Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

Accountability 247
A series of managerial changes in the United Kingdom had the express aim
of improving accountability. In the late 1960s the Fulton Report argued that
accountable management means ‘holding individuals and units responsible for
performance measured as objectively as possible’. Its achievement depends
upon ‘identifying or establishing accountable units within government departments
– units where output can be measured as objectively as possible and
where individuals can be held personally responsible for their performance’
(Fulton, 1968, p. 51). Fulton led to no clear improvements in accountability but
raised an important issue that was to be revisited.
Accountability was a major factor at work in the Thatcher government’s
financial changes; specifically, there was ‘the desire of some ministers to get
a grip over their own departments: to ensure that the civil servants, for whose
activities they were accountable to Parliament were actually accountable to
them’ (Carter, Klein and Day, 1992, p. 17).
Enhancing accountability was a specific aim of the early move towards managerialism,
both in response to the inadequate form of accountability in existence
before and to try to emulate the ‘superior’ accountability practices
believed to exist in the private sector. Gray et al. argue that promoting accountable
management was the ‘guiding ideology’ of the FMI in the United
Kingdom where ‘authority and responsibility are delegated as far as possible to
middle and junior managers who are made aware of and accountable for meeting
their costs and other performance targets’ (1991, p. 47).
A managerial view of accountability adds direct accountability to the public.
Political accountability still exists, but there is now greater accountability for
results to politicians and the public, especially clients. There is less emphasis
on the negative sense, which concentrated on the avoidance of mistakes.
Management systems are aimed at fulfilling government programme objectives,
in which costs are visible and related to outputs. When public servants
become involved in setting policy and monitoring progress towards objectives,
they are heading towards management rather than administration and need to
be responsible for what they do. There is managerial accountability as well as
political accountability. While the political leadership certainly has a major
role in determining goals and objectives – strategic leadership – the bureaucracy
itself is required to meet targets. As Behn argues (2001, pp. 210–11):
We need to accept that accountability is not just about finances and fairness, but about
finances, fairness, and performance. Traditional hierarchical accountability might make
sense for finances and fairness. It might even make some sense when results are something
that one person or one unit produces. It does not make sense, however, in a nonhierarchical
world of collaboratives. Thus we need a new mental model of accountability;
we need to shift from the implicit conception of linear, hierarchical, uni-directional,
holder–holdee accountability to an explicit recognition that we need mutual and collective
accountability. And we need to do both of these things simultaneously – to shift our
accountability emphasis from finances and fairness to finances, fairness, and performance
while rethinking what accountability (for all three) might mean.