Accountability In A ‘Reinvented’ Government
| Author | Linda Deleon |
| Date | 01 September 1998 |
| Published date | 01 September 1998 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9299.00116 |
ACCOUNTABILITY IN A ‘REINVENTED’
GOVERNMENT
LINDA DELEON
Whether ‘reinvented’ government implies worker empowerment, increased mana-
gerial discretion, or decentralization, it is widely thought to mean diminished
accountability. A two-dimensional typology (based on clarity of goals and certainty
of cause-effect knowledge) of decision-making processes and their associated
organizational structures is compared to Romzek and Dubnick’s typology of
accountability relations. The article argues that accountability mechanisms can be
matched to public problems and agency structures and that changes in perceptions
concerning the nature of public problems is at the root of contemporary enthusiasm
for non-hierarchical modes of organizing.
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, a wave of change has passed through government organiza-
tions in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and else-
where. Vigorously criticizing the bureaucratic model, its orthodoxy holds
that public organizations need increased flexibility and manoeuvrability in
order to respond creatively to changed and still changing conditions, to
invent and experiment in order to devise new ways of ‘doing more with
less’. But although administrative reform holds out the promise of better
service to citizens, more efficient use of public monies, and a zeal for con-
tinuous improvement, its major prescriptions – such as greater authority
for public managers, empowerment of front-line workers, and market-like
competition to create incentives – all pose a challenge to traditional theories
of accountability. Several observers have characterized the problem as
involving, inevitably and unfortunately, a trade-off between accountability
and the increased flexibility and entrepreneurial energy of ‘reinvented’
government: to get more of one, we must take less of the other (Bellone
and Goerl 1992; Hughes 1994; Lynn 1992; Moe 1994).
The seeming incompatibility of modern administrative reform initiatives
and traditional theories of accountability, however, results from a failure
to recognize that bureaucracy is but one of the methods that can be (and,
in fact, is already) used to hold public employees responsible for their
Linda Deleon is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University
of Colorado at Denver.
Public Administration Vol. 76. Autumn 1998 (539–558)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
540 LINDA DELEON
actions. But rather than simply layering new varieties of accountability atop
the old, the public and its elected representatives should attempt to make
considered choices among the available alternatives. This article argues that
the particular nature of contemporary administrative reform is, in part, the
result of changes in the conventional wisdom concerning the problems the
public sector is asked to address. As perceptions about the nature of these
problems have changed, opinion concerning the sort of organizational
arrangements best suited to solving them has changed too. Further, it will
be argued that the appropriateness of various methods by which account-
ability may be ensured are also a function of organization structure. A
refined and extended theory of accountability offers the possibility of
answering the challenge confronting administrative reform: how can the
people control the administration in a ‘reinvented’ public sector, while still
permitting public managers enough leeway to accomplish needed improve-
ment? (Romzek and Dubnick 1994).
CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTEMPORARY REFORM
As Lynn (1992) writes concerning prior efforts at administrative reform in
the United States (which date back at least to the Progressive-era civil ser-
vice reform legislation that instituted the ‘merit system’ in the federal
government), the current movement pursues two quite different routes
toward the improvement of government performance:
A ‘soft path’ . . . builds from the premise associated with the human
relations school of management, that long-lasting changes in perform-
ance require changes in the quality of the working environment and in
the nature of work itself. A second, and far more popular, route to per-
formance improvement, the ‘hard path,’ relies on the conventional tools
of hierarchy and competition to induce higher levels of performance
(Lynn 1992, p. 13).
Contemporary advocates of reform also favour the ‘hard path,’ stressing
increased authority for public managers to direct personnel matters,
budgeting, and purchasing (Caiden 1994; Gore 1993; Osborne and Gaebler
1992). Like previous reform – and like ‘managerialism’ or ‘the new public
management’ in England, Australia, and New Zealand (Denhardt 1993;
Hood 1991; Hughes 1994; Mascarenhas 1993; Peters and Savoie 1994; Pollitt
1996) – the private sector offers the model to emulate. Thus there is an
emphasis on competition, the risk-taking of entrepreneurship, customer ser-
vice, efficient use of resources, and accountability for results. On the other
hand, the legacy of the quality movement (which, in the US, began with
private-sector companies attempting to copy Japanese management) was
a preference for flatter hierarchies and worker empowerment (Cohen and
Eimicke 1994; Swiss 1992). The catchword ‘empowerment’ encompasses a
great deal, however, from increased consultation in decision making to self-
managing teams that take on both production and managerial responsi-
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1998
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