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Accountability and Worth: A Study of New Zealand’s

Tertiary Education Institutions

Rodney Dormer

Victoria Business School

Victoria University of Wellington

New Zealand

rodney.dormer@vuw.ac.nz

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Accountability and Worth: A Study of New Zealand’s

Tertiary Education Institutions

Abstract

This paper explores the complex web of accountability relationships between New

Zealand’s tertiary education institutions (TEIs) and the different forums with whom

they interact. A brief review of the extensive literature on accountability suggests that

previous approaches to this topic have largely adopted the perspective of those forums

to whom accountability is provided. However, it is argued that the alternative

perspectives of those giving an account provide a more insightful understanding of

accountability practices.

Key Words: universities, polytechnics, wānanga, accountability, worth

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Introduction

This paper seeks to explore how accountability is understood and practised by New

Zealand’s twenty-three tertiary education institutions (TEIs) that include universities,

polytechnics and wānanga (māori tertiary education providers). All of those

organisations receive a significant proportion of their funding (between 40 and 80 per

cent) from government but are also involved in a web of accountability relationships

that incudes students, donors, employers and local communities. However, the nature

of those relationships and the conceptions of accountability involved are variable,

confusing and at times conflicting and as Denhardt and Denhardt (2015) have observed:

“accountability is not, and cannot be made, simple” (p.143).

What follows is a brief review of the extensive literature on accountability. The paper

then provides an analysis of a series of semi-structured interviews, undertaken with

senior managers in a range of tertiary education institutions, adopting, and to some

extent adapting, the economies of worth framework suggested by Boltanski and

Thévenot (2006).

Literature Review

The complex nature of accountability in a public context has been identified my many

observers including Denhardt and Denhardt (2015) who suggest that it encompasses:

… a constellation of institutions and standards including the public interest,

statutory and constitutional law, other agencies, other levels of government,

the media, professional standards, situational factors, democratic norms, and

of course citizens. (p. 123)

Bovens (2007, p.449) has suggested that the concept of accountability “today resembles

a dustbin filled with good intentions, loosely defined concepts and vague images of

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good governance”. Certainly accountability means different things to different people

and yet it is central to any discussion of good governance.

This confusion is increased by the at times interchangeable use of the words

‘accountable’ and ‘responsible’ although, as Gregory (2012) has noted, being

responsible for something or someone does not necessarily imply being accountable.

A mistake made by a subordinate does not necessarily mean that a responsible manager,

or Minister, is accountable – unless there is a broader, systemic issue involved. In this

sense an actor is accountable to one or more others but responsible, often in a moral

sense, for something that involves the actor’s, or others’, actions. Thus while on the

one hand good governance can be seen to be associated with control through specific

and clear definition of what is to be delivered or achieved, it might also be seen to

require the facilitation of a shared ownership of those objectives. Gregory therefore

quotes Uhr (1993) who suggested:

Accountability is about compliance with authority, whereas responsibility is

about empowerment and independence. Accountability is the negative end

of the same band in which responsibility is the positive end. If accountability

is about minimising mis-government, responsibility is about maximising

good government. (p.3)

Thus it has been argued that administrative accountability involves both ‘external’ pre-

set performance criteria and ‘internal’ professional, or technical, values that

administrators internalise and hold each other accountable to (Denhardt and Denhardt

2015). And therefore:

… the problem of how to bring about responsible conduct of the

administrative staff of a large organization is, particularly in a democratic

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society, very largely a question of sound rules and effective morale.

(Friedrich, 1960, p.19)

At a macro level Bovens (2007) has also proffered a solution to this confusion by way

of the following definition:

Accountability is a relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the

actor has an obligation to explain and justify his or her conduct, the forum

can pose questions and pass judgement, and the actor may face consequences.

(p. 450)

Which suggests three questions by which a relationship involving accountability may

be distinguished from those involving a simpler wish to share information, cooperate

or be transparent. i.e.:

does the actor have an obligation (legal, implied or assumed) to explain and

justify his/her conduct?

can the forum pose questions and pass judgement? and

could the actor face consequences?

