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This chapter examines organisational change processes that occur when accountability demands from powerful external stakeholders change. It investigates, firstly, whether these external accountability demands impact on the performance management systems of two different types of organisations. Secondly, it considers whether the goals for improved performance contained within the external accountability demands are realised. The chapter derives its primary insights from analysing in-depth interviews with managers working in a private sector company and in public sector organisations. The analyses reveal complex organisational responses. In the public sector case study, the organisations tended to reorient their performance management systems towards the external accountability demands; whilst in the private sector organisation, pressures from falling share prices forced managers to focus their decision making on the preferred performance measures contained in shareholders’ accountability demands. However, whilst there is some evidence of performance management system changes, the desires for improved performance subsumed by the external accountability demands are not necessarily realised through the performance management system changes.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of external audit on the management of the Common Fund of the Mozambique National Institute of Statistics (INE).

This paper followed a case study approach of the INE Common Fund that was based on the qualitative evidence from the content analysis of the external audit reports, annual plans of activities and budget for the past seven years and interviews with middle managers of the INE.

The research found that external audit has a relatively significant impact on the management of the INE Common Fund. The authors attribute the positive impact to the high concern of management to implement the external audit recommendations, associated with the financial dependence between the agent (the National Institute of Statistics) and the principal (Fund Donors), explained through Laughlin’s Model of Accountability.

The results indicate that external audit associated with the financial dependence of the agent on the principal has a significant impact on the accountability. Thus, it contributes to assist in the formulation of public policies on external financing to developing countries.

Most of the studies on external audit and accountability are from countries with more developed economies than Mozambique’s, without heavy reliance on external financing, and these studies analyse the audits carried out by public audit institutions. This research explores the phenomenon in the context of external financing to the State Budget by governments and international organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of external auditing to accountability in the Tanzanian local government authorities (LGAs).

This paper uses content analysis of the external audit reports of the LGAs for the past ten years. Corroborative evidence was gathered through interviews with external auditors, councillors, Parliamentary Committee members and selected internal auditors of the LGAs.

The study finds that external auditing had marginally contributed to the enhancement of accountability within the LGAs. This is mainly attributed to the limited scope and failure of the responsible officials to address audit recommendations. In the light of agency theory, the findings suggest that external auditing has not sufficiently enabled the stakeholders to hold LGAs’ officials accountable.

The findings indicate that external auditing can enhance accountability when the scope is widened to provide relevant information and also when audit recommendations are implemented by responsible officials.

Most studies of external auditing and accountability have focussed on the developed countries; this is one of the few papers which explores the phenomenon in the context of emerging economies.

Motivated to know more about the internal means through which accountability for sustainability takes shape within organisations (in what ways and by whom), this paper aims to explore how accountability for sustainability is constructed within an organisation during a process of establishing a control system for sustainability.

This paper adopts a qualitative case study approach of a decentralised industrial group, operating mainly in Scandinavia, between 2017 and 2020. Both primary and secondary data are used (e.g. document analyses, semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and site visits) to inform the findings and analysis.

The findings reveal a multi-faceted path towards accountability for sustainability that involves several concerns and priorities at organisational and individual levels, resulting in a separate sustainability control systems within each subsidiary company. Although hierarchical structures for accountability exist, socialising accountability activities are needed to (further) mobilise sustainable accounts.

Successful sustainable control systems require employees making sense of formalised accountability instruments (e.g. policies and procedures) to establish their roles and responsibilities in organisations.

This paper proposes socialisation processes as important for driving forward sustainability solutions.

This study elaborates on the internal accountability dynamic for the construction of sustainable accounts. Its novelty is built upon the interaction of hierarchical and socialising accountability forms as necessary for establishing a control system for sustainability. It furthermore illustrates the relationship between the external and internal pathways of accountability.

The primary purpose of this study is to test the measurement invariance and the latent mean differences of the personal accountability measure (PAM) constructs.

Obtained through the Turkish version of the PAM from a random sample of 453 teachers working in elementary and secondary schools in Aksaray province, data were analyzed using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the measurement invariance and latent mean differences of the internal and external accountability constructs across gender, tenure, school grade and teacher branches, respectively.

Teacher internal and external accountability constructs were demonstrated in this study to be fully equivalent across gender and tenure, and partially equivalent across school grade and teacher branches. Latent mean comparisons showed that less-experienced tenure teachers, class teachers and ESL teachers in Turkey felt more internally accountable compared to their peers in other groups. No significant latent mean differences of teacher external accountability were observed across genders, tenures, school types or teacher branches.

This study contributes to research by providing further valuable information on the equivalencies of the external and internal accountability constructs across gender, tenure, school grade and branch for future research studying multigroup comparisons and structural relationships of personal accountability constructs. It also provides school principals and policymakers with more accurate, multigroup comparisons of teacher external and internal accountability dispositions across gender, tenure, school grade and branch.

It is difficult for corporate sustainability reporting (CSR) to provide accountability to stakeholders. This paper assesses whether accountability-based CSR systems can be created through the application of Spotlight Accounting and WikiRate as a hybrid forum.

The current paper explores the utility of Spotlight Accounting for CSR through assessing its application to a hybrid forum, WikiRate. This process involved engaging student researchers to collect CSR data from the United Nations Global Compact's (UNGC) corporate action group (CAG) and recording this information into the WikiRate platform. Aggregate analysis was conducted to assess the limitations and challenges of the data to inform decision-making.

Spotlight Accounting exposes challenges within traditional applications of CSR. These challenges impact comparability, decision usefulness and accountability of CSR data for stakeholders.

