Academic literature on the topic 'Dual accountability'

Although only results from mathematics and reading assessments are required to be used when Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) of schools is calculated, some states have elected to include science achievement results either in their AYP calculations or as part of a separate dual accountability system. This study examined 2009 National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) results based on how states use, or do not use, science in their accountability programs. Consideration was given to the idea that including science achievement might detract from efforts, and consequently results, in mathematics and reading. Results from both fourth- and eighth-grade data indicated that states choosing to use science in their accountability calculations did not lose ground in those other subjects. Fourth-grade data indicates that the states using science in their accountability programs additionally had significantly higher science achievement than the other states.

AbstractIncreasingly, jurisdictions are adopting “apology legislation” that allow medical professionals to apologize to patients and family members when an adverse event occurs while disallowing the introduction of the apology in a liability case as evidence of fault or liability. While apology legislation itself is fairly straightforward, its potential meaning and impact is much more complex. This paper conceptualizes apology legislation from an accountability and ethics of care perspective. These two concepts—accountability and care—are distinct but interrelated concepts and this dual theoretical approach offers a rich analysis on the potential impact(s) of apology legislation. We argue that apology legislation is a mechanism added to the existing accountability regime that can offer important opportunities to express and practise care. As an accountability mechanism, apology legislation creates space for an accountability relationship to emerge between medical professionals and their patients. Apology legislation also addresses long-standing gaps in how we as a society think about health care and respond to patients and families in ways that challenge the dominant “consumer of services” role. It is in this sense that apology legislation has the potential to destabilize traditional notions of social citizenship. Last, we argue that empirical research is urgently needed to know to what degree apologies contribute to accountability and the transformation of health care.

Purpose: This study examines the genesis of accountability: a global view. The concept of accountability has been viewed from various disciplinary lenses in order to develop an integrated understanding of the term. Special attention is devoted to principal—agent perspectives from political science and economics. Design/Research method: An integrated framework is developed, based on four central observations. (1) Accountability is relational in nature and is constructed through inter- and intra-organizational relationships. (2) Accountability is complicated by the dual role of nonprofits as both principals and agents in their relationships with other actors. (3) Characteristics of accountability necessarily vary with the type of nonprofit organization being examined. (4) Accountability operates through external as well as internal processes, such that an emphasis on external oversight and control misses other dimensions of accountability essential to nonprofit organizations. Finding: The study finds that the time has come for individuals, organizations, stakeholders, establishments, institutions and governments to focus on reporting on their programme results, such as inventory take result and product performance result. Limitation: Paucity of data and empirical works were the major restrictions to this study. Implication: Thus, being clear about intentions, measuring and understanding results, and making adjustments where necessary, would help assure taxpayers/stakeholders that their money is being spent wisely. A focus on results would also help to ensure that limited public resources are being applied in a way that provides the most value to all concerned. Keywords: Accountability, Genesis, Performance, Responsibility, Types, Assessment, Global How to cite: Omodero, C.O. (2019) Genesis of accountability and its impact on accounting. International Journal of Financial, Accounting, and Management, 1(1), 47-55.

This discussion focuses on the intersection of two dissonant concepts of importance in today's educational scene—democracy and accountability. In this article, we describe how these conflicting ideologies might be resolved, theoretically and practically, through democratically accountable leadership—that is, the dual necessity of educational leaders to successfully function as change agents working for social justice. Understanding how educational leaders conceive of these phenomena is an important starting place toward preparing future educational leaders to deal more effectively with them. Hence, we investigated the idea of rethinking accountability around democratic principles and incorporating it into leadership preparation. Specifically, we present results from a study involving doctoral students (i.e., educational leaders) who were asked to link the principles of democracy and accountability to the application of social justice. As such, the article contains suggestions for implementing democratically accountable leadership into practice.

The lack of cognitive models to explain the concept of accountability can be synthesized in the absence of a single term in the Portuguese language since Accountability is usually considered a word whose meaning is incomplete. The impact of cognitive models in the form of audit is taken is very important. Courts of Accounts were established in Brazil since Old Republic while CGU was created in 2003. In this paper, we analyze the conceptual differences between the Courts of Accounts and Federal Comptroller General regarding accountability. Despite many municipal actions receive a dual inspection, data shows a wide divergence between the results obtained by respective TCE and CGU. The performance of the latter is closer to an audit of performance, reporting on average a larger number of irregularities in the cities, whereas in the Courts of Accounts, it is usually done audit of compliance, with relatively minor findings.