This standard, economically framed approach to accountability is also presented by

Hughes (2012) and many others who describe accountability in the context of a

hierarchy of principal-agent relationships in which agents have a singular and clear

relationship with a principal to whom they must explain and justify their use and

stewardship of delegated resources and power. This requires:

… an agreed definition of tasks, measures of performance, appropriate

organisation and control of resources, systems for monitoring and reporting,

and incentives and sanctions. (OECD, 1991, p.12)

Thus for Gregory (2012) “the essence of accountability is organisational control”

(p.687); a control that is dependent on an ability to know what the ‘facts’ are. However,

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it has also been noted that many public functions, or the activities they involve, do not

readily lend themselves to clear ex ante definition and subsequent measurement

(Wilson, 1989). As Noordegraaf (2008) has argued, the attempt to turn complex social

and economic phenomena into “crisp facts and figures” can both fall short of capturing

the reality of a situation and further change and complicate it as a result of the inevitable

behavioural consequences of the measurement process.

Behn (2001) has described a broader conception of accountability that, as well as

accountability for performance against “some kind of objective goal or target”, also

encompasses:

financial accountability for the wise use of public money; and

an accountability for treating all citizens fairly and for maintaining rules and

procedures that protect citizens from abuses of power.

Although Behn acknowledges that these accountabilities might at times overlap and

conflict.

Considine (2002) has also discussed the broader implications of a system of

accountability, “defined as the legal obligation to be responsive to the legitimate

interests of those affected by decisions, programmes and interventions” (p.22). He

distinguishes between a standard approach informed by legal and economic theories

that are concerned with authorisation and control through vertical structures, and,

arguably more realistic, structures of horizontal accountability. The web of

accountability then moves beyond the instrumental, transaction-based rationality of

specifically defined ends and clearly understood means to one in which desired ends

and acceptable means emerge from a discursive relationship. As Considine (2002) has

also noted:

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Horizontal accountability issues can be seen as those able to invite and

authorise the contributions of social partners, community interests,

other levels of government, and other autonomous contributors. … It

may, thereby, improve the legitimacy of the whole system. (p.28)

Certainly, horizontal accountability takes on more significance in the context of

increasingly fragmented arrangements for the provision of public services that include

elements of co-production with other service providers, communities and citizens. As

Considine suggests, horizontal accountability requires moving away from both law and

economic markets to embrace network relations and different approaches to

governance. He states:

… the question of accountability then goes beyond being a matter of

compliance (legal strategy) or performance (economic strategy) and becomes

a matter of organisational convergence (cultural strategy). (p.28)

However, the concept of convergence may be neither attainable nor desirable if it

suggests a ‘one correct way’ approach to issues that, particularly in the public domain,

involve the diverse identities and objectives of complex societies. Structures of lateral

accountability involving diverse principles of evaluation have been described by Stark

(2009) as a ‘heterarchy’. He argues that, with no hierarchical ordering of these

principles, the friction between them may represent a productive dissonance from

which new and innovative knowledge can emerge.

Bovens (2007) has also argued that public institutions are accountable to “a plethora of

different forums all of which apply different criteria” (p.455). He broadly classifies

these forums as involving:

political accountability,

legal accountability,

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administrative accountability,

professional accountability, and

social accountability.1

In effect, Boven’s fivefold framework of forums of accountability starts from the

perspective of those actors to whom an account is given. However, we might more

profitably ask, from the perspective of the actors giving an account, why do they do so?

Understanding how those we wish to hold accountable conceive of their roles, duties

and obligations, and especially what principles might guide them, arguably provides a

more real-world insight into practice (Burke, 1986). The meaning that accountability

has for different actors will reflect the nature of those forums to which they believe they

are accountable together with those things for which they believe they are accountable.

(The significant implication here is that if actors do not believe themselves to be

accountable to a particular forum, they cannot, or will not, in practice be accountable.)

Those beliefs will in turn reflect a conception of what is important or of value in a

particular context.

It is, therefore, again important to note that those actors will co-exist in a number of

different contexts, or worlds, each of which will have its alternative conception of “what

is valuable, what is worthy, what counts” (Stark, 2009, p.5). This occurs in contexts

not governed by hierarchical relationships of authority where “design preceded

execution, with the latter carried out with the time-management precision of a Taylorist

organisational machine”; but rather in those in which organisational boundaries are

“crisscrossed by dense ties of interlocking patterns of ownership and complex patterns

of strategic alliances” (ibid. p.23).

