Accountability

Accountability is an obligation or willingness of an individual or organization to accept responsibility for their actions, decisions, and their consequences. 

It involves being answerable to others for one's actions and ensuring that commitments and obligations are met.

 Accountability can apply to various contexts, including personal, professional, governmental, and societal levels.

Accountability has become a key concept in both public administration and democratic theory. Its meaning is contested, but the general definition “obligation to answer for the performance of duties” would fit most versions. 

In this sense, accountability is a relationship between two parties—the person or organization answering orbeing held to account (the accountor or agent) andthe person or organization to whom theaccount isowed (the account holder or

principal) . 

Analysis of accountability begins with the double question:  

Who is accountable to whom?

Accountability obligations depend on the terms ofthe relationship and on its institutional context, leading to two more key questions: 

1. For what is the accountor accountable? 

2. And how? 

Accountability is crucial because it fosters trust, integrity, and responsibility within individuals, organizations, and societies. 

It ensures that people are held responsible for their actions and decisions, which promotes transparency and ethical behavior. 

Without accountability, there can be chaos, mistrust, and a lack of progress or improvement. It's a cornerstone for effective governance, leadership, and sustainable development.

Accordingto a strict understanding, organizations operating in a market,

particularly private companies, are accountable primarily to their owners

and shareholders, not to their

customers. 

They may beaccountable to individual consumers who have purchased goods or services, and they may also bepublicly accountable in the sense of being liable toscrutiny for complying with any relevant law and regulations. 

But overall responsiveness to consumer

preferences comes from the consumers’capacity to choose between

alternative suppliers ina competitive market. 

Suppliers adjust to consumer demand not because of any complaints or scrutiny from potential customers, who have no such rightsagainst a supplier, but because they will go out of business if they have no customers. Markets are thus primarily “exit” mechanisms for securing responsiveness. Dissatisfied customersvote with their feet. 

Accountability, on the other hand,

as normally understood, as a “voice”

mechanism, allowing dissatisfied

members of the public to complain and

to seek information and rectification

from an organization.  In this case, markets do not count as accountability mechanisms. 

Nonetheless, because competitive

markets have the capacity to force

service providers to take note of

consumer preferences and, in some

sense, to“answer” to expressed

demand, to describe themas instruments of accountability can have a certain plausibility.

In the same way, organizations that respond to peer or public opinion

through concern for their corporate reputations are sometimes said to be

exhibiting “reputational” accountability. 

Again,there is no direct connection or dialogue between the supposed “accountor” and the “account holder,

,” no right of the public or the organization’s peers to call the organization to account,and no formal obligation of the accountor toaccept sanctions or redirections from others.

Again, however, the emotive force of the

termaccountability leads sympathetic

observers to classify such responsiveness as instances of account- ability. 

Moreover, in modern democratic societies,reputational effects are often the result of media publicity and scrutiny. There are good grounds for seeing the media as agents of accountability, holding public figures and organizations up to scrutiny,even though the media may have no formal rights to demand information or to impose sanctions. 

As with transparency in general, however,

suchaccountability without rectification

is inchoate andincomplete.

Accountability is thus a chameleon-

like conceptthat readily takes on new,

additional senses fromthe different

contexts in which it is used. 

Because external scrutiny and sanctions, the core of accountability, are so central to

checking abuses of powerand to the

processes of representative democracy,

the term itself is easily extended to

other mechanisms and processes that

secure the same overallobjectives,

including legal and regulatory con-

straints, market competition, and

public serviceprofessionalism and

commitment to the publicinterest.

These extensions and variations have

been driven by the emotive power of the

term combined with the lack of widely recognized academic authorities on the topic. To expect agreement on a single concept of accountability is unrealistic. 

But,at least, analysts of accountability could become more aware of the well-

established variations in usage and more willing to place their own versions within that larger conceptual context.