This work tries to highlight the determinant role of CSR during periods characterized by non-linearity and to produce insights for further research on a dual perspective: 1) companies’ decision-making on CSR implementation and promotional tool preference; 2) consumers’ purchasing/consuming decision-making. So, the interrelated perspective, under the influencing contextual variable of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, would show a crucial role of CSR as an anti-crisis solution. The domain-based review, the direct observation mixed with field analysis survey-based on a sample of 208 respondents made possible the hermeneutical and inference activity on results according to the Situational Crisis Communication Theory and Goffman’s view on the art of impression management, mixed with a persuasive approach characterizing advertising. The perception analysis, not directly operated ethnographically with companies, allowed to investigate CSR from different angles, permits the researchers to observe the exponential rise of advertising campaigns with a social scope and CSR promotional activities in accordance with the emergence of the two intrinsic concepts of accountability from an external point of view.

During the 1980s some remarkable public administration reforms took place in the Commonwealth primary industries portfolio statutory research and marketing authorities. These reforms implemented dual accountability arrangements which legislated the requirement for the authorities to be held accountable directly to government and Parliament, as well as to industry and community bodies which held either a financial stake in the authorities or a stake in the outcomes of their activities. This dissertation discusses the nature of the dual accountability arrangements in the broader context of administrative and accountability theory, with particular emphasis on its place in the evolution of public enterprise and of more open, participatory and socially responsive public administration. It also considers the 1980s reforms in the historical context of Australian primary industry institutionalisation and agrarian socialism. The dissertation concludes that dual accountability can strengthen an organisation's accountability while at the same time reduce the need for close administrative control. Dual accountability acknowledges that the fundamental processes of an organisation's accountability should apply in more than one direction, and that the decentralisation of these processes actually fills the voids left by removing control mechanisms. The dissertation also identifies variations in the application of dual accountability principles across primary industry authorities and suggests that there is potential for the principles to be applied to other areas of government administration.

This study investigated the effects of accountability and purpose of appraisal on rating and behavioral accuracy. Subjects viewed a videotape of a lecture and were asked to rate the lecturer's performance. Accountability to the ratee (the GTA on the videotape) was held constant. Accountability to a supervisor (a faculty representative) was manipulated such that subjects in the no (supervisor) accountability condition anticipated a meeting with the GTA only; subjects in the weak (supervisor) accountability condition anticipated a meeting with the GTA as well as a supervisory review of the ratings; while subjects in the strong (supervisor) accountability condition were led to believe that they would have to meet with both the GTA and the faculty representative to explain their ratings. Additionally, participants were led to believe that the purpose of this appraisal was either to provide feedback for development or to make administrative decisions. Two-way ANOVAs were used to assess the effects of accountability and purpose of appraisal on rating accuracy (elevation accuracy, dimensional accuracy, leniency) and behavioral accuracy. Results indicated that (a) increased accountability to a supervisor led to greater elevation accuracy, (b) raters in the administrative purpose condition provided more lenient ratings than did raters in the developmental purpose condition , (c) behavioral accuracy increased with level of accountability (none, weak, strong) to a supervisor, (d) raters who believed that the purpose of appraisal was for development exhibited greater behavioral accuracy than did raters who believed that the purpose was to make administrative decisions.
Master of Science

