Identifying and Prioritizing the Barriers of Public Accountability in Iranian Public Organizations

Public organizations must be accountable to the people, their agents, and other regulatory bodies for their performance and actions. However, this important issue has not received as much attention as it should in public organizations. In this mixed-method study, the aim is to identify and prioritize barriers of public accountability in public organizations. In the qualitative phase of the research, using unstructured and in-depth interviews with 24 public managers, employees of public organizations, and public administration professors, data was obtained. Analyzing the data using thematic analysis method, the main and minor barriers to public accountability in public organizations and their sub-branches were identified. Then in the quantitative phase of the research, through the questionnaires, the barriers were prioritized using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) methodology. The results show that three categories of structural, environmental, and content (behavioral) barriers disrupt accountability. According to the findings, barriers of public accountability in public organizations, with respect to priority, include legal barriers, lack of efficient accountability system, administrative corruption, lack of meritocracy, lack of proper performance evaluation system, lack of proper organizational culture, inefficiency of managers, lack of efficient information system, cultural barriers, and instability in public organizations.