Accountability in Street-Level Organizations

Abstract

The challenge of managing street-level discretion lies at the heart of the search for strategies of administrative oversight and control. How can management promote accountability without deadening responsiveness and undermining the application of professional judgment on which management also depends? This article reconsiders the problem of accountability from a street-level perspective.

First, it reviews the literature on implementation, street-level bureaucracy, and new public management in order to raise questions about the limitations of current approaches to accountability, including new public management solutions that rely on performance measurement. Second, it makes the case for a street-level approach to accountability and illustrates how it can be used to reveal critical dimensions of organizational practice that are not captured by other means. Finally, issues of street-level practice are placed in broader perspective, as part of an on-going global search for ways to advance transparency and accountability in social provision.

Keywords:

• accountability
• performance measurement
• public management
• street-level bureaucracy

The author acknowledges research support from the National Science Foundation (#9730821), the Open Society Institute, and the Ford Foundation.

Notes

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