THERE IS ACCOUNTABILITY AND THEN AGAIN THERE IS ACCOUNTABILITY

Prof Bruce Stone et al have identified eight types of accountability, namely: moral, administrative, political, managerial, market, judicial, constituency relation, and professional. Leadership accountability includes many of these albeit that real leadership is less to do with politics and more to do with those things that cause others to follow – situational interactive power, vision and values, charisma and intelligence. It is therefore important for an organisation to have a mission for a high level of accountability as it is a powerful way to strengthen the leadership role of governance.

Political accountability is the accountability of governance, the public service and political representatives to the constituency and to legislative bodies such as a Council or a Parliament. Generally voters do not have any direct way of holding elected representatives accountable during their term of office. Additionally, some officials and legislators may be appointed rather than elected and are thus functionally unaccountable to the constituency they are employed to serve. Rather they are accountable to the constituency's elected representatives.

However, a constitution, or statute, can empower a legislative body to hold their own members, the government, and government bodies to account. This can be through holding an internal or independent inquiry. Inquiries are usually held in response to an allegation of misconduct or corruption. The powers, procedures and sanctions vary. A 'legislature' may have the power to remove or suspend a representative from office. Alternatively, an accused person might  decide to resign before her/his misdemeanor is exposed.

In parliamentary systems, the government relies on the support or parliament, which gives parliament power to hold the government to account. For example, some parliaments can pass a vote of no confidence in the government.

Ethical accountability is to do with improving overall personal and organisational performance by:

• developing and promoting responsible tools and professional expertise; 

• advocating an effective enabling environment for people and organisations to embrace a culture of sustainable development. 

Ethical accountability may include the individual, as well as small and large enterprises (business and cultural), not-for-profit organisations, research institutions and academics, and government. One scholarly paper has posited that "it is unethical to plan an action for social change without excavating the knowledge and wisdom of the people who are responsible for implementing the plans of action and the people whose lives will be affected." 

Administrative accountability is to do with internal rules and behaviours along with  independent commissions and  mechanisms that hold public servants within an administration accountable. Within an administration best practice demands that behaviors are  bounded by rules and regulations. Furthermore, public servants are subordinates in a hierarchy and accountable to superiors. However, there is a need for independent “watchdogs” to scrutinise and hold administrations accountable. The legitimacy of these watchdogs is entirely dependent upon their independence – and the lack of any conflicts of interest. Apart from internal checks, best practice 'watchdog units' accept complaints from constituents, bridging governance and Communities of Ownership and Interest to hold the Public Service accountable to constituents – not merely the internal administrative hierarchy.

The contemporary evolution of accountability involves either the expectation or assumption of account giving behavior. The study of account giving as a sociological act was articulated in a 1968 article on "Accounts" by Marvin Scott et al although it can be traced as well to J. L. Austin's 1956 essay "A Plea for Excuses," in which he used excuse making as an example of 'speech acts'. A speech act can be taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning and inviting someone as well as congratulating them.


Communications scholars have extended this work through the examination of strategic uses of excuses, justifications, rationalisations, apologies and other forms of account giving behavior by individuals and corporations – colloquially and collectively known as 'spin'.  Philip Tetlock and his colleagues have applied experimental design techniques to explore how individuals behave under various scenarios and situations that demand accountability.

The One World Trust – itself a model of accountability – Global Accountability Report, published in a first full cycle 2006 to 2008 is one attempt to measure the capability of global organisations to be accountable to their stakeholders – their Communities of Ownership and Interest.  Accountability is becoming an increasingly important issue for the non-profit world – not the least in the museum world. On the international stage several NGOs signed the "accountability charter" in 2005. In the Humanitarian field, initiatives such as the HAPI – Humanitarian Accountability Partnership International –  appeared. Individual NGOs have set their own accountability systems – for example, the ALPS, Accountability, Learning and Planning System of ActionAid.

Increasingly, discretionary accountability is becoming less and less acceptable and especially so as the Internet facilitates greater levels of accountability being communicated and communicated both efficiently and very effectively. 

ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE IVORY TOWER

In so much as museums are seen, and see themselves, as being a part of 'academe' they have also been seen as existing within 'The Ivory Tower Paradigm.' As the 20th C progressed this view has been changing – and likewise has been challenged.  

Originally the term Ivory Tower came to us in Biblical references to the Song of Solomon and later  for Mary Mother of Jesus. However, by the 19th C it was used to describe a kind of academic world view where there was a perceived disconnect between the practicality of everyday life and academe. 


Indeed, the term Ivory Tower has come to carry pejorative  connotations of a willful disconnect from the everyday world, the esoteric, overly specialised cum useless research and academic elitism. Typically it carries the negative connotations of outright condescension. In globalised English usage it has become the shorthand for 'academia' or 'the university' – particularly departments of the humanities.

Against this background, and in so much as museums are perceived as being a part of academe, it can be seen that some museums both set themselves apart from the everyday and/or are seen as being separate from the mundane concerns of  ordinary life – albeit that this may be a misconstruction in a great many cases. More crudely put, many museums seemed to understand themselves as  closed shops of a kind and thus unaccountable to anyone not deemed as having jurisdiction over them – most members of the public etc.

Therefore, for many observers, museums carry the burden of being seen as self determined, self defined and largely unaccountable. Along with this comes the perception – internal and external – that museums are by-and-large unaccountable in line with  19th C imaginings of museums and their place in the world. For better or worse the 20th C saw great changes in the ways museums operated and were understood as well as what might be understood as a museum – along with changes in the ways in which they have increasingly become more accountable. 

Museology in the 21st C has, and is, taking on and promoting new dimensions of accountability against the background of the international political thrust for greater levels of democracy in once autocratic states, jurisdictions, etc.   The Ivory Tower Paradigm as it may apply to museums no longer has any credibility in a Western cultural context even if there are still adherents to the thesis that museums are separate and apart – and therefore only required to be 'relatively accountable'.         

ACCOUNTABILITY: The Principle & The Test

Accountability as a concept is variously understood within the context of ethics and governance. Typically  it is linked to concepts such as as responsibility, answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving. 

In relation to governance, accountability is central to discourses relative to issues in the public sector, not-for-profit enterprises and private corporate  worlds. In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, service delivery, decisions, and policies. 

Accountability includes the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or the employment position and encompasses the obligation to report, explain and be answerable for resulting consequences.

Relative to governance, accountability has been difficult to define – and sometimes there is a resistance to definition. Accountability is frequently described as an account-giving relationship between individuals.

 For example, A is accountable to B when: 

•  A is obliged to inform B about A’s past and/or future actions;
•  A is obliged to inform B about A’s decisions, to justify them, and 
•  A is obliged to cause B to suffer some form of punishment in the case of misconduct, 

Accountability can not exist without proper accounting practices and does not exist without apparent and transparent accountability. In other words, the absence of accounting, and the means to be held accountable, translates as the absence of accountability. In an organisation the accountability chain needs to be clearly articulated and the accountability test needs the be equally applied at every strata of the organisation.