This article provides a critical reflection on the heavily normative nature of current accountability debates. In particular, it explores three streams of normative discourse on nonprofit accountability: improving board governance, improving performance-based reporting, and demonstrating progress toward mission. The article describes how these logics are associated with three basic accountability regimes: coercive, technocratic, and adaptive. It then discusses how a focus on these normative logics and regimes, although important, can mask the realities of social structure and the relations of power that underlie them. The article proposes a more empirical approach to framing accountability—“thick description”—that might enable scholars better understand how social regimes of accountability actually operate in different contexts and in which the instruments of accountability are at least as likely to reproduce relationships of inequality as they are to overturn them.
Behn, R.D. (2005). The core drivers of CitiStat: It's not just about the meetings and the maps. International Public Management Journal, 8, 295-319.
5.
Board Source and Independent Sector. (2006 ). The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and implications for nonprofit organizations . Washington, DC: Board Source and Independent Sector. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from www.independentsector.org/issues/sarbanesoxley.html
6.
Bogart, W.T.1995. Accountability in nonprofit organizations: An economic perspective. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 6, 157-170.
7.
Brown, L.D. (2007). Multiparty social action and mutual accountability . In A. Ebrahim & E. Weisband (Eds.), Global accountabilities: Participation, pluralism, and public ethics (pp. 89-111). Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press.
8.
Childress, S., Elmore, R., & Grossman, A. (2006). How to manage urban school districts. Harvard Business Review, 84, 55-68.
9.
Chisolm, L.B. (1995). Accountability of nonprofit organizations and those who control them: The legal framework. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 6, 141-156.
10.
David, R., & Mancini, A. (2003, March 25-26). Transforming development practice-The journey in the quest to develop planning, monitoring and evaluation systems that facilitate (rather than hinder) development. Paper presented at workshop on "Partners in Development Evaluation: Learning and Accountability," organized by France and the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Working Party on Aid Evaluation, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Paris .
11.
David, R., & Mancini, A. (2004). Going against the flow: Making organisational systems part of the solution rather than part of the problem. Lessons for Change in Policy & Organisations, No. 7. Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies.
12.
David, R., Mancini, A., & Owusu, C. (2001). Notes to accompany ALPS. London : ActionAid.
13.
DiMaggio, P.J., & Powell, W.W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review, 48, 147-160.
14.
Dobkin Hall, P. (2005). A solution is a product in search of a problem: A history of foundations and evaluation research. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~phall/EVALUATION%20ESSAY.pdf
15.
Ebrahim, A. (2002). Information struggles: The role of information in the reproduction of NGO-funder relations. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 31, 85-113.
16.
Ebrahim, A. (2005). Accountability myopia: Losing sight of organizational learning. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 34, 56-87.
17.
Edelman Trust. (2007). Edelman Trust barometer 2007. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from www.edelman.com/trust/2007/trust_final_1_31.pdf
18.
Edwards, M., & Hulme, D. (1996). Too close for comfort? The impact of official aid on nongovernmental organizations. World Development, 24, 961-973.
19.
Feldman, M.S., & March, J.G. (1988). Information in organizations as signal and symbol . In J. G. March (Ed.), Decisions and organizations (pp. 410-428). Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
20.
Ferguson, J. (1990). The anti-politics machine: "Development," depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
21.
Fleishman, J.L. (2007). The foundation: A great American secret: How private wealth is changing the world. New York: Public Affairs.
22.
Fremont-Smith, M.R. (2006). The search for greater accountability of nonprofit organizations: Recent legal developments and proposals for change (Working Paper No. 33.8). Cambridge, MA: Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from www.ksg.harvard.edu/hauser/PDF_XLS/workingpapers/workingpaper_33.8.pdf
23.
Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In C. Geertz (Ed.), The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays (pp. 3-30). New York: Basic Books.
24.
Goodin, R.E. (2003). Democratic accountability: The third sector and all. Paper presented at Nonprofit Scholars Conference: Crisis of Governance: Implications for the Nonprofit/Non-Governmental Sector . Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Conference date: April 3-4, 2003. Harvard University , Cambridge, MA.
International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). (2006). Analysis of law #18-FZ, on introducing amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation. Washington, DC: ICNL. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from www.icnl.org/knowledge/news/2006/01-19_Russia_NGO_Law_Analysis.pdf
27.
Jordan, L. (2007). A rights-based approach to accountability. In A. Ebrahim & E. Weisband (Eds.), Global accountabilities: Participation, pluralism, and public ethics (pp. 151-167). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
28.
Jordan, L., &Van Tuijl, P. (Eds.). (2006). NGO accountability: Politics, principles and innovations. London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan.
29.
Keating, E.K. (2006). Is it time to address selective disclosure for nonprofit organizations? (Working Paper No. 33.7). Cambridge, MA: Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Harvard University. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/hauser/PDF_XLS/workingpapers/workingpaper_33.7.pdf
30.
Light, P.C. (1997). The tides of reform: Making government work, 1945-1995 . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
31.
Light, P.C. (2000). Making nonprofits work: A report on the tides of nonprofit management reform. Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute and Brookings Institution Press.
32.
Macdonald, K. (2007). Public accountability within transnational supply chains: A global agenda for empowering Southern workers? In A. Ebrahim & E. Weisband (Eds.), Global accountabilities: Participation, pluralism, and public ethics (pp. 252-279). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
33.
Meyer, J.W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83, 340-363.
34.
Nielsen, W.A. (1972). The big foundations. New York : Columbia University Press.
35.
Ostrower, F., & Bobowick, M.J. (2006). Nonprofit governance and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Urban Institute national survey on nonprofit governance, preliminary findings. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy.
36.
Panel on the Nonprofit Sector. (2005). Strengthening transparency, governance, accountability of charitable organizations: A final report to Congress and the nonprofit sector. Washington, DC: Independent Sector. Retrieved July 10, 2007, from http://www.nonprofitpanel.org/report/final/
37.
Riddell, R.C. (1999). Evaluating NGO development interventions. In D. Lewis (Ed.), International perspectives on voluntary action: Reshaping the third sector (pp. 222-241). London: Earthscan.
38.
Romzek, B.S., & Dubnick, M.J. (1987). Accountability in the public sector: Lessons from the Challenger tragedy. Public Administration Review, 47, 227-238.
39.
Rothschild, J., & Miethe, T.D. (1999). Whistle-blower disclosures and management retaliation . Work and Occupations, 26, 107-128.
40.
Scott-Villiers, P. (2002). The struggle for organisational change: How the ActionAid accountability, learning and planning system emerged. Development in Practice, 12, 424-435.
41.
Senge, P.M. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.
42.
Smillie, I. (2007). Not accountable to anyone? Collective action and the role of NGOs in the campaign to ban "blood diamonds." In A. Ebrahim & E. Weisband (Eds.), Global accountabilities: Participation, pluralism, and public ethics (pp. 112-130). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
43.
Smillie, I., & Hailey, J. (2001). Managing for change: Leadership, strategy and management in Asian NGOs. London: Earthscan.
44.
Smith, S.R., & Lipsky, M. (1993). Nonprofits for hire: The welfare state in the age of contracting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
45.
Tassie, B., Murray, V., & Cutt, J. (1998). Evaluating social service agencies: Fuzzy pictures of organizational effectiveness. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 9, 59-79.
46.
Wolch, J.R. (1990). The shadow state: Government and voluntary sector in transition. New York: The Foundation Center.
