I would add a third element in defining accountability - the moral repair of relationships necessary to sustain accountable relationships over time. Without this, the mutual trust needed to sustain high accountability and high agency is likely to prove elusive. Robust theories of scaling emphasise moral recognition of such reality. eg see Judge, M., Bouman, T., Steg, L., & Bolderdijk, J. W. (2024). Accelerating social tipping points in sustainable behaviors: Insights from a dynamic model of moralized social change. One Earth, 7(5), 759-770. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2024.04.004
That's an excellent addition, Bill. One interesting question for us would be: who are the actors that need to enter into these sustained accountability relationships? At the interpersonal level, this is pretty clear, but for evaluators working at the institutional level, I think we might end up with a more complicated conclusion. Evaluators might be considered a sort of mediator who helps facilitate the moral repair between other actors, like an agency and its beneficiaries or the stakeholders.
Also, boy am I the right audience for that Judge et al. paper - the combination of moralization and diffusion of innovation theory was right there but I never thought through how to do it. I really want to see some more validation of this line of research because it makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the recommendation.
Anthony, I am coauthoring a paper for Sustainability Science applying Judge et al to a 40-year case study of sustainable scaling of agricultural practice in rural sub-Saharan Africa (scaling from 12 smallholder farmers in 1983-4 to 10 million+). At this scale much of the moral repair comes from 'deep scaling' involving moral recognition within landscape communities who scale into movements. Our resubmission is currently being re-reviewed.
A dysfunctional culture might refer to the above LABs as:
-emotional intelligence
-social skills
-savvy
-being a team player
-reading the room
-flexibility/adaptability
But my preferred umbrella acronym for LABs is just BS.
Thank you. Very valuable, Anthony.
I would add a third element in defining accountability - the moral repair of relationships necessary to sustain accountable relationships over time. Without this, the mutual trust needed to sustain high accountability and high agency is likely to prove elusive. Robust theories of scaling emphasise moral recognition of such reality. eg see Judge, M., Bouman, T., Steg, L., & Bolderdijk, J. W. (2024). Accelerating social tipping points in sustainable behaviors: Insights from a dynamic model of moralized social change. One Earth, 7(5), 759-770. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2024.04.004
That's an excellent addition, Bill. One interesting question for us would be: who are the actors that need to enter into these sustained accountability relationships? At the interpersonal level, this is pretty clear, but for evaluators working at the institutional level, I think we might end up with a more complicated conclusion. Evaluators might be considered a sort of mediator who helps facilitate the moral repair between other actors, like an agency and its beneficiaries or the stakeholders.
Also, boy am I the right audience for that Judge et al. paper - the combination of moralization and diffusion of innovation theory was right there but I never thought through how to do it. I really want to see some more validation of this line of research because it makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the recommendation.
Anthony, I am coauthoring a paper for Sustainability Science applying Judge et al to a 40-year case study of sustainable scaling of agricultural practice in rural sub-Saharan Africa (scaling from 12 smallholder farmers in 1983-4 to 10 million+). At this scale much of the moral repair comes from 'deep scaling' involving moral recognition within landscape communities who scale into movements. Our resubmission is currently being re-reviewed.