The Quest for Responsibility: Accountability and Citizenship in Complex Organisations

Voorkant
Cambridge University Press, 12 mrt 1998 - 252 pagina's
The search for responsibility in complex organisations often seems an impossible undertaking. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach combining law, social science, ethics and organisational design, Mark Bovens analyses the reasons for this, and offers possible solutions. He begins by examining the problem of 'many hands' - because so many people contribute in so many different ways, it is very difficult to determine who is accountable for organisational behaviour. Four possible solutions - corporate, hierarchical, collective and individual accountability - are analysed from normative, empirical and practical perspectives. Bovens argues that individual accountability is the most promising solution, but only if individuals have the chance to behave responsibly. The book then explores the implications of this approach. What does it mean to be a 'responsible' employee or official? When is it legitimate to disobey the orders of superiors? What institutional designs might be most appropriate?
 

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Inhoudsopgave

Complex organisations and the quest for responsibility
3
Public and private organisations
5
The plan
6
Complex organisations as corporate actors
9
Complex organisations as corporate actors
11
A new asymmetry in society
15
Complex organisations as Chinese boxes
19
Two concepts of responsibility
22
Accountability of the whole and of its parts
110
Ten excuses
113
The impotence of private morality
125
The demanding nature of responsibility
132
Preconditions and possibilities
134
Active responsibility
141
Virtue citizenship in complex organisations
143
Five conceptions of bureaucratic responsibility
148

Two concepts of responsibility
26
Passive responsibility
28
Active responsibility
32
Responsibility and the control of complex organisations
38
Passive Responsibility
43
Accountability the problem of many hands
45
four models
50
Corporate accountability the organisation as a person
53
The complex organisation as a rational person
58
The problem of prevention
60
The limited rationality of complex organisations
62
The lack of external insight
64
The impotence of morality
66
The limits of the law
68
The organisation as a semiautonomous social field
70
Corporate accountability and personal accountability
72
Hierarchical accountability one for all
74
Managers are outsiders
75
the Achilles heel of the hierarchical model
78
the Slavenburg affair
80
The shortcomings of ministerial responsibility
85
Amending hierarchical accountability
89
Collective accountability all for one
93
Internal and external collective accountability
97
The overinclusiveness of collective accountability
101
Conditions for collective accountability
102
Individual accountability each for himself
106
The organisation as a Gordian knot
108
strict loyalty to superiors
149
loyalty to conscience
157
loyalty to peers
160
loyalty to the profession
161
loyalty to citizens
163
Individual loyalty and employee responsibility
165
Employee civil disobedience
168
exit voice and loyalty
172
resignation and refusal
176
resignation
177
a right to refuse
181
Framing a limited right to refuse
183
Voice whistleblowing and leaking
190
The plight of whistIchlowers
193
Justifying whistleblowing
194
The effects of whistieblowing
197
some American experiences
201
Framing whistleblowing provisions
206
The limits of the law
212
Loyalty responsibility as a byproduct
215
Tinkering with the structure
216
Internal forms of voice
220
Individual loyalty and organisational learning
224
the quest for responsibility never ends
228
References
231
Subject index
247
Name index
249
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