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In deze bijdrage wordt de mate van relevantie die bestuurders van zelfstandige bestuursorganen (ZBO’s) en agentschappen toekennen aan hun verantwoordingsrelaties met maatschappelijke belanghebbenden geanalyseerd. Hoewel er veel aandacht is voor maatschappelijke vormen van verantwoording in de wetenschappelijke literatuur, is er geen grootschalig kwantitatief onderzoek gedaan naar hoe bestuurders van uitvoeringsorganisaties deze verantwoording ervaren. Deze studie vult deze leemte op basis van surveyonderzoek door: (1) het belang van vormen en praktijken van maatschappelijke verantwoording voor uitvoeringsorganisaties in kaart te brengen en (2) potentiële verklaringen te wegen voor verschillen in het belang van maatschappelijke verantwoording bij uitvoeringsorganisaties. We tonen aan dat bestuurders van ZBO’s en agentschappen een groot belang hechten aan verantwoording richting hun brede publieke omgeving, ook in vergelijking met andere landen met vergelijkbare typen uitvoeringsorganisaties. Deze observatie sluit aan bij de Nederlandse reputatie van consensueel en interactief bestuur. Verschillen in het belang van maatschappelijke verantwoording tussen uitvoeringsorganisaties kunnen niet worden verklaard door de verticale verantwoordingsrelatie tot het moederdepartement of door andere institutionele organisatiekenmerken. Onze analyse laat zien dat de maatschappelijke oriëntatie groter is onder ZBO’s en agentschappen waar bestuurders een grotere invloed van de media ervaren. Maatschappelijke verantwoording hangt samen met grotere ervaren mediadruk.

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ppa-10.1177_09520767221098292 for Public sector accountability styles in Europe comparing accountability and control of agencies in the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and the UK by Thomas Schillemans, Sjors Overman, Matthew Flinders, Per Laegreid, Martino Maggetti, Yannis Papadopoulos and Matthew Wood in Public Policy and Administration

In a simple model of accountability, the core of the interaction consists of the supply and demand of performance information. Alignment of information supply and demand is crucial for an effective accountability relationship, but alignment is difficult in a situation with ambiguous or contested goals. This study analyzes the alignment between local governments and museums. The study uses a mixed-methods approach, including survey data, formal documents, and qualitative interviews with museum directors to analyse the accountability alignment. Demand and supply are not always well-aligned, leading to accountability mismatches. The implications of accountability mismatches for museums and other public organizations are discussed.

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. publishedVersion

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-aas-10.1177_00953997211004606 for Conflictual Accountability: Behavioral Responses to Conflictual Accountability of Agencies by Thomas Schillemans, Sjors Overman, Paul Fawcett, Matthew Flinders, Magnus Fredriksson, Per Laegreid, Martino Maggetti, Yannis Papadopoulos, Kristin Rubecksen, Lise H. Rykkja, Heidi H. Salomonsen, Amanda Smullen, Koen Verhoest and Matthew Wood in Administration & Society

In contemporary public governance, leaders of public organizations are faced with multiple, and oftentimes conflictual, accountability claims. Drawing upon a survey of CEO’s of agencies in seven countries, we explore whether and how conflictual accountability regimes relate to strategic behaviors by agency-CEO’s and their political principals. The presence of conflictual accountability is experienced as a major challenge and is associated with important behavioral responses by those CEO’s. This article demonstrates empirically how conflictual accountability is related to (a) controlling behaviors by principals, (b) constituency building behaviors by agencies, and (c) a general pattern of intensified contacts and information processing by both parties.

Is the delegation of public services to semi-autonomous agencies associated with increased citizen satisfaction? This article assesses three theoretical routes that might link the two: responsiveness, credible commitment, and blame deflection. The article draws on data from the European Social Survey and an expert survey about delegation of tax and police services to semi-autonomous agencies in 15 countries. No supporting evidence was found for the responsiveness and credible commitment theories. Yet semi-autonomous agencies sometimes can absorb or deflect blame for bad performance. In the tax case, dissatisfied service users blame the agency, rather than the government. The presence of an agency worked as a scapegoat for dissatisfied service users and resulted in less dissatisfaction with the government in countries where tax services were delegated.