Literature on in-depth studies of dual transitional justice mechanisms in postconflict settings is inadequate. This qualitative case study sought to understand the practice of dual transitional justice by examining the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the Special Court engaged for transitional justice in postconflict Sierra Leone. Data consisted of documentary sources, observational field notes and 31 individual semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions of Sierra Leonean public officials, United Nations officials, and TRC and Special Court officials, as well as civil society actors. Data were analyzed through detailed "description", "categorical aggregation", "direct interpretation", establishment of "correspondence and patterns", and development of "naturalistic generalizations". It was found that because the 2 institutions were not planned and coordinated as different parts of the same tool, they were pitched against each other, undermining their respective mandates and creating tensions in their efforts to implement their plans. Also, the Sierra Leonean populace, civil society organizations, the government and the international community, including the United Nations, were divided in their opinions, sentiments and support for the 2 mechanisms. The implication of this study is that the policy choice, design and packaging of restorative and retributive mechanisms for postconflict transitional justice should not create conflict so that they can link seamlessly to the strategic goal of peace and stability. The knowledge of the dynamics of dual transitional justice is useful for governments, policy makers, the United Nations and especially the International Criminal Court whose intervention in a country may run parallel to a restorative process.

There is a conceptual knot at the intersection of moral responsibility and action theory. This knot can be expressed as the following question: What is the relationship between an agent's openness to moral responsibility and the intentional status of her behaviour? My answer to this question is developed in three steps. I first develop a control-backed account of intentional agency, one that borrows vital insights from the cognitive sciences – in the form of Dual Process Theory – in understanding the control condition central to the account, and demonstrate that this account fares at least as well as its rivals in the field. Secondly, I investigate the dominant positions in the discussion surrounding the role of control in moral responsibility. After consideration of some shortcomings of these positions – especially the inability to properly account for so-called ambivalence cases – I defend an alternative pluralist account of moral responsibility, in which there are two co-extant variants of such responsibility: attributability and accountability. The latter of these will be shown to have a necessary control condition, also best understood in terms of a requirement for oversight (rather than conscious or online control), and in terms of the workings of the dual system mechanism. I then demonstrate how these two accounts are necessarily related through the shared role of this kind of control, leading to my answer to the original question: if an agent is open to moral accountability based on some activity or outcome, this activity or outcome must necessarily have positive intentional status. I then apply this answer in a consideration of certain cases of the use of the Doctrine of Double Effect.

