Managing public-private collaboration: extensive and intensive accountability

There are characteristic--though not universal--differences between business and governmental organizations in how accountability is conceptualized, constructed, and enforced. Reform movements, including aspects of the New Public Management and Corporate Social Responsibility, can be construed as efforts to overcome these differences, imbuing government with the more-intensive accountability that marks the private sector, and corporations with the more-extensive accountability of the public sector. Without entirely dismissing the merits of attempting to drive convergence, this note argues the more promising approach is often to construct composite action models that allocate the aspects of an undertaking to the sector whose mode of accountability is best suited to the specific task. Appreciating the distinctions between intensive and extensive accountability can aid public managers in harvesting the benefits and limiting the risks of engaging the private sector in the creation of public value.