The Shifting Meaning of Governance: Public Accountability of Third Sector Organizations in an Emergent Global Regime

In the context of the global transmission of organizational forms and public values, the traditional boundaries of governance that have relied on legal and organizational measures of answerability are no longer adequate for the meaning of public accountability. With the growing involvement of third sector organizations in governance (through contracting, mobilizing, advocacy, and developmental activities), the traditional meaning of accountability is shifting towards an emergent accountability regime. To identify the global scope of the regime, the paper utilizes a framework of multiple accountability – recently articulated for the nonprofit organizations of the North, and extends its scope to include the accountabili ty expectations and experiences of the non-governmental organizations in the South.