Are Voluntary Organisations Accountable?

Leat, Diana

doi:10.1007/978-1-349-24485-0_5

Cited by 24 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Guidance issued in December 201223 suggests that, in addition to a payment for meeting target thresholds on these indicators, what Leat15 calls ‘programme accountability’ for these outcomes will form part of NHSE's overall annual assessment of CCG performance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of authors have addressed this question 12–14. Leat15offers a fourfold classification: fiscal accountability, focusing on expenditure and financial probity; process accountability, exploring the adequacy of procedures for decision-making; accountability for priorities, providing justification for the way in which an organisation has focused its activities; and programme accountability, by which an actor is held to account for the outcomes of their activity. Turning to the question of sanctions, Brinkerhoff12 sketches the idea of a spectrum, from accountability as the provision of information about an organisation's actions at one end, through the additional requirement to justify those actions, to a sanction-backed formal ‘answerability’, in which different types of sanctions may be enforced in order to ensure compliance at the other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accountable to whom, for what? An exploration of the early development of Clinical Commissioning Groups in the English NHS

et al. 2013

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Objective One of the key goals of the current reforms in the English National Health Service (NHS) under the Health and Social Care Act, 2012, is to increase the accountability of those responsible for commissioning care for patients (clinical commissioning groups (CCGs)), while at the same time allowing them a greater autonomy. This study was set out to explore CCG's developing accountability relationships. Design We carried out detailed case studies in eight CCGs, using interviews, observation and documentary analysis to explore their multiple accountabilities. Setting/participants We interviewed 91 people, including general practitioners, managers and governing body members in developing CCGs, and undertook 439 h of observation in a wide variety of meetings. Results CCGs are subject to a managerial, sanction-backed accountability to NHS England (the highest tier in the new organisational hierarchy), alongside a number of other external accountabilities to the public and to some of the other new organisations created by the reforms. In addition, unlike their predecessor commissioning organisations, they are subject to complex internal accountabilities to their members. Conclusions The accountability regime to which CCGs are subject to is considerably more complex than that which applied their predecessor organisations. It remains to be seen whether the twin aspirations of increased autonomy and increased accountability can be realised in practice. However, this early study raises some important issues and concerns, including the risk that the different bodies to whom CCGs are accountable will have differing (or conflicting) agendas, and the lack of clarity over the operation of sanction regimes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accountable to whom, for what? An exploration of the early development of Clinical Commissioning Groups in the English NHS

et al. 2013

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“…Leat characterises accountability along four dimensions: fiscal, which concerns financial probity and thus the ability to trace and adequately explain all expenditure; process, which concerns the use of proper procedures; programme, which concerns the activities undertaken and, in particular, their quality; and priorities, which concerns the relevance or appropriateness of the activities chosen 7. All these aspects of accountability are relevant to the activities of clinical staff working in primary care, but process and programme accountability are most relevant to clinical governance.…”

Section: Accountability For What?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Clinical governance in primary care: Accountability for clinical governance: developing collective responsibility for quality in primary care

Allen

2000

BMJ

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“…Secondly, it is contended that NPOs delivering welfare services must be democratic to ensure accountability. Defined by Chaskin (2003:182) as "the extent to which organisations that speak for or act on behalf of a community are fulfilling their stated goals and can be held responsible for their actions", NPOs use variable forms of regulation to achieve accountability and must be accountable to a number of different agents including governors, members, service users, staff, government and taxpayers (Leat, 1996;Powell and Guerin, 1997). This raises the issue of to whom NPOs should be primarily accountable.…”

Section: The Case For Democracy In the Non-profit Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

Democratising the non-profit sector: reconfiguring the state–non-profit sector relationship in the UK

Poole

2014

Policy &Amp; Politics

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Newcastle University ePrints -eprint.ncl.ac.uk Elstub S, Poole L. Democratising the non-profit sector: reconfiguring the state-non-profit sector relationship in the UK. Policy and Politics2014, 42(3), 385-401 Copyright: This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy edited version of an article published in Policy and Politics. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Elstub S, Poole L. Democratising the non-profit sector: reconfiguring the state-non-profit sector relationship in the UK. Policy and Politics2014, 42(3), 385-401 is available online at: http://dx. INTRODUCTIONThis paper focuses on questions of democracy within the non-profit sector (NPS) and the form of state/NPS relationship that needs to exist if a fertile environment for democratic arrangements is to be cultivated. It argues that, wherever the NPS fulfils a significant role in delivering publicly funded welfare services, democratic arrangements are essential within non-profit organisations (NPOs) to ensure legitimacy and accountability, but also because democracy can help improve service quality and effectiveness and enhance policy agendas through advocacy and value guardianship.The UK is adopted as a case study to illuminate the barriers to democratising the NPS because UK NPOs have played a significant role in public service delivery for thirty years and this has been accompanied by some of the most extensive institutional NPS support in the world (Smith and Teasdale, 2012). Furthermore, NPS service delivery seems set to continue with the Coalition Government placing it at the centre of its 'big' idea for a 'Big Society' (Conservative Party, 2010:37). Studying the UK NPS thus has the potential to illuminate the type of state-NPS relationship that needs be in place to facilitate democratic governance in NPOs, not just in the UK but in any country where they are heavily involved in public service delivery. This is not to ignore the differences in welfare trends between countries or the different contexts within which national NPSs operate (Taylor et al., 2010:146), but rather to highlight the key similarities that transcend these differences, even if they vary in salience from country to country.The UK evidence suggests that the democratization of the sector is being hindered by the pressures arising out of the emerging contract culture of the 1980s/90s and, more recently, New Labour's welfare 'modernisation' agenda, which have induced normative, coercive and mimetic isomorphism, with NPOs becoming increasingly dominated by a hierarchical, bureaucratic organisational archetype. Of course, given the significant diversity within the sector in terms of finances, human resources, functions, structure and organisational characteristics, a diversity of state/NPS relationship is inevitable (Warren, 2001). Moreover, there is also evidence that a growing polarization within the sector, especially between those larger, more formal, more professionalised organisations and those that are smaller, rely more on volunteers/community input and are more informally...

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Are Voluntary Organisations Accountable?

Cited by 24 publications

References 4 publications

Accountable to whom, for what? An exploration of the early development of Clinical Commissioning Groups in the English NHS

Accountable to whom, for what? An exploration of the early development of Clinical Commissioning Groups in the English NHS

Clinical governance in primary care: Accountability for clinical governance: developing collective responsibility for quality in primary care

Democratising the non-profit sector: reconfiguring the state–non-profit sector relationship in the UK

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