It remains factual that accountability has many faces given the need for accountants to be held accountable by both internal and external actors as part of legal requirements and compliance to industry standards. For non-profit organizations, accountability plays an integral role in ways various folds and falls under various categories in the sense of financial, governance, performance, and mission accountability. Contextually, financial accountability involves transparency in the financial undertakings of non-governmental organizations through correct disclosure of income and expenditure (Renz, 2016). This is in accordance with the established legislative requirements or any regulatory oversight authority tasked with the onus of ensuring checks and balances vis-à-vis an organization’s matters, often through threats of sanctions for non-compliance.
Governance accountability on the other hand centers board of directors responsible for overseeing the financial activities of the organization and ensuring that such activities are in tandem with established legal parameters. This adherence is to facilitate loyalty and obedience on the part of the employees in the accounting department, maximize the social value of the organization, and assist the organization in its performance and the realization of its strategy. Yet, performance accountability takes a different trajectory by holding the organization accountable in regard to what it purposes to deliver through demonstration of results using tools such as logic models and focus on metrics by emphasizing on quick fixes as opposed to long term solutions. As the name suggests, mission accountability revolves around performance measurement of the organization through an emphasis on interaction and learning considering that social problems plaguing non-governmental organizations usually require the ability to cope with the changes taking place within the organization. Mission accountability normally falls under boards of governance or management tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that the organization goals are met and that the organization adapts to emerging changes in the realization of such goals.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
There are various mechanisms involving these faces of accountability. They include the preparation and submission of reports and disclosure statements and evaluation and performance assessments. Reports and disclosure statements are some of the most widely used given that they are frequently required by law. They function to hold the organization accountable despite being easy to abuse. Evaluation and performance assessment are commonly progress and metric oriented and are used both internally and externally (Renz, 2016). This often makes them a source of potential conflicts between the organization and stakeholders in regard to over what is to be measured and control over the evaluation process. Nevertheless, the strength of evaluation and performance assessment rests on explicit attention to results.
Aside from tools such as reports and disclosure statements and evaluation and performance assessments, non-governmental accountability equally involves certain processes; industry self-regulation, participation, and adaptive learning. Self-regulation is the codes or standards of behavior and performance that help in the redemption of the sector’s image through licensure and certification as a symbolic value to a skeptical public (Herman, 2005). Participation entails information availed to members of the public such as through public hearings, public involvement in project-related activities and people’s own initiatives as typified in social movements. Adaptive learning is the critical self-reflection and analysis through the concrete learning process and supportive learning process and leadership by focusing on short-term demands as opposed to showing long-term sustained results.
References
Herman, R. D. (2005). The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Renz, D. O. (2016). The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management . New York: John Wiley & Sons.
