Adverse effects of Accountability

Lerner & Tetlock [1] wrote about experimental work that indicated accountability could produce inefficient decision outcomes. Under resource scarcity, decision makers would be inefficient but fair. I wonder if that works in the public sector, where people often suggest there is a scarcity of resources.

Later Siegel-Jacobs & Yates [2] distinguish between procedural and outcome accountability, and I wonder which is of greater relevance to using consultants in the public sector. I suspect, especially after having just read the 31st report of the Commons Public Accounts Commitee, that outcome accountability is what the media and MPs ask for, but if the procedural accountability exists, assuming that means a need to justify one's actions, then the project stages that use consultants will each be accounted for. Perhaps procedural accountability is less visible than outcome accountability. Perhaps there are more gaps in procedural accountability than the MPs and media realise.

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[1] Lerner, J.S., Tetlock, P.E., 1999, Accounting for the Effects of Accountability, Psychological Bulletin, Vol 123 no 2 pp 255-275
[2] Siegel-Jacobs, K, Yates, J.F., 1996, Effects of Procedural and Outcome Accountability on Judgment Quality, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol 65, No 1 pp 1-17

Collecting data

I've managed to record two interviews, one only 20 minutes on the phone and awful sound quality and the other face-to-face. The short one should lead, I hope, to a case study, and I'm already finding documents to go with it and some interesting relationships between consultants, clients and accountability. The longer interview was more about getting practical background but led to some themes. For example:

1. there's a mass of written or electronic evidence available for public projects.
2. more projects work in teams rather than hierarchical now than some years ago, so accountability might be a team duty rather than pass up the hierarchy.
3. but OTH, some public organisations will still be hierarchical.
4. therefore, although I might expect to find network discourse expressing accountability in a team context, I might find hierarchies in the public sector, a concern with control and consequently the discourse on accountability will be bureaucratic.