Accountability and Sustainable Development

What is it about?

Accountability is a term that has been widely discussed and is defined as, “The duty to provide an account or reckoning of those actions for which one is held responsible. Accountability has two crucial components: it arises as a result of a relationship between two or more parties (be the individual, loose associations or organizations) and its nature is determined by the social and moral context in which the relationship is manifest.” (Gray et al. 2014: 50) Accountability is often overlapped with other related concepts, such as transparency, responsibility and clarity (Bovens 2007).

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Why is it important?

According to the above definition of accountability, each individual will have an innumerable relationship with different individuals, parties, and organizations. Each relationship could be in different purposes. What is considered acceptable behavior in the relationship? Different customs, different cultures, and different socioeconomic systems will have different acceptable standards and practices (Gray et al. 2014). The combination of the nature of the relationship and the certain form of governing the relationship in the context is called ‘ethic of accountability’ that is suggested by Dillard (2007). Each particular relationship has a moral aspect strongly determined by the certain expectations and the nature of the relationship (Gray et al. 2014).

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