Accountability for responsibility: a case study of a more intelligent enactment of accountability
通过挪威石油公司的案例，研究层级问责如何与会计控制系统结合，以促进员工的责任感，并探讨超越预算实践如何催生更智能的问责形式。
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how hierarchical accountability can be enacted and accounting control systems mobilized in a way that promotes a sense of felt responsibility. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on interviews, shadowing and observations to explore the implementation of a strategy for “increasing accountability” in a Norwegian Oil Company. The case provided an opportunity to explore the dynamics of hierarchical accountability and felt responsibility, and in particular Roberts (2009) concept of “intelligent accountability”, in an empirical context. Findings The case study explores how the strategy of increasing accountability at OilCo was enacted around three operational issues; the control of costs, roles and relationships in the complex matrix structure, and the operation of the management system. It traces how the long history of Beyond Budgeting practices and philosophy in OilCo resulted both in an explicit recognition of the incompleteness of accounting numbers, and trust-based practices which avoided many of the dysfunctional individual and organizational effects typically associated with the exercise of hierarchical control. Originality/value The paper explores empirically how OilCo’s embrace of Beyond Budgeting practices and philosophy had created the conditions under which a more intelligent form of accountability could emerge. As a European case study, it calls into question the Anglo-American tradition of accounting research which suggests that externally imposed accountability within a hierarchy mitigates against employees’ felt responsibility.