Strategic Stewards: Managing Accountability, Building Trust

This study examines professional accountability systems as a potential source of conflict in the relationships between librarians and their overseers. The structure of these governance systems, combined with the motivations of the stakeholders within the system, generates conflict. Potential for conflict is not uniform across the professional accountability systems in public libraries because librarians strategically manage in the conflict-generating structure and because the professionalism generates trust, offsetting some potential for conflict. This study enriches our understanding of the strategic behavior of professionals, utilizes a positive model to study accountability relationships, and sheds light on the work of a very common, but little studied, public agency.