Understanding Accountability: Theoretical Models and their Implications for Social Service Organizations

This article examines the concept of accountability and its implications for social service organizations. Accountability, it is argued, is a theoretically embedded concept, with each theory producing various conflicting models of accountability. The article seeks to map and structure the various models of accountability, highlighting the differences between the models and their implications for social service organizations. The models chosen are relevant to the Aotearoa/New Zealand context and also to countries in western Europe as they include the systems of political economy present within recent history: social democratic and neo‐liberal, and also a coherent alternative, the communitarian model.