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For many critics, democracy is a utopian enterprise. More moderate observers, on their turn, propose enhancements for the democratic models of contemporary societies. One of these proposals is to increase citizen insertion in the public sphere, so citizens may participate in State decisions and control the actions of public representatives. The literature has also shown that the process of elections is not enough to guarantee that political representatives will act in the best interest of their constituencies. To attain this aim, it would be necessary to reduce both the information asymmetries between State and society, and the distance between representatives and constituencies. Bearing this context in mind, the relevance of the Courts of Accounts must be highlighted, since they are autonomous and independent institutions that can become important instruments for enhancing the control that society must or should exert over its political representatives. But are these Courts prepared to play this leadership role, considering that they would need to be permeable to society while providing mechanisms to help and facilitate the exercise of social accountability over the public administration? Based on this premise, the aim of this work is to assess the permeability of Brazilian Courts of Accounts to the society, and whether these courts are working to facilitate the exercise of social accountability over the public administration. This descriptive research was developed in two stages. The first stage was a review of the theoretical literature on the theme, to build a framework for assessing the permeability of the Courts of Accounts to the society and their potential for enabling social control. This stage was followed by exercises of Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) that produced perceptual maps of similarities and dissimilarities among the Courts of Account based on the explored factors and indicators. Finally, a round of interviews was carried out with Councilors from the three Courts of Accounts found to be the most similar, and also from the three most dissimilar ones. The results generally show that Brazilian Courts of Accounts are still poorly permeable to society and count on few mechanisms to help and facilitate citizen control. They also show that the means of social participation are still limited, and are basically represented by the Office of the Ombudsman, the Transparency Web Portal and the Citizen Assistance Service. Yet, this study has identified a strong influence of the Fiscal Responsibility Law (LRF) and the Access to Information Law (LAI) at the Courts of Accounts. Although gradually, these elements can lead to future changes in terms of an increasingly prominent role of the Courts of Accounts as strong allies in the process of enhancing vertical accountability.
Para muchos críticos la democracia es sólo una utopía. Otros, no tan duros en su crítica, proponen mejoras en el modelo democrático actual de las sociedades contemporáneas. Entre ellas, una mayor participación del ciudadano en la esfera pública con el fin de tomar parte en las decisiones del estado, así como controlar las acciones de sus representantes. La teoría también ha demostrado que el proceso electoral no es suficiente para asegurar que el representante actúe en el mejor interés de los representados. Por ello, se necesitan de otros instrumentos que puedan contribuir a la reducción de la asimetría informativa entre el Estado y la sociedad, o de la distancia representante-representado. En este contexto, los Tribunales de Cuentas ganan relieve, pues tienen autonomía e independencia y se pueden convertir en instrumentos importantes para la mejora del control que la sociedad debe o debería ejercer sobre sus representantes. Sin embargo, estos Tribunales estarán preparados para tal protagonismo ya que deben ser permeables a la sociedad y, al mismo tiempo, deben proporcionar mecanismos para auxiliar o facilitar el ejercicio del control social sobre la administración pública. Partiendo de esta premisa, este trabajo tiene por objetivo analizar la permeabilidad de los Tribunales de Cuentas brasileños a la sociedad, así como si estos Tribunales actúan para facilitar el ejercicio del control social sobre la administración pública. Se trata, por lo tanto, de una investigación descriptiva que se desarrolló en dos fases. La primera, eminentemente teórica, se recurrió a la teoría para la construcción de referencial que permitiese evaluar la permeabilidad de los TC a la sociedad y su potencial posibilidad de auxiliar el control social. A continuación, se utilizó la técnica estadística de Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) para crear mapas perceptuales de similitudes/disimilitudes de los TCs a partir de los factores e indicadores planteados. Finalmente, se realizó encuestas con los Consejeros de los tres TCs considerados más similares y de los tres más disimilares. Los resultados revelaron que, en general, los TCs son todavía poco permeables a la sociedad y poseen pocos mecanismos para auxiliar o facilitar el control ciudadano. Se observó, aún, la limitación de medios para la participación social, reducidos, fundamentalmente, a la Oidoría, al Portal de la Transparencia y al Servicio de Atendimiento al Ciudadano. Se identificó, sin embargo, la fuerte influencia de la LRF y la LAI en los TCs. Esto puede significar cambios futuros, aunque incrementales, en la dirección de la actuación de los TCs como fuertes aliados al perfeccionamiento de la accountability vertical.
Para muitos críticos a democracia é apenas uma utopia. Outros, mais amenos em suas críticas, propõem aperfeiçoamentos no modelo democrático vigente nas sociedades contemporâneas. Dentre esses, maior inserção do cidadão na esfera pública a fim de que possa tomar parte nas decisões estatais, bem como controlar as ações de seus representantes. A literatura também tem demonstrado que o processo eleitoral não é suficiente para garantir que o representante atue no melhor interesse do representado. Para tanto, seriam necessários outros instrumentos que pudessem contribuir para a redução da assimetria informacional entre Estado-Sociedade, ou da distância representante-representado. Nesse contexto, os Tribunais de Contas ganham relevo, pois gozam de autonomia e independência e podem se converter em instrumentos importantes para o aperfeiçoamento do controle que a sociedade deve ou deveria exercer sobre os seus representantes. Entretanto, estariam esses Tribunais preparados para tal protagonismos, vez que precisariam ser permeáveis à sociedade e, ao mesmo, tempo proporcionar mecanismos para auxiliar ou facilitar o exercício do controle social sobre a administração pública. Com base nessa premissa, este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar a permeabilidade dos Tribunais de Contas brasileiros à sociedade, bem como se esses tribunais atuam de forma a facilitar o exercício do controle social sobre a administração pública. Trata-se de uma pesquisa descritiva que foi desenvolvida em duas fases. A primeira, eminentemente teórica, se recorreu à literatura para a construção de referencial que permitisse avaliar a permeabilidade dos TCs à sociedade e a sua potencial possibilidade de auxiliar o controle social. Em seguida, foi utilizada a técnica estatística Multidimentional Scaling (MDS) para criar mapas perceptuais de similaridade/dissimilaridades dos TCs a partir dos fatores/indicadores levantados. Por fim, realizou-se entrevistas com Conselheiros dos três TCs considerados mais similares e três considerados mais dissimilares. Os resultados, de maneira geral, evidenciaram que os TCs ainda são pouco permeáveis à sociedade e possuem poucos mecanismos para auxiliar ou facilitar o controle cidadão. Constatou-se, ainda, limitação de meios para participação social, reduzindo-se, basicamente, à Ouvidoria, ao Portal da Transparência e ao Serviço de Atendimento ao Cidadão. Identificou-se, porém, a forte influência da LRF e da LAI nos TCs. Isso pode significar mudanças futuras, mesmo incrementais, na direção da atuação dos TCs como fortes aliados ao aprimoramento da accountability vertical.

