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The purpose of this paper is to explore how accountability practices are affected and potentially transformed when mediated by translation. Adopting a postcolonial lens, the authors consider the ways in which translation functions and how intermediaries act as cultural translators in the context of microfinance.

The authors take a qualitative approach to a case study of a microfinance organization based in South Africa. Fieldwork allowed for the collection of data by means of direct observations, interviews, documents and a fieldwork diary.

The study demonstrates the presence of spaces of hybridity that co-exist within the same organizational context (Bhabha, 1994). Two spaces of hybridity are highlighted, in which translation processes were possible because of the proximity between borrowers and fieldworkers. The first space of hybridity was found locally and here translation shaped an accountability that aimed at leveraging local cultures and favoring cultural framing. The second space of hybridity was characterized by the interaction between oral and written cultures and the translation of responsibilities and expectations was predominantly unidirectional, prioritizing accountability practices consistent with organizational requirements.

This research offers in-depth insights into the links between intermediation, translation and accountability practices. It differs from prior research in considering intermediaries as active translators of accountability practices who act in-between cultures. The authors contend that the translation process reinscribes culture allowing dominant accountability practices to prevail and local cultural traditions to merely contextualize accountability practices.

A public‐private partnership can be seen as an appropriate institutional means of dealing with particular sources of market failure by creating a perception of equity and mutual accountability in transactions between public and private organisations through co‐operative behaviour. The relative merit of the idea of public‐private partnership is oriented mainly around a mutual benefit. As the roles of government in public‐private partnerships are not only to provide services, but also to monitor the marketplace, a well‐defined regulation framework is essential. A sound regulatory framework will increase benefits to the government by ensuring that essential partnerships operate efficiently and optimise the resources available to them in line with broader policy objectives, ranging from social policy to environmental protection. In turn, it provides assurance to the private sector that the regulatory system includes protection from expropriation, arbitration of commercial disputes, respect for contract agreements, and legitimate recovery of costs and profit proportional to the risks undertaken.

Accountability is ubiquitous in social systems, and its necessity is magnified in formal organizations, whose purpose has been argued to predict and control behavior. The very notion of organizing necessitates answering to others, and this feature implies an interface of work and social enterprises, the individuals comprising them, and subunits from dyads to divisions. Because the nature of workplace accountability is multi-level as well as interactive, single-level conceptualizations of the phenomenon are incomplete and inherently misleading. In response, this chapter sets forth a meso-level conceptualization of accountability, which develops a more comprehensive understanding of this pervasive and imperative phenomenon. The meso model presented integrates contemporary theory and research, and extends our perspectives beyond individual, group, unit, or organizational perspectives toward a unitary whole. Following this is a description of challenges and opportunities facing scholars conducting accountability research (e.g., data collection and analysis and non-traditional conceptualizations of workplace phenomenon). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as are directions for future research.

The purpose of this research is to use an accountability framework to explain the emerging tensions in accountability and how an intended bottom‐up approach became progressively supplanted. This paper is set within an emerging Zambian microfinance organisation moving into crisis.

A series of semi‐structured interviews were conducted with key local microfinance specialists, managers and accountants, clients and past and current loan officers. Live observation of the client‐loan officer interface and internal meetings provided triangulation on accountability relationships in the midst of crisis. Data were analysed using NVIVO, a qualitative computer software package.

The findings show that tensions between vertical and horizontal accountability in practice can be directly translated into heightened pressure and stresses on both the non‐governmental organisation (NGO) and its loan officers, which constrain overall accountabilities to other stakeholders and disguise other potential dysfunctions.

This study focussed on accountability at the grassroots in microfinance NGOs with a social mission. It reveals potential for further personal, community and socially constituted accounting research within microfinance in particular.

The paper adds to the literature on NGO accountability. It will be of value to researchers and practitioners seeking to gain a better understanding of not‐for‐profit organisations whose goals are not primarily wealth creation. It also gives details on under‐researched areas in accounting, namely NGOs and poverty reduction, and practices in Sub‐Saharan Africa.

This paper aims to examine how small, grass‐roots non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) account for their actions and expenditures and how this accountability is discharged to, and benefits, the citizens they serve.

The paper draws on social capital theory to inform an interpretive analysis of documentary and interview evidence. The empirical material is derived from CHAI policy and project documents, coupled with interviews with 75 participants at the national, district and community levels of the CHAI programme. An illustrative case study is presented of an NGO that delivers welfare services to a Ugandan community affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The research finds that, by harnessing the attributes of social capital, grass‐roots NGOs can supplement formal accountability obligations to funders with effective “bottom‐up” accountability to an often overlooked NGO stakeholder group – the service beneficiaries, with positive outcomes for social services delivery.

The research examines a single community‐led public welfare initiative (the Ugandan CHAI), with a particular focus on one illustrative grass‐roots NGO within that programme. Nevertheless, it offers insights into how accountability mechanisms can be reconceptualised to suit the context of developing countries where smaller NGOs increasingly operate.

The potential for less formal, “bottom‐up” accountability mechanisms is illustrated using the case of the Ugandan community‐led HIV/AIDS initiative (CHAI), a programme for delivering social services to communities ravaged by the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

This research addresses the lack of empirical studies of smaller, grass‐roots NGOs in the accounting literature. It also contributes to the under‐researched area of how NGOs can appropriately discharge their accountability obligations to beneficiaries. The use of social capital theory to inform the study is also a novel contribution of this paper.

