefit from designing their studies in ways that makes it possible to observe and theorise dynamic and situation-specific accountor and constituent roles.Practical implicationsThe studied supervision meetings served as an arena where on-going accountability issues played out and were mediated through role attribution. Seemingly, there are possibilities to complement formal role descriptions and contracts with systematic processes for addressing on-going operational accountability issues within and beyond individual, formalised accountor–constituent relationships. From a societal perspective, it might be relevant to mandate more systematic procedural structures to support on-going accountability processes, for example, the creation and maintenance of interactive inter-organisational forums which can serve as a mechanism for systematic, yet situation-specific, handling of operational and strategic issues. At an organisational level, this paper shows a need that such forums merit on-going managerial attention and conscious staffing to secure both competence and stability.Originality/valueThe authors find a dynamic and situation-specific attribution of accountor and constituent roles, in contrast to prior research’s routine consideration of these roles as being predetermined by existing relationships of hierarchy and influence. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management Emerald Publishing

Role attribution in public sector accountability processes

Download PDF
23 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/role-attribution-in-public-sector-accountability-processes-Sb6kyI9iM0
Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN
1176-6093
DOI
10.1108/QRAM-04-2017-0025
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how actors take on and ascribe the role of accountor and constituent in the process of giving and demanding of reasons for organisational conduct.Design/methodology/approachThe on-going interactions in supervision meetings between the supplier of outsourced elderly care in Sweden and a local government administration were examined through a longitudinal study.FindingsThe paper proposes the concept of role attribution to characterise a strategy for handling complexity in public sector accountability processes. This complements previous research, which has described three main strategies for handling competing accountability demands: decoupling, structural differentiation and compromising. Role attribution was found to involve the supplier and purchaser of public services pursuing a specific resolution to an accountability demand by positioning themselves as jointly aligned with certain prospective constituents in the environment. Thus, while inter-organisational relationships can be a source of complexity for accountors, as already documented in prior research, the findings of this paper show ways in which the dynamic and situation-specific accountor and constituent roles can serve as a resource. The two organisations moved back and forth between cooperating to handle accountability demands from actors in the environment and assuming different accountor and constituent roles within their relationship.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper discusses the need to move beyond the taken-for-granted roles of accountor and constituent in analysing outsourced public service relationships. Specifically, the findings suggest that researchers interested in public sector accountability processes would benefit from designing their studies in ways that makes it possible to observe and theorise dynamic and situation-specific accountor and constituent roles.Practical implicationsThe studied supervision meetings served as an arena where on-going accountability issues played out and were mediated through role attribution. Seemingly, there are possibilities to complement formal role descriptions and contracts with systematic processes for addressing on-going operational accountability issues within and beyond individual, formalised accountor–constituent relationships. From a societal perspective, it might be relevant to mandate more systematic procedural structures to support on-going accountability processes, for example, the creation and maintenance of interactive inter-organisational forums which can serve as a mechanism for systematic, yet situation-specific, handling of operational and strategic issues. At an organisational level, this paper shows a need that such forums merit on-going managerial attention and conscious staffing to secure both competence and stability.Originality/valueThe authors find a dynamic and situation-specific attribution of accountor and constituent roles, in contrast to prior research’s routine consideration of these roles as being predetermined by existing relationships of hierarchy and influence.

Journal

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management – Emerald Publishing

Published: Oct 9, 2017

References

  • Citizens and consumers
  • Styles of accountability
  • Neecastle city council and the grassroots: accountability and budgeting under austerity
  • Accounting and organizations: realizing the richness of field research
  • Standards for field research in management accounting
  • Public accountability
  • Accountability and governance in social care: the impact of personalisation
  • Accounting and accountability in an Italian social care provider: contrasting people-chaning with people-processing approaches
  • Resisting the ‘new public management’: absorption and absorbing groups in schools and GP practices in the UK
  • The interdependencies of intra- and inter-organisational controls and work practices – the case of domestic care of the elderly
  • Accountability, rhetoric, and poltical interests: twists and turns of NHS performance measurements
  • Interviews in organizational research
  • Customer focus - an accountability dilemma
  • Inter-organizational cooperation challenging hiearchical accountability: the dominated actors in a municipal joint venture
  • Accounting and NPM in UK local government – contributions towards governance and accountability
  • Organisational design choices in response to public sector reforms: a case study of mandated hospital networks
  • Trust in the monitoring of publicly financed services – a case study of two outsourced care homes for the elderly
  • Contracting accountability in network governance structures
  • The proper scope of government: theory and an application to prisons
  • Inledning
  • Joined-up government and the challenges to accounting and accountability researchers
  • A public management for all seasons?
  • The ‘new public management’ in the 1980s: variations on a theme
  • Hybridization or polarization: doctors and accounting in the UK, Germany and italy
  • Municipal contracting out: governance choices, misalignment and performance in Swedish local government
  • Governing cooperation hazards of outsourced municipal low contractibility transactions: an exploratory configuration approach
  • The attitudes of NHS clinicians and medical managers towards changes in accounting controls
  • Interventionism - an approach for the future?
  • Trust and control in network relations: a study of a public sector setting
  • Heterogenous accountingisation: accounting and inter-organisational cooperation in home care services
  • Accounting in inter-organisational relationships within the public sector
  • Modernising government: the calculating self, hybridisation and performance measurement
  • Accountingization v. legitimation: a comparative study of the use of accounting information in intensive care
  • Redefining the boundaries of public sector accounting research?
  • Strategies for theorizing from process data
  • Studying processes in and around organizations
  • The NPM agenda: back to the future
  • Absorbing LMS: the coping mechanism of a small group
  • Pushing budgets down the line: ascribing financial responsibility in the UK social services
  • Consumers of eldercare in Sweden: the semblance of choice
  • The limits of accountability
  • Accounting, hybrids and the management of risk
  • Circuits of power and accountability during institutionalisation of competing tendering in public sector organisations: a field study in public care of the elderly