Accountability
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Accountability has several meanings and is the subject of a broad debate among students of modern governance. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as answerability, responsibility, blameworthiness, liability and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving. As an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in both the public and private (corporation) worlds. As important has been its centrality to the study of ethics.
Accountability implies a concern for the welfare of those with whom one works. Accountability denotes an ambition to leverage one's position in the economy to the benefit of society as a whole. Accountability at the most fundamental level signify's an obligation to one's self- an obligation to lead a meaningful life-both in and out of the workplace consistent with one's own values. - Yale, School of Management
At its root, accountability involves either the expectation or assumption of account-giving behavior. The study of account giving as a sociological act was first explicitly articulated in a 1968 article on "Accounts" by Marvin Scott and Stanford Lyman, although it can be traced as well to J.L. Austin's "A Plea for Excuses" (published in 1956-57) in which he used excuse making as an example of speech acts. Communications scholars have extended this work through the examination of strategic uses of excuses, justifications, rationalizations, apologies and other forms of account giving behavior by individuals and corporations, and Philip Tetlock and his colleagues have applied experimental design techniques to explore how individuals behave under various scenarios and situations that demand accountability.
In politics, and particularly in representative democracies, accountability is an important factor in securing good governance. Accountability differs from transparency in that it only enables negative feedback after a decision or action, while transparency also enables negative feedback before or during a decision or action. Accountability constrains the extent to which elected representatives and other office-holders can willfully deviate from their theoretical responsibilities, thus reducing corruption.
The goal of accountability is at times in tension with the goal of leadership. A constituency may have short-term desires which are at odds with long-term interests.
See also: campaign finance reform.fr:redevabilité ja:説明責任