This investigation was a post-hoc, quantitative analysis of secondary academic performance and participation choices of Hispanic students. Three years of longitudinal student-level data was collected to examine the likelihood of college enrollment based on college and career readiness (CCR) factors. At the time of the study, CCR was defined as qualifying exam scores, credit for at least two advanced/dual enrollment courses, or enrollment in a career and technology education (CTE) coherent sequence of courses. Research participants (N = 803) consisted solely of Hispanic high school graduates from the 2014 cohort. Frequency statistics indicate 45.5% (n = 365) attended an institute of higher education (IHE) within 2 years of high school graduation. Findings reveal Hispanic females were more likely than Hispanic males to meet CCR indicators as well as postsecondary resiliency outcomes. Analysis of chi-square tests of independence suggests a moderately strong association exists between CCR indicators and postsecondary participation among high school graduates. Differences were found in terms of gender and postsecondary enrollment, x^2(6) = 24.538, p < .001. Differences were also found in terms of type of IHE and postsecondary resiliency, x^2(3) = 34.373, p < .001. More Hispanic CCR graduates enrolled at 2-year and 4-year IHE than expected by chance. While non-CCR graduates enrolled in IHE, they were less likely to meet postsecondary resiliency outcomes. CCR graduates who initially enrolled at 2-year IHE were also less likely to persist. Furthermore, the greatest contribution to differences in resiliency existed for Hispanic CCR graduates who enroll at 4-year IHE.

The study concludes that the Chief Executive's dual accountability need not be an impossible mission, either from a theoretical or an empirical perspective. That said, the practice of dual accountability must take into account the significance of the liberal notion of accountability that has emerged in Hong Kong. Despite the possibility of further demarcating its functions and roles, the smooth functioning of the office of the Chief Executive depends on the willingness and the ability to negotiate solutions between the contending parties. It also depends on the participants to internalize the values in both responsiveness and responsibility. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
This dissertation examines the dual accountability of the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the People's Republic of China. As stipulated in Article 43 of the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Chief Executive "shall be accountable to the Central People's Government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region...." The Basic Law, thus, creates a situation where one agent serves two principals, while raising a theoretical question for the liberal notion of political accountability. With its emphasis on sanction as the indispensable tool for reinforcing responsiveness, the liberal notion of political accountability implies that one agent cannot possibly serve two principals, unless the two principals seek identical goals and conceptualize the role of agent in the same way, and exercise sanctioning powers with full agreement. The dual accountability experiment hence puts the logic and limits of the liberal accountability theory to the test.
This study begins with the assumption that the Chief Executive's dual accountability is an impossible mission, as liberal accountability theory would imply. In searching for a remedy, different connotations and models of accountability are examined, the politico-legal framework of the office of the Chief Executive is reviewed and the dynamics among the competing, players---the people in the Hong Kong SAR and the Central People's Government as the principals, and the Chief Executive as the agent---are analyzed. The possibilities of the construct are then evaluated and remedies to it deliberated.
Poon Kit.
"August 2005."
Adviser: Kuan Hsin-chi.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-07, Section: A, page: 2746.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 230-236).
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstract in English and Chinese.
School code: 1307.

