TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding Felt Accountability
T2 - The institutional antecedents of the felt accountability of agency-CEO's to central government
AU - Schillemans, Thomas
AU - Overman, Sjors
AU - Fawcett, Paul
AU - Flinders, Matthew
AU - Fredriksson, Magnus
AU - Laegreid, Per
AU - Maggetti, Martino
AU - Papadopoulos, Yannis
AU - Rubecksen, Kristin
AU - Rykkja, Lise Hellebø
AU - Salomonsen, Heidi Houlberg
AU - Smullen, Amanda
AU - Wood, Matt
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Maj Grove Jeppesen (Utrecht University) first of all, and also Daniel Bailey (University of Sheffield), Martin Moos (Aarhus University), Annbj?rg Ryssdal (University of Bergen), Manuel Quaden (Utrecht University), Amanda Waldenstr?m (University of Gothenburg), Ella Weisbrot (Australian National University) for their excellent research assistance.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors
Funding Information:
We would like to thank Maj Grove Jeppesen (Utrecht University) first of all, and also Daniel Bailey (University of Sheffield), Martin Moos (Aarhus University), Annbjørg Ryssdal (University of Bergen), Manuel Quaden (Utrecht University), Amanda Waldenström (University of Gothenburg), Ella Weisbrot (Australian National University) for their excellent research assistance.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Governance published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
PY - 2021/7
Y1 - 2021/7
N2 - The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top-down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived to be (b) legitimate and (c) to have the expertise to evaluate those decisions. We explore felt accountability of agency-CEO's and its institutional antecedents with a survey in seven countries combining insights from public administration and psychology. Our bottom-up perspective reveals close connections between de facto control practices rather than formal institutional characteristics and felt accountability of CEO's of agencies. We contend that felt accountability is a crucial cog aligning accountability holders' expectations and behaviors by CEO's.
AB - The literature on autonomous public agencies often adopts a top-down approach, focusing on the means with which those agencies can be steered and controlled. This article opens up the black box of the agencies and zooms in on their CEO's and their perceptions of hierarchical accountability. The article focuses on felt accountability, denoting the manager's (a) expectation to have to explain substantive decisions to a parent department perceived to be (b) legitimate and (c) to have the expertise to evaluate those decisions. We explore felt accountability of agency-CEO's and its institutional antecedents with a survey in seven countries combining insights from public administration and psychology. Our bottom-up perspective reveals close connections between de facto control practices rather than formal institutional characteristics and felt accountability of CEO's of agencies. We contend that felt accountability is a crucial cog aligning accountability holders' expectations and behaviors by CEO's.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85091430914&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/gove.12547
DO - 10.1111/gove.12547
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85091430914
SN - 0952-1895
VL - 34
SP - 893
EP - 916
JO - Governance
JF - Governance
IS - 3
ER -