Accountability: Your Experience?

While reading Alnoor Ebrahim’s chapter this week I noticed some connection’s between his observations and the article by Donald P. Moynihan I brought up in response to Rebecca’s Post in the first week. Since comments do not allow hyper linking, here is a link to the Moynihan article that I posted.

To elaborate, Ebrahim mentioned that some organizations will put aside long term goals in order to meet short term goals that look good to funders. This response to accountability measures fits Moynihan’s "Political" definition quite well.

Another example is that Ebrahim asserted that a “strategic focus” toward accountability should be of higher priority than “compliance focus” so that organizations will exceed in their mission rather than just meet it. This fits in with Moynihan’s “Passive” definition.

I would like to know what accountability experiences or knowledge others in the class have and how they fit (or do not fit) the concepts from the Ebrahim chapter and Moynihan article. What issues have you encountered and how to they match up with Moynihan’s four definitions? Do any of your experiences (or situations you’re aware of) not fit in with Moynihan’s definitions? Did he leave anything out? I don’t think that he has, but my experience has mainly been with organizations having a “passive” response to accountability. However, with the new management of the Tioga County Historical Society, we are trying to change the passive attitude toward accountability by creating some internal accountability measures. One example is that we now have an audit committee that I sit on.