Universities across the world have recently experienced a number of serious cases of academic misconduct. In the public and academic debates, one dominant explanation exists for the fraudulent behaviour of university staff. Academic misconduct is considered to be the logical behavioural consequence of output-oriented management practices, based on performance incentives. This article puts this explanation to the test. Based on our analysis of a dataset of employees in Dutch higher education (N = 4,775) from 2010 and 2012, we argue that performance indicators have a positive impact on higher education professionals' perception of integrity in their work environment.

Contains fulltext : 159475.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Politicians use a variety of expectations to justify the delegation of public services to public, semi-public or private organizations. This article reveals expectations of delegation, as well as its correlates. Empirical evidence is drawn from a systematic review of 250 peer-reviewed articles published in leading public administration journals between 2000 and 2012. This study identifies a discourse with three main categories of justifications: scientists and practitioners expect economic, political, and organizational benefits. The effects associated with delegation are not in line with these expectations. Delegation has inconsistent correlations to outcomes when governments maintain a role in service delivery. Complete privatization is associated with negative outcomes. These results have important implications for the study and practice of delegation. 19 november 2015

New accountability instruments – performance indicators, audits, and financial incentives – are expected to replace traditional accountability instruments in NPM reforms. We test this expectation by looking at the accountability arrangements of semi-autonomous agencies as a typical example of NPM reforms. Our findings are based on survey data on 342 agencies in six countries. We identify four types of accountability arrangements in semi-autonomous agencies, in line with the four trajectories of public management reform identified by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004). Accountability relations between agencies and ministries are determined by country-specific administrative regimes, types of agency, and to a lesser extent, agencies' policy fields. We identify new avenues for theory and research into the effects of reforms on accountability in the public sector, and on semi-autonomous agencies in particular.

Contains fulltext : 159264.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) The increased establishment of semi-autonomous agencies in most countries from the 1980s on has been justified by claims of expected improvement in public sector performance. Empirical research to test these claims has been scarce, based on single cases and showing mixed results. This study tests these claims at the macro level in twenty countries using a range of indicators and variables. Overall, we find a negative effect of agencification on both public sector output and efficiency. This refutes the economic claims about agencification. 01 april 2015

Reputation is of growing interest for the study of public bureaucracies, but a measurement that can discern between the subdimensions of reputation and is validated on real‐life audiences has remained elusive. The authors deductively build, test, and cross‐validate a survey instrument through two surveys of 2,100 key stakeholders of the European Chemicals Agency, the European Union chemicals regulator. This empirical tool measures an agency's reputation and its building blocks. This scale represents an important contribution to reputation literature, as it allows scholars to distinguish and measure which aspects of reputation public organizations are “known for” and build their claim to authority on, as well as how the profiles of public organizations differ. The authors find that direct stakeholder contact with the agency is necessary for stakeholders to be able to evaluate the separate dimensions of reputation independently. Evidence for Practice This study equips practitioners with a reputation barometer tailored to the public sector. It allows them to measure the reputation of their organization, in a differentiated fashion, among different stakeholder groups.While public organizations increasingly engage in reputation management activities, a potential caveat that emerges from our exercise is that managers might be steering in non‐astute directions. While our study shows that, as for private actors, “performance matters,” procedural and moral aspects also weigh heavily in the eyes of stakeholders when it comes to public regulators.To secure a positive organizational image and the authority crucial for public agencies to operate, the performance management turn in the public sector may need to be supplemented by an enhanced organizational attention to procedural and moral aspects.

For public sector organisations, accountability has become a navigation act. They are not only accountable to ministries and the government (“the state”), but also have to deal with accountability demands from societal stakeholders (“the streets”). Various politicians and academics have argued in favour of social accountability: forms of accountability directed to citizens, clients, users, and other stakeholders. But when and why does social accountability matter in executive governance? This dissertation sketches an empirically fine-grained picture of the many faces of social accountability. It is based on multi-methodological research, including surveys, experiments, focus groups, and qualitative interviews. Although social accountability is not as prominent as political accountability, public sector organisations consider social accountability to be important. This is particularly the case when they are confronted with social media pressures. The dissertation further shows that social accountability is a limited control instrument. Rather, social accountability arrangements, such as client councils and stakeholder panels, often serve practical and strategic ends for public sector organisations. Particularly, social accountability can strengthen citizens' perceptions of the legitimacy of organisational decisions. This dissertation calls for a nuanced understanding of the actual impact of social accountability. While accountability to the state is necessary for political and democratic control, accountability to the streets is most relevant for effective public policy implementation and the reputation and legitimacy of public sector organisations.