11-10-2012, 05:15 PM
ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPONSIBILITY AND CORRUPTION: MANAGING THE 'PUBLIC PRODUCTION PROCESS
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Differing Managerial Cultures
A central proposition of this chapter is that those responsible for consolidating, evaluating and enhancing the New Zealand state-sector reforms should draw on a broader range of scholarly inquiry than was used in designing the new 'public production process' , which has been shaped by insights drawn almost exclusively from organisational economics.' A more multidisciplinary, experientially based - and more commonsensical? - approach should better ensure that some aspects of the reforms do not ultimately exacerbate rather than overcome the problems they were originally intended to address.
I have outlined elsewhere the reasons why the reforms might introduce new varieties of 'goal displacement', a contradiction common to virtually all large bureaucratic organisations, and one which the changes were explicitly designed to overcome. In similar vein, this chapter will discuss the possibility that, unless a broader range of theory and experience is drawn upon, other unintended and undesirable consequences might follow. Of central concern in this discussion are the consequences that may flow from an exaggerated preoccupation with managerial accountability at the expense of administrative responsibility.
A basic conceptual framework that is central to both discussions is outlined by James Q. Wilson in his major work on American public bureaucracy. In summary, Wilson deploys a four-way matrix (see Figure 3.1) to differentiate among public agencies according to (i) the observability of an agency's outputs, and (ii) the observability of its outcomes. The former comprise the work the agency does, and the latter the effects of that work on the community. To quote Wilson:
The outputs (or work) of police officers are the radio calls answered, beats walked, tickets written, accidents investigated, and arrests made. The outcomes (or results) are the changes, if any, in the level of safety, security, order, and amenity in the community.
It should be noted that Wilson uses the two terms in almost the same way as New Zealand's Public Finance Act 1990, which is one of the three main statutory foundations of the state-sector reforms (the others being the State Owned Enterprises Act 1986, and the State Sector Act 1988).
Managers of production organisations-or of production tasks-can evaluate workers 'on the basis of their contribution to efficiency', measured clearly as a ratio between outputs and outcomes. In procedural organisations workers are much more likely to be assessed according to their compliance with rules and procedures, given that processes can be observed while outcomes cannot. In a craft environment compliance must be assessed against the outcomes produced rather than the means of doing so. In a coping culture 'effective management is almost impossible' since neither work nor outcomes are readily observable.
Accountability and Responsibility
In the state-sector reforms there has emerged a huge contrast between the fulsome attention paid to accountability and the very sparse consideration of responsibility. Perhaps the two words are considered synonymous. But they are not, as they represent two concepts which, while related, embody different ideas about the behaviour of public officials.
Accountability, as the word itself suggests, is about the need to give an account of one's actions. In an organisational context, the primary duty of obligation is to provide such an account to one's superiors in the hierarchical chain of bureaucratic command. Ralph Hummel captures the essence of bureaucratic accountability in pointing out that managerial control is based on the attempt to render all work 'visible', through reporting systems and procedures. Managers must know what their subordinates are doing, and their subordinates must tell them. Work that is hidden is potentially threatening to the organisation, understood as a control system. Information about the work carried out is the sine qua non of effective management. In this view, if work (outputs) cannot be seen it cannot be properly supervised.
Accountability for Production and Procedural Tasks
.As Wilson indicates, the work involved in carrying out some tasks is relatively easy to observe, while in other cases it is much more difficult. .Accountability' therefore, understood as the need to make work visible, is more easily fostered in tasks which lend themselves to a production or procedural managerial mode than in those tasks which are more consistent with craft and coping modes. In the two former categories, work is observable as it happens; in other words it is directly (or simultaneously) controllable There is little scope for rendering misleading, or downright untrue' accounts of what is going on. In the latter two categories, however, work can often be made visible only after it happens. It is indirectly (or retrospectively) controllable, since it depends heavily on accounts given —stories told—by operators whose actual conduct is not observable by their managerial superiors.
In these cases managers may be told by their operators only what they want or expect to hear. The 'reality' reported to managers in craft and coping contexts may indeed be 'socially constructed', and their knowledge of what operators are actually up to must often be based on information gleaned from other sources, such as 'clients' or members of the public. This is what Herbert Kaufman calls 'unplanned feedback'. These operators are the 'street-level bureaucrats' discussed by Michael Lipsky—police officers, social workers, corrections officers, school teachers, and so on.
Responsibility for Craft and Coping Tasks
The need for accountability often becomes a source of frustration for many officials who are required to carry out tasks that are highly dependent on the discretionary exercise of specialised knowledge. They are often professionals working in craft organisations. In these cases, as with professionals and other workers in coping organisations, there may be greater scope for 'morally hazardous' behaviour since their work is less observable than that of workers in production or procedural organisations. And in production organisations there may be less non-compliant behaviour simply because outcomes are clearly achievable without it. In procedural organisations all actions will be watched, as Wilson points out, because they can be watched, whereas outcomes remain elusive (and sometimes illusory). Agency theory has been invoked by architects of the state-sector reforms to curb the likelihood of 'morally hazardous' behaviour.