This dissertation examines the life stories of Marsha Ethridge (all names are pseudonyms), a teacher who has taught for 46 years in one urban elementary school. The stories Marsha tells about her life are used as lenses to consider the following: (1) What influences most shaped Marsha’s practices and stories to live by as a teacher? (2) What has it been like for Marsha teaching reading in an urban elementary school for 46 years? and (3) What is the nature of caring in Marsha’s stories? The study draws on life story and portraiture methods. Data were collected over a period of three years and includes life story interviews, one focus group interview, observations, and artifacts. Through the process of constant comparative method, three themes emerged: literacy and accountability, teacher development and identity, and caring and connecting. The most salient theme was caring and connecting throughout Marsha’s stories, and it served as a unifying thread to pull her stories together. This study found that in Marsha’s first years of teaching there were few forms of accountability. She felt that this was the primary reason many of her sixth graders had made it through school without learning to read. In the following years she used a variety of measures for accountability, including high-stakes accountability, which caused her to experience increasing professional dissonance. The form of accountability she believed improved her teaching practices the most was accountability situated in the context of caring relationships and it led to hope for future success. Marsha experienced this face-to-face accountability in the teacher-initiated group she had been meeting with for 27 years. Research implications from this study include the need to further explore discourse in teacher-initiated groups over time and in different contexts, as well as consider how the relational dynamics and accountability within collaborative teacher groups contribute to teacher growth. Additionally, the analysis of Marsha’s life stories indicate a need for teachers, parents, researchers, and policy makers to lay aside discourse of blaming and shaming to create opportunities for extended conversations about alternatives to high-stakes accountability.
text

Government human service organizations regularly attempt to recruit ethnically and culturally diverse professionals to improve services to diverse communities. The assumption here is that organizational culture and structure support this organizational practice. This study considers the unique challenge for Aboriginal professionals who work in a government child welfare system responsible for the oppression of Aboriginal children, families, and communities. As a non-Aboriginal organizational insider and researcher, I use a combined Indigenous/ethnographic approach to explore these issues with Aboriginal professionals within the British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD). This study involves a dual focus that examines the history, identity, values, motivations, and practice approaches of Aboriginal professionals as well as how organizational structural and environment variables support or impede their representation of community needs and interests. Analysis of these two areas results in significant findings for the organization, the social work profession, and various practice and organizational diversity literatures. Aboriginal participant descriptions of values, beliefs, and practices contribute to literature exploring contemporary Indigenous practice approaches that integrate traditional knowledge with professional practice. Consistent with some representative bureaucracy studies, participant descriptions of personal history, experience, practice, and motivation to work in MCFD indicate values, beliefs, and motivations strongly shared with their representative group: to reduce the number of Aboriginal children in government care and reconnect them to community. Aboriginal participant role tensions and dual accountabilities, resulting from their unique community/Ministry insider/outsider position, provide context to studies that explore tensions and contradictions that exist for diverse professionals working in their communities through mainstream organizations. Findings also contribute to studies in representative bureaucracy and other organizational diversity approaches concerned with the ability of diverse professionals to actively represent community interests. Organizational variables, such as low Aboriginal practice support, racism, cultural incompetence, hierarchical structure and decision making, risk-averse practice norms, poorly implemented rhetorical change initiatives, and institutional physical environments, among others, impede the ability of Aboriginal participants to actively represent community interests. Mitigating factors were found where some Aboriginal participants describe significant organizational support at the worksite level through dedicated culturally competent Aboriginal management and practice teams.
Graduate
0452
0617
0631
janerousseau@shaw.ca

This chapter focuses on lyrics written from the point of view of the unfaithful lover. Theological concepts of charity, forgiveness, and confession can inform secular discussions of erotic accountability: what we owe those we love and those who love us. Understanding accountability in the dual senses of responsibility and narration illuminated by Judith Butler, this chapter considers how aesthetic creation—the struggle to tell a coherent story of the self and its desires—constitutes an unattainable ethical obligation. The devotional and libertine poetry of John Donne, like the writings of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin before him, represents confession not as what Michel Foucault called an act of truth, but as an imaginative acknowledgment of guilt in potentia. Donne’s attention to the entanglement of matter and spirit resists the ideals of romance and rationality that have often been deemed the signal characteristics of “human” sexuality; instead, he writes from the perspective of a being coopted by foreign forces within and without. Counterintuitively, Donne is at his most religious when he defends promiscuous, impermanent, and impure intimacies. For the indiscriminate desire that Donne’s speakers pursue is a secular approximation of divine forgiveness and caritas, the arbitrary yet generous love for imperfect creatures regardless of merit.