This paper provides recommendations to enhance the accessibility and relevance of company information to assist in the provision of Spotlight Accounting. In doing so, it highlights the usefulness of CSR to leverage greater accountability between corporations and society.

This paper applies the emerging practices of Spotlight Accounting and presents it as an alternative way to research and conceptualise external accounts, reporting and accountability. This form of accounting has the potential to enhance communications and partnerships between companies and society as well as challenge dominate power dynamics held by corporations.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain how upward accountability processes can be enabling in, or constraining to, the effective deployment of development aid funding.

The paper derives its primary insights from in-depth interviews and focus groups with non-governmental organization (NGO) fieldworkers working and delivering development aid in Northern Ghana. It analyses inductively the perspectives of fieldworkers to explain their experiences of upward accountability.

The fieldworkers’ perception of upward accountability was mainly one of external control, in response to which they enacted a skilful form of compliance accountability. This perception of control failed to stifle their initiative and intrinsic commitment to beneficiaries. The fieldworkers craved “conversations for accountability”, in which they had a voice in the development of upward accountability metrics, thereby enabling them to fulfil their sense of felt responsibility to beneficiaries. While aspects of “conversations for accountability” were emerging in fieldworker-funder interactions, it was unclear to what extent funders were committed to further advancing them. Overall, the analysis unveils how felt responsibility mediates for, and partly diminishes, the perceived negative impacts on aid effectiveness of upward accountability processes informed by a focus on control.

The authors examine the potential of upward accountability processes using in-depth analyses of the actual experiences of those involved in delivering NGO services at the grassroots level. The authors contribute to emerging work in this vein by enriching the authors’ understanding of local constituencies’ experiences of accountability processes more generally, especially the impact these mechanisms have on NGO operational activities. The authors also unveil the mediating role fieldworkers’ “felt responsibility” to beneficiaries’ plays in moderating the perceived negative impacts on aid effectiveness of upward accountability processes.

The purpose of this paper is to add to our understanding of how external factors such as funding and external accountabilities affect the organisational inner workings, especially identity issues.

The paper is based on a comparative case study of two professional chamber orchestras, one in Sweden and one in the UK. The two orchestras had significantly different funding conditions and had different relations with funders and were thus exposed to different kinds of accountability dilemmas. The two organisations were studied using and ethnographically inspired approach. The developments of various parts of the organisations were studied, such as funding, management, strategy, management control and identity issues.

The paper illustrates how the solution to accountability dilemmas in an organisation can, over time, result in the protection or the dilution of a perceived organisational core and thus in an identity struggle. Especially, management has to deal with the balance between financial and operational accountability, where organisational members could perceive the decisions to be confirming or rejecting what they perceived as being the higher purpose of their work.

This paper may help managers become more aware of the long ranging consequences of managerial decisions and how such decisions may affect the identity orientation of organisational members.

The paper combines the concept of identity with the concept of accountability, something that has not been done to a large extent in previous research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of accountability as it relates to a non-governmental organisation (NGO) evolving through a period of considerable change in Sri Lanka.

An in-depth single case study of a large NGO working in Sri Lanka is presented. Data collection involved conducting semi-structured interviews with a range of NGO employees and stakeholders, undertaking participant and non-participant observation and document analysis.

This paper shows how accountability is a contested notion that is shaped by struggles among stakeholders within a field. The authors explore how the “widespread field” consisting of the aid context in Sri Lanka and internationally is rapidly shifting. This creates unique pressures within the “restricted field” of the case NGO and its constituents. These pressures are manifested in the contest between the different capitals held by various stakeholders to shape the NGO. The nature of access to these capitals is important in the way that the NGO is shaped by external forces, and also by the individuals within it.

This study adds fresh perspective to the growing body of work in NGO accountability. The paper highlights the tensions NGOs face through a holistic application of a Bourdieusian conceptual framework. The authors show how the habitus of the organisation is shaped in such a way that conceptions of accountability were captured by powerful external and internal constituencies. Ultimately, the nature of an organisation’s agency is questioned.

The authors present a more nuanced understanding of forces which shape accountability in an NGO setting which is of practical relevance to NGOs and their stakeholders. The authors highlight the struggle for an NGO to maintain its agency through resisting external forces that impact on its operations.

This study presents a comprehensive and holistic application of Bourdieu’s concepts and their interactions in an organisational setting. The struggle to harness various forms of capital in the field, shapes doxa and the habitus of NGO actors, illuminating the role of symbolic violence in the creation of an organisational identity.

Principals face shifting accountability pressures from many sources. The most notable recent change in the USA has been the growing pressure from state and federal government. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which the accountability pressures experienced by principals in one American state were the same as those reported in research documenting “objective” changes in those pressures.

This qualitative study uses interviews with New Jersey middle school principals. The purposeful sample includes principals who had been in their buildings at least three years and enhances variation on socioeconomic status (as measured by New Jersey's rating of “district factor groups”) and school achievement. The authors averaged three years of achievement data and controlled for variation in poverty, ethnicity, language proficiency, and enrollment. A total of 37 principals were contacted; 25 were interviewed. Principals first rank ordered seven sources of accountability. They were then interviewed to learn why the one they ranked highest was most important.

The most frequent top source of accountability was “your own conscience.” Principals who selected this option highlighted a sense of personal responsibility, responsibility to the children in their charge, and how conscience mediates among competing accountabilities. Accountability to one's conscience was most prevalent in high achieving schools.

Frequent reference to internal responsibility among leaders suggests that they continue to feel a strong sense of internal accountability in spite of increasing external pressures. It also illustrates the range of external, often conflicting pressures that principals face which include pressures from the public and the district office as well as state and federal government. In this increasingly prescriptive and contradictory environment the principal's moral code is important to her or his school.