The Accountability Trap: Why Focusing Too Much on Results Can Backfire - and What to Do About It
Local governments are faced with big challenges and are increasingly asked to address hard problems such as climate change, social inequalities and drug abuse. Addressing these problems may require considerable expenditure of public resources. Given the high stakes of the issues at hand and the potentially large sums of money involved, there can be a justifiable interest from elected officials and the public that the government (and its staff) be held “accountable.” This sounds fine, in theory, but there are some practical problems with a focus on accountability. At this session we'll explore better solutions based on work by word-famous psychologist Adam Grant.