Teacher and Administrator Views on School Principals’ Accountability

Abstract

Substantial social, legal, economic, and technological transformations in the developing and changing world have caused organizations to question their managerial styles and gravitate toward new approaches and practices. Management and administration systems of organizations have started transforming (Akyel & Kose, 2010) and the tendencies toward more transparent and democratic management have increased (Sezer & Kargin, 2002). The umbrella concept of accountability (Bovens, 2007), which includes modern management principles such as transparency, equality, democracy, competency, and honesty, has started to gain more and more importance as a result of these changes. Accountability, a key concept of modern management, has become one of the critical elements in the approach of such things as reform, transformation, governance, and citizen satisfaction during the restructuring period and it has been placed in the center of democratic systems since it mediates the accountability of authorities towards society and other related parties. The American Institute of Certified Planners (1981) also emphasized the importance of the principle of accountability by addressing this concept along with honesty, justice, and serving public interests in its 1994 report on the Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.A series of definitions have been provided for the concept of accountability, a recent focus of interest for researchers. These definitions explain this concept in terms of providing information to an authority related to ones practices (Balci, 2003; Sozen, 2005), holding a person or an organization responsible to an authority regarding the activities in question (Julnes, 2006; Mulgan, 2000; Peters, 2007), liability to provide answers and explanations (Ba$, 2007), and a process for providing explanations to a specific authority about tasks and practices (Mulgan, 2000). Accountability, in more detail, has been defined as the accountability of authorities in an organization to higher authorities regarding the use of authority and responsibility; acting in line with criticisms and demands related to accountability; the need to take responsibility in case of failure, incompetence or infraction of rules (Arcagok & Eruz, 2006); the use of authority and resources in organizations in line with the law and in accordance with principles of productivity and efficiency; and the presentation of responsibility related to the achievement of specified goals and targets (Sozen & Algan, 2009). At the same time, accountability is one of the principles that needs to be addressed together with the fundamental principles of consistency, responsibility, equity, transparency, participation, commitment to the legal system, legitimacy and measurability in order to ensure organizational governance (Toksoz, 2008).Accountability is a tool that ensures organizational managers have appropriate conduct in line with the law and its regulations during the administration of organizational goals. This tool also indicates a social relationship in which the administrator feels required to answer to higher authorities regarding the accuracy of their actions. In this relationship, a higher authority questions the validity of their actions and the sufficiency of information while the party that provides accountability has to answer these questions (Parlak, 2011). In this context, the mechanisms for accountability should be created that clearly provide the procedures and processes to present for determining whether administrators act in line with the expectations of organizations (Sozen, 2005) L