Accountability in the ARM Literature

In archives and records management, accountability is often mentioned but rarely explicitly defined. However, many ARM theorists have indicated that a primary goal of archives and records management as an occupation is to ensure organizational accountability (Bearman 1995; Eastwood 1993; Cook 1994; Cox 2000a; Duranti 1994; Meijer 2001a; Reed 2004), or what McKemmish refers to as the “recordkeeping-accountability nexus, which flows from an emphasis on records as evidence of social and organisational activity” (2001, 338). Joseph, Debowski, and Goldschmidt (2012) argue that recent shifts in recordkeeping responsibilities suggest that increasing concern with accountability will characterize the recordkeeping professions in the future.

Albert Meijer (2001b) comments on the lack of a clear definition of the term in academic literature. He chooses a definition put forward by Barbara Romzek (2000) that defines accountability as “a relationship in which an individual or agency is held to answer for performance that involves some delegation of authority to act” (Meijer, 259). The theme of assignment, or delegation, is a common one within the accountability literature, and a 12 _{By “contract,” they appear to be referring to the notion of a social contract, an ethical theory that suggests that} people consent (either explicitly or tacitly) to surrender some of their freedoms by submitting to the authority of the state in exchange for protection of their remaining rights.

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number of authors suggest that it is a key component of accountability (Fitzpatrick 2000; Grant and Keohane 2005; Meijer 2001b; Romzek 2000). Noting that information sharing is a component of accountability, Meijer points out that the digitization of records most strongly affects the information sharing phase of accountability processes. During the information phase, a “forum reconstructs the actions of an individual or agency in order to form an opinion” (260). Accurate records and a systematic records management program are important because they are required to support accountability goals. Meijer’s discussion of the relationship between records and accountability suggests that he considers records to be artifacts that can be examined and interpreted in order to allow one to “reconstruct” a series of past actions – they become representatives of objective scenarios and facts. Accountability for him is thus a “thing” that is an outcome of reconstructing a set of interconnected facts as represented by records.

Barbara Reed (2004) speaks of the idea of shared or distributed accountability within public sector shared services environments. She accepts Mulgan’s definition of

accountability as “a relationship in which one party, the holder of accountability, has the right to seek information about, to investigate and to scrutinize the actions of another party, the giver of accountability” (140). Although Mulgan also includes the notion of sanctions in his definition, Reed does not mention this aspect of accountability. Her treatment follows a more legalistic notion of accountability, whereby it is defined as a legal right that can be held or assigned. She does not specifically discuss the nature of the resulting responsibility on the part of the accountable entity, although she does focus on the ways in which accountability is shared among those individuals in real-world public sector settings.

Elizabeth Yakel (2001) uses a very different approach in her analysis of

accountability, criticizing some authors’ tendency to treat accountability as a thing. She adopts ideas from social constructionism13 and from Weick’s ideas of organizational sensemaking (1995) to develop a process-oriented theory of accountability that she uses to analyze radiological reports from a large tertiary care medical center. She introduces her analysis by discussing the tendency in ARM literature to use the notion of warrant, which she defines to be “law, customs, standards, and professional best practices accepted by society and codified in the literature of different professions concerned with records and

recordkeeping” (2001, 233). She notes that if one uses the notion of warrant it needs to be extended to include uncodified practices and tacit knowledge because it is often the case that these uncodified practices and knowledge conflict with, compete with, or are melded into local practice in ways that do not directly relate to the written warrants. She treats

accountability as both a process of accounting and as a form of narrative, which allows individuals to justify their actions within their specific organizational contexts. She also allows ethical beliefs, morals, and responsiveness to be added to the narrower compliance- oriented definition of accountability, arguing that records are intermediaries in the accounting process. As intermediaries, records both shape the justifications of past behavior and, through sensemaking processes, lead to expectations of similar future behavior, thereby shaping the nature of accountability over time. She asserts that because every individual context has its own unique accountability process, multiple accountabilities exist.

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Social constructionism attempts to explain how social phenomena are created, institutionalized and reproduced by human interaction. It does not take so-called “reality” as given and objective but rather, treats objects as subjectively perceived and their apparently objective characteristics as jointly created via social interaction and intersubjective agreement.

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The recognition that accountability is both situational and evolutionary is important, but when it is placed within the context of social constructionist theories, one treats it as a social entity that is inherently subjective and separate from so-called objective reality. Nonetheless, recognizing the processual nature of accountability environments provides an important step in developing a theory of accountability that can help found ARM

professionals’ identity as supporters of accountability. If one treats accountability as a social structure in Giddens’ sense, one can capture this sense of the term. As a social structure, accountability exists only when enacted on a routine basis by human agents, and their situated actions constitute it and are simultaneously shaped by it. It is a particular enactment of rules and resources that are regularly treated as a property of social systems. It is founded on the normative and meaning-laden structures of each given social environment and reflects the dominance structures found within that environment. There are not “multiple

accountabilities.” Rather, there are multiple instantiations of the social relations that help make up the repetitive structure we interpret as accountability.

