Executive pay, accountability, and Training and Enterprise Councils

Abstract

Examines accountability in training and enterprise councils and uses executive pay as an example of changing mechanisms and values. Discusses a number of issues crucial to public sector management: democracy in “quangoland”; public sector ethics; what constitutes a private, as opposed to a public, organization. Contributes to the debate on the wider reordering of the machinery of government: the emergence of “quangoland” and the implication of this for accountability and democracy. One of the central issues in this is the seeming confusion over lines of responsibility, and how responsibility is divided between agency executives and Ministers in Parliament. Draws a contrast between the determination of pay for executives in the newly “private sector” Training and Enterprise Councils and their predecessors and counterparts in nationalized industries and local government. Highlights many of the central debates in the vastly changed world of public sector management in Britain.