This paper explores how ethnicity is implicated in an etic–emic understanding through day-to-day practices and how such practices meet external accountability demands. Addressing the broader question of how ethnicity presents in an accounting situation, it examines the mundane level responses to those accountability demands manifesting an operationalisation of the ethnicity of the people who make those responses.

The study followed ethnomethodology principles whereby one of the researchers acted both as an active member and as a researcher within a Salvation Army congregation in Manchester (UK), while the others acted as post-fieldwork reflectors.

The conceivers and guardians of an accountability system relating to the Zimbabwean-Mancunian Salvationist congregation see account giving practices as they appear (etic), not as they are thought and interiorised (emic). An etic–emic misunderstanding on both sides occurs in the situation of a practice variation in a formal accountability system. This is due to the collision of one ethnic group's emics with the emics of conceivers. Such day-to-day practices are thus shaped by ethnic orientations of the participants who operationalise the meeting of accountability demands. Hence, while ethnicity is operationalised in emic terms, accounting is seen as an etic construct. Possible variations between etic requirements and emic practices can realise this operationalisation.

The authors’ findings were based on one ethnic group's emic construction of accountability. Further research may extend this to multi-ethnic settings with multiple etic/emic combinations.

This study contributed to the debate on both epistemological and methodological issues in accountability. As it is ill-defined or neglected in the literature, the authors offer a working conceptualisation of ethnicity – an operating cultural unit being implicated in both accounting and accountability.

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.

This paper analyses participatory budgeting (PB) in two Indonesian indigenous communities, illustrating how the World Bank sponsored neo-liberal model of “technical rational” PB is overshadowed by local values and wisdom, consisting of sophisticated, pre-existing rationalities for public participation.

Adopting a qualitative and interpretive case study approach, the study draws on data from semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and periods of participant observation. The paper utilises Weber's characterisations of rationality to analyse the PB process in indigenous communities.

The co-existence of both formal (technical) and substantive rationalities leads two Indonesian indigenous communities to execute participatory budgeting pragmatically. The formal budgetary mechanisms (Musrenbang), cascaded down from central and local governments, are melded with, and co-exist alongside, a tradition of public participation deriving from local cultural values and wisdom (Rembug warga). Reciprocal relationships and trust based on a pre-existing substantive rationality result in community members adapting budget practices while also preserving their local culture and resisting the encroachment of neo-liberal initiatives. The paper offers deeper analysis of the unintended consequences of attempting to implement technical rational accounting reforms and practices in indigenous settings.

The paper provides important insights into the way the interplay between formal and substantive rationality impacts on accounting and budgeting practices in indigenous communities. Our study also presents a unique case in emerging economy contexts in which neoliberal initiatives have been outmanoeuvred in the process of preserving indigenous values and wisdom. The informal participatory mechanism (Rembug warga) retained the community trust that neoliberalism systematically erodes.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have transformed the global outlook for international higher education. Given the rapid shift to online learning, the Tokyo Convention in the Asia-Pacific entrusted to UNESCO has become an important policy framework to facilitate regional collaboration, authoritative information sharing and recognition of qualifications across diverse modes of learning. This paper examines the role of the Tokyo Convention to establish an inclusive platform for monitoring and collaborative governance of mobility and internationalization based on fair and transparent recognition policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific.

In August 2019, a standardized survey instrument was sent by the Secretariat of the Tokyo Convention Committee at UNESCO Bangkok to competent recognition authorities in 46 countries in the Asia-Pacific, including the eight State Parties to the Tokyo Convention that ratified the Convention as of the reporting period. In total, qualitative data from n = 27 countries/states was received and analyzed to assess implementation of the Tokyo Convention throughout the region. The research design illustrates how normative instruments such as the Tokyo Convention are monitored and assessed over time.

A multi-stakeholder approach based on collaborative governance is needed to effectively monitor implementation and implications of the Tokyo Convention for diverse higher education stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region.

Implications include establishing baseline data and methods for monitoring implementation of the Tokyo Convention. Based on collaborative governance theory, the paper explores potential for a multi-stakeholder approach to promote mutual accountability in the Asia-Pacific and to develop mechanisms for inclusive participation in the governance of the forthcoming Global Convention on recognition.

As the first systematic review of its kind, this paper includes a unique dataset and insights into UNESCO's methodology to monitor implementation of standard-setting instruments for qualifications recognition in the Asia-Pacific.

This study explores how introducing a permissioned blockchain in a supply chain context impacts accountability relationships and the process of rendering an account. The authors explore how implementing a digital transformation impacts the governance of network transactions.

The authors mobilize 28 interviews and documentary analysis. The authors focus on early blockchain adopters to get an insight into how implementing a permissioned blockchain can transform information sharing, coordination and collaboration between business partners, now converted into network participants.

The authors suggest that implementing a permissioned blockchain impacts accountability across three levers, namely through the ledger, through the code and through the people, where these levers are interconnected. Blockchains are often valued for their ability to enable transparency through the visibility of transactions, but the authors argue that this is an incomplete view. Rather, transparency alone does not help to satisfy a duty of accountability, as it can result in selective disclosure or obfuscation.

The authors extend the conceptualizations of accountability in the blockchain literature by focusing on how accountability relationships are enacted, and accounts are rendered in a permissioned blockchain context. Additionally, the authors complement existing work on accountability and governance by suggesting an integrated model across three dimensions: ledger, code and people.