Program Accountability as an Emergent Property: The Role of Stakeholders in a Program's Field

• Published date: 01 January 2005
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2005.00433.x
• Date: 01 January 2005
• Author: Lenahan O'Connell

Program Accountability as an Emergent Property 85

Lenahan O’Connell

University of Kentucky

Program Accountability as an Emergent

Property: The Role of Stakeholders in a

Program’s Field

This article applies the concepts of organization field and accountability environment to a govern-

ment-funded program. It argues that the formula for accountability inspired by agency theory—

define performance standards, measure performance, and sanction based on measured perfor-

mance—is frequently impossible to apply because program accountability can be an emergent

property arising from the actions of the major actors in a program’s field. Studying a program

reform of social service transportation in Kentucky, it illustrates the utility of conceptualizing ac-

countability as an emergent property of the program’s field. After the principle actors in this

program field—the transportation broker, the state, the transportation provider (such as a taxi

company), and the riders—established their roles, there was a decline in program cost per rider

and a reduction in waste and fraud. The article concludes with implications for designing more

accountable programs.

Many reforms of government programs are designed to

increase answerability or accountability (Rosen 1998;

O’Connell, Betz, and Shepard 1990; Dwivedi and Jabbra

1989; Caiden 1989; Romzek and Dubnick 1987; Frink and

Ferris 1998). As often as not, these programs increase pa-

perwork and formal oversight but have little impact on pro-

gram effectiveness—a primary accountability concern

(Behn 2001; Donohue 1997). Recent research on account-

ability sheds some light on the general problem of design-

ing programs that hold actors accountable for performance.

In many settings, there are multiple mechanisms for ac-

countability and multiple actors striving to hold each other

to account (Behn 2001; Kearns 1996; Romzek and

Ingraham 2000; Johnston and Romzek 1999; Romzek

1998). As a consequence of this complexity, it is frequently

the case that the agency-theory-inspired formula for ac-

countability—define performance standards, measure per-

formance, sanction based on measured performance (Swiss

1983)—is impossible to apply. Accountability arises, it

seems, from the interplay of many actors, some of whom

are not in hierarchical relationships.

Combining the new institutionalist concept of “organi-

zation field” and Kearns’s (1996) concept of “accountability

environment,” this article views accountability as an emer-

gent product of the relationships among actors in a

program’s field. It illustrates the utility of this approach to

accountability using the results of a statewide reform of

the social service transportation delivery system in Ken-

tucky, a reform that deliberately reconstituted the account-

ability environment to make it less hierarchical. The im-

pact of the change in the accountability environment is

assessed by answering these questions:

1. Did the reform reduce the unit cost of providing

services?

2. Did it change the quality of service?

3. Did it reduce waste, fraud, and inefficiency?

First, I describe two ways of conceptualizing the quest

for accountability. I then present the specifics of

Kentucky’s transformation of its human services trans-

portation system and assess the new system in terms of its

impact on overall program accountability. After describ-

ing the research design and data, I present the findings.

Lenahan O’Connell is a research associate at the Kentucky Transportation

Center and a graduate student in the Martin School of Public Policy and

Administration at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include

accountability, transportation policy, and smart growth. His articles have

appeared in

Public Administration Review, Social Problems, Urban Studies,

Journal of Transportation and Statistics, Journal of Business Ethics

, and other

journals. E-mail: locon0@engr.uky.edu.