Performance and Accountability—A Theoretical Discussion and an Empirical Assessment

Tom Christensen and Per Lægreid ()

Public Organization Review, 2015, vol. 15, issue 2, 207-225

Abstract: This paper starts with a theoretical discussion on the relationship between performance and accountability in public organizations with a special focus on administrative reforms. Accountability theory, based in the work of Dubnick/Romzek, Bovens, Behn, Bouckaert, Halligan and Pollitt, is discussed and related to different aspects of performance. How ambiguous is the relationship between accountability and performance? Do different types of accountability relate to different aspects of performance or pose certain challenges in NPM reforms, post-NPM reforms and hybrid reforms? The second part of the paper illustrates performance and accountability relations in a large welfare administration reform in Norway by addressing the experiences different actor have had of performance and accountability dynamics. We focus on how the reform has affected different kinds of accountability relations and the relationship between accountability and performance. The data used are document studies, interviews and survey data from a large evaluation project. A main finding is that the relationship between administrative reform and accountability is ambiguous and contested. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Administrative reform; Accountability; Performance; Welfare administration; Norway (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11115-013-0267-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:porgrv:v:15:y:2015:i:2:p:207-225

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11115/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11115-013-0267-2

Access Statistics for this article

Public Organization Review is currently edited by Ali Farazmand

More articles in Public Organization Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().