Managing Public Accountability: How Public Managers Manage Public Accountability

Abstract

Accountability is of growing importance in contemporary governance. The academic literature on public accountability is fraught with concerned analyses, suggesting that accountability is a problematic issue for public managers. This article investigates how public managers experience accountability and how they cope with accountability. The analysis highlights a number of ways in which public managers do indeed “suffer” from accountability, although, conversely, most of the respondents were able to identify strategic coping mechanisms with which apparently problematic accountability requirements can be converted into practically useful procedures.