This chapter is dedicated to administrative accountability regarding the civilian dimension of EU security and defence. It first decorticates the administrative environment of civilian CSDP. The scrutiny covers institutional, legal, and procedural components (reporting lines and attribution schemes, disciplinary arrangements, etc). The chapter then outlines the small role national authorities play in administrative accountability. Thirdly, the assessment concentrates on the role of the European Ombudsman as a quasi-judicial accountability forum for both individual complaints and overall administrative questions. The evaluation of the Ombudsman’s role is followed by a study of the dual function of the European Court of Auditors, which simultaneously fulfils an auditing and a consultative function. Finally, the chapter discusses the complementarity of the Ombudsman and the European Court of Auditors.

This paper discusses the importance of evaluating the implementation of public programs as an integral component of organizational actions performed by public administrations. Drawing on contributions from policy studies and organization theory, the authors assign a dual role to evaluation: valuable cognitive resource and accountability tool for the policymakers. This exploratory case study contributes to the literature on implementation evaluation by providing an encompassing theory-grounded perspective on a recent e-government project by the City of Milan. The authors’ preliminary findings confirm the heuristic potential of an evaluation approach where interdisciplinary inputs can enlighten not only the results, but also the process of design, adoption and the use of e-services.

Over time, the Supreme Court of India has evolved from being a court of law to a major institutional actor in the political arena. The present chapter analyses this transition by directing external and internal lenses on the court’s functioning. The external lens reveals engagement by the Court with legislative and executive domains of governance, and the current concerns of transparency and accountability that it faces. The internal lens scrutinizes the Court’s success as a court of law and its capability to streamline the judicial process such that the judicial system lives up to the legitimate expectations of the litigant public. Using the insights offered from these dual perspectives, the authors suggest important changes to the court’s functioning and a reorientation of its priorities that can render it a more effective public institution.

This chapter explores the impact of technology on assessment and evaluation in higher education. The impacts on classroom, program, and organizational assessment are discussed. Both formative and summative assessments in classrooms have been impacted by emerging technologies. However, the impact of many of the technological tools developed by measurement specialists has not been as widespread as one would expect given the age of many assessment technologies. Nevertheless, there remains a great potential for new measurement technologies to significantly improve classroom assessment practices. Technology for organizational assessment has continued to boom in light of the dual push for both accountability and continuous improvement by accreditors. The social impacts and burden of organizational assessment and evaluation are discussed. Overall, it is concluded that in order to evaluate the impact of technology, attention needs to be paid to the consequences of both classroom and organization assessment.

Filling out forms in the practice of mental health is much more than “dull paperwork.” With proper training, most forms can be filled out during the session rather than spending valuable time afterward. On-target forms can provide the required documentation that the services provided are medically necessary. Too many mental health clinics have gone out of business or have suffered severe financial loss after an audit or review of records by third parties such as insurance companies, licensing boards, clients, or the court. The discussion of forms in this chapter provides information about what is necessary to clearly document the client’s diagnosis, treatment plan, progress of therapy, need for continued services, discharge, outcomes, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance, and financial policies.

O ambiente de negócios atual é complexo, e a quantidade de informações disponíveis para tomada de decisões pode sobrecarregar os gerentes de projetos, e fazê-los perder de vista informações relevantes. Neste cenário, acredita-se que as organizações e os projetos podem se beneficiar com os produtos e serviços de informação oferecidos pelos observatórios. Assim, o problema que essa pesquisa busca solucionar é: de que forma, e a partir de quais elementos, podem ser estruturados observatórios para apoiar o compartilhamento de informações, a tomada de decisão, a gestão do conhecimento e a accountability em projetos? Para responder a essa questão de pesquisa, este trabalho tem como objetivo principal, a proposição de um modelo de observatório para projetos. O método de pesquisa principal escolhido para guiar a execução desta pesquisa é o Design Science Research (DSR). Além do DSR, mais duas metodologias de apoio serão utilizadas: Pesquisa-Ação e Mapeamento Sistemático da Literatura. As principais contribuições deste trabalho serão: o modelo de observatório para projetos e sua instância. Além disso, os resultados do mapeamento sistemático da literatura poderão ser considerados também como uma contribuição para a comunidade científica da área.