Reputation and accountability relationships: managing accountability expectations through reputation

Accountability is said to be about the management of expectations. Empirical studies reveal considerable variation in organizational interest, intensity and investment in accountability relationships. Less is known, however, as to what explains these observed variations. Drawing on accountability and reputation-concerned literatures, this paper argues that a reputation-based perspective to accountability offers an underlying logic that explains how account-giving actors and account-holding forums actually manage these expectations, how organisations make sense of and prioritise among accountability responsibilities. Reputational considerations act as a filtering mechanism of external demands and help account for variations in degrees of interest in, and intensity of, accountability. The resulting accountability outcomes are co-produced by the reputational investment of both account-giver and account-holder, resulting in distinct accountability constellations and outcomes