The fact that accountability has received so little explication from a group of professionals who claim it is a primary basis for their profession is somewhat troubling, however. The International Organization for Standardization’s ISO 15489-1 does define the term as the “principle that individuals, organizations, and the community are responsible for their actions and may be required to explain them to others” (2001a, 2).14 However, ARM professionals have alluded to their allegiance to accountability for much longer than this

14 _{The ISO 15489-1 standard specifies what it means to perform records management. According to McLeod, it}

was designed in order to standardize international best practices.

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standard has been in existence,15 so the authors of the standard apparently interpreted what they believed to be the already-common use of the term by recordkeeping professionals. Also, as Yakel pointed out, accountability varies from organization to organization, depending upon a combination of written warrants, tacit knowledge, and ethical and moral orientation. By treating accountability as self-evident, ARM professionals may fail to recognize the conception of accountability held by other occupational groups within (or outside) the organization in which they work. To the extent that their conceptions are fully in sync with those of other occupational groups with whom they share records responsibilities, this may not be problematic. Without a clear assessment of various individuals’ and groups’ conceptions within concrete settings, however, one cannot know whether the “ARM view” of accountability maps well to the view of other occupational groups with whom they

correspond.

Accountability itself, as a structure in which dominance relations are enacted both tacitly and explicitly, is likely to be a source of political struggle within organizations

because it involves an asymmetry of power due to the delegated responsibilities and ability to provide rewards or threaten sanctions (DeSanctis and Poole; Orlikowski 1992). It is required in situations in which someone is granted the freedom to perform actions on behalf of

another individual or group; in other words, power over resources is delegated to someone. In return, the accountable party takes on the responsibility of ensuring that he, she or they can provide an explanation, or accounting, of their activities to show that they have acted in good faith and according to mutually understood expectations (Parkinson 1993). Understanding more about the perceptions of dominance and delegation within an organization could 15 _{ISO 15489-1 was first published in 2001.}

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therefore help to clarify the extent to which ARM professionals’ understanding of this term maps to the understanding of other occupational workers who are co-stewards16 of the information that is presumably evidence of accountability or lack thereof.

Barbara Craig describes archivists’ accountability:

A legitimate question for archivists to ask would be how their professional

accountability is expressed, especially as it relates to the assertion of competence to do appraisal and their largely understood power to make keep-and-destroy decisions responsibly, with a view to serving the needs of society as a whole. Clearly, the broader notion of “accountability” should include a dimension of archival

accountability, that is, both a recognition of the principle and the provision of a means for rendering an account for the responsibilities to the profession and to society for the decisions we make on records (2007, 28).

She also asserts that the results of a survey she conducted indicate that “there is ambiguity in the archivist’s practices and beliefs concerning when and how the society they serve, as represented by the general public and users, have access to appraisal assessments and decisions” (28).

Terry Eastwood argues that “Accountability is a property of the institutional structure of a democracy” (69) [my italics]. Unlike Yakel, he distinguishes accountability from

responsiveness by stating, “responsiveness is a measure of how much accountability an institutional structure permits,” being “a consequence of interaction within such structures” (69).

Wendy Duff (2001) agrees that archivists are responsible for ensuring accountability and remarks that “accountability depends upon access to trustworthy records” (230). This raises the question of what roles and responsibilities archivists must accept in order to fulfill their professional functions. The issue of ARM roles and responsibilities and ARM identity will be covered in the next section.

16 _{For example, IT workers could be considered one co-steward.}

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There are a number of archivists who dispute the notion that the primary function of an archives is, or should be, accountability (Dirks 2004). These writers argue that focusing primarily upon the accountability and evidence of organizations creates a risk of forgetting that archives also exist to support social memory and historical research. According to this view, archivists must therefore always consider the historical value of records as well as their potential evidentiary value. However, James O’Toole points out that thinking of archives as supporters of accountability is not inconsistent with thinking of them as keepers of social memory insofar as they do in fact support historical accountability (O'Toole 2004). He says that the notion of historical accountability leads ARM professionals to examine records for possible ethical and moral issues that could allow the records to hold past individuals, groups, or nations accountable for actions performed in the past, such as war atrocities.

ARM researchers could benefit from more awareness of how they interpret accountability in general and how they are accountable to supporting it within their

organizations. To learn this requires venturing into the organizational settings of practitioners to understand better how common understandings and practices lead various recordkeeping professionals (including, but not exclusive to, records managers and archivists) to identify with their roles and responsibilities.