Enriching accountability: strategising on multi-relational accountability in public services

PurposeMulti-relational accountability in public services is considered crucial when it creates disorder in collaborative, multi-actor settings. Accountable actors face their own concerns and mitigations but could also seek to collectively achieve a meaningful account-giving. Our aim is to explore how accountable actors' strategic thinking unfolds in a process of joint engagement for accountability in multi-actor collaboration.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on an exploratory, case-study research applied to an accountability practice in a challenging public service context: organised crime in Rotterdam South. We investigated Team Hartcore, a multi-actor collaboration that critically engaged with flaws in its reporting. Our interest was to gain deep insights into their efforts, discourses and activities to reframe their account-giving. By tracking this practitioner-led project, we were able to explore the purpose and patterns of actions in their search for a meaningful account-giving.FindingsThe in-depth case-based analysis reveals three conceptual insights: (1) accounting strategy: Team Hartcore's agency on accountability manifests itself as strategic intent, i.e. as an proactive and enduring purpose to reframe predisposed account-giving relationships for their multi-actor collaboration; (2) strategising on accountability: the framing covers not one singular event but unfolds in distinguishable episodes of strategising (enacting, discovering and shaping), with intermediate manifestations that alter the path from intention to realisation; (3) patterns of framing: mapping phases and the sequenced patterns of framing the account-giving reveals distinct manifestations of strategic practices; as intended and (un)realised, and in-between emergent and deliberate.Originality/valuePrevious research has primarily focused on the actor/organisational level, rightly emphasising the need to explain the effects of negative perceptions and conflicts resulting from multi-relational accountability, and modes of mitigation. It lacks an understanding of how account-giving situations change, or allow for deliberate change. We argue that accounting strategy and strategising on accountability are valuable as entry points for investigating how accountable actors engage purposefully with adjusting their account-giving. We introduce a tentative frame for a more comprehensive, process-oriented view of strategic thinking on "Enriching Accountability", as it moves from what accountable actors' intend to do to what is realised in everyday accountability practices.