Accountability – are We Better off Without It?

Abstract

Public managers increasingly lament about negative effects of accountability. Despite these reports and the importance of accountability in public organizations, it is yet unknown when it has positive or negative effects on managers. Overcoming two major obstacles in accountability research, this study therefore investigates ‘how accountability affects public manager's work behaviour’. Firstly, this study applies a cognitive theory offering a promising way out of the current theoretical dead-end. Secondly, the quasi-experimental research design makes the complex concept of accountability more tangible and findings transferable to practice. Moreover, individual level characteristics such as motivation are used to investigate a potential interaction between contingency and individual level characteristics. Results indicate both positive and negative effects of accountability on work behaviour and hence strongly challenge the positive normative connotation of accountability.     

Desiderata und Perspektiven der Forschung über parasoziale Interaktionen und Beziehungen zu Medienfiguren

Parasocial interactions and relationships are a frequently used framework for studies on media reception in communication research. In spite of its long tradition, however, the concept is still in need of several clarifications. Therefore, this article explores ways to increase the explanatory value of the concept. We briefly present major problems of the definition and conceptualization of parasocial interactions and relationships, namely the understanding of the key elements interaction, relationship, and persona, and suggest first ideas for their solution. Subsequently, opportunities are outlined to enhance the concept by integrating other theories and concepts on media reception and interpersonal perception, taking them from communication research and psychology. Finally, we discuss methodological problems in general and specific shortcomings of the quasi-standard measure, the Parasocial-Interaction-Scale.     

Europäische Klimapolitik: Zwischen Anspruch und Wirklichkeit

In order to restrict the risks of anthropogenic climate change to a ?tolerable“ extent, the fourth assessment report of the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change calls for a trend reversal towards globally decreasing greenhouse gas emissions within the next two decades which ultimately must lead to a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions until the mid of the century by 50 percent as compared to 2000 emission levels. The European Union claims a lead of a role in climate policy with the objective to push forward international negotiations on far-reaching emission reduction commitments with other important industrialized and developing regions. The EU’s credibility as a leading force will hinge crucially on how successfully it can fulfill its emission reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol by means of market-based environmental policy, in particular the exemplary operation of the EU emission trading system. Against this background, the following article provides a critical assessment of the EU’s climate policy.     

Evolutionary stability of discrimination under observability

We study the evolution of preferences under perfect and almost perfect observability in symmetric 2-player games. We demonstrate that if nature can choose from a sufficiently general preference space, which includes preferences over outcomes that may depend on the opponent's preference-type, then, in most games, only discriminating preferences (treating different types of opponents differently in the same situation) can be evolutionary stable and some discriminating types are stable in a very strong sense in all games. We use these discriminating types to show that any symmetric outcome which gives players more than their minmax value in material payoffs (fitness) can be seen as equilibrium play of a player population with such strongly stable preferences.     

Task Conflict,Narcissism and Entrepreneurial Capability in Teams Planning a Business: A Moderated Moderation Approach to Explaining Business Planning Performance

Drawing on the dynamic self‐regulatory processing model of narcissism, we hypothesize that in teams planning a business, task conflict relates positively to business planning performance and that this link is reinforced by the team's narcissism. By integrating aspects of human capital theory, this brighter side of narcissism is amplified where the narcissism is aligned with entrepreneurial capability and the team members' belief in their entrepreneurial capability. The findings of the moderated moderation analysis examining 66 teams of entrepreneurship students support the study's assumptions and provide meaningful implications for social psychology and personality researchers in entrepreneurship.     

Trinkwasserversorgung: privat gleich teuer?

The article examines the relationship between the degree of private ownership and the price level in the German drinking water market. In addition to a compact overview of important characteristics of the German drinking water supply and the regulatory framework, the empirical study focuses on the 100 largest communities and is based on a multivariate OLS regression and a fixed effects analysis using annual data for 2009–15. The results do not conclusively indicate a rise in prices due to a higher degree of private ownership. For future surveys, it might be useful to include key economic figures of the respective water supply companies into the analysis.