1 See also Romzek and Ingraham, 2000.

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We may, then, argue that, rather than organisational control, the essence of the practice

of accountability is justification. Being accountable is a process by which an actor will

justify their provision of value, of their worth. Dependent upon to whom (to which

forum) that accountability occurs different “repertoires of justification” (Wagner, 1999)

will be employed. As Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) have noted:

… the same persons have, on the same day and in the same social space, to

use different devices for assessment, including the reference to different types

of worth, when they shift from one situation to another. (p.369)

Although they have subsequently acknowledged that these are neither exclusive nor

necessarily valid for all time, in their 1991 work On Justification Boltanski and

Thévenot 2 identified six such types or orders of worth, namely:

the world of inspiration,

the domestic world,

the world of renown,

the civic world,

the market world, and

the industrial world.

The justification of worth is, in effect, a mechanism by which actors or organisations

seek to establish a legitimacy which has been described as:

… a generalised perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are

desirable, proper or appropriate within some socially constructed system of

norms, values beliefs and definitions. (Suchman, 1994, p.574)

Scott (2001) has described three institutional systems by which legitimacy may be

established. Firstly, regulative legitimacy is based on conformity to the rules framed

2 translated into English in 2006

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by legal or quasi-legal structures that also underpin worth in the industrial and market

worlds described by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006). Secondly, normative legitimacy

for which the rewards and sanctions are more likely to be intrinsic as well as extrinsic

reflecting the deeper moral criteria that are more likely to be internalized by actors.

Normative legitimacy can be seen as more pertinent to the renown and civic worlds.

Thirdly, cultural-cognitive legitimacy, which is relevant to the domestic world, is based

on a common frame of reference or orthodoxy that employs “preconscious, taken-for-

granted understandings” (p. 61).

What follows is an exploration of the extent to which those worlds and orders of worth

are applied in the accountability and legitimisation practices of New Zealand’s tertiary

education institutions.

Research Methods

To establish a context the research initially involved a review and analysis of publicly

available documents from New Zealand’s Tertiary Education Commission and the

twenty-eight tertiary education institutions. A sample of managers from within these

institutions was then sought from approaches to three universities, three polytechnics

and two wānanga. Those approached for an interview represented those actors within

each institution that were responsible for or involved in processes of external

accountability. As a result five individual semi-structured interviews were conducted

with senior managers of one university and three polytechnics and a further semi-

structured interview was undertaken with three senior members of a wānanga.

Notes were taken during these interviews which were also transcribed and a copy

provided to each interviewee for correction or further comment. The final documents

were loaded into the NVivo software where successive readings allowed the recurring

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themes, and common and differing ideas, to emerge. These themes and ides were then

mapped against by Boltanski and Thévenot’s (1991) orders of worth described above.

By listening to the interviewees and also observing the context of how and where their

statements were made, this study aims to reveal the practices by which the structures of

accountability are “brought to life” (Berger and Luckman, 1967).

Research Findings

In what follows, comments received in the semi-structured interviews are mapped

against five of the worlds described by Boltanski and Thévenot. The sixth of these

worlds, ‘inspiration’, did not receive any relevant statements. The following table

summarizes these worlds and its application is explained in the following sections.

TEI Accountability

Industrial Market Renown Civic Domestic

Mode of

legitimacy

regulatory regulatory normative normative cultural-

cognitive

Mode of

evaluation

efficiency

productivity

predictability

price other people’s

opinion

collective

interest

reputation

esteem

tradition

Relevant

information

measurable

criteria

statistics

monetary

values

semiotic

surveys

formal

official

oral,

explanatory,

anecdotal

Human

Qualifications

professional

competency

expertise

purchasing

power

desire

celebrity equality,

belonging to a

group, or

representative

of a collective

authority

Tangible

Expression

formal plans

agreements

contracts

reports

possessions

market share

trade marks,

badges

social media

“likes”

rules, codes,

procedures

physical

premises

titles, visiting

cards, houses,

estates

(Based on Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999)

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The Industrial World

So what we try and prove through those sorts of financial or fiscal analyses is

our value for money, our public good. (P2)

As noted above, accountability is commonly framed as a hierarchical structure of

expectations and obligations in which those to whom accountability is due exercise

“independent and external administrative and financial supervision and control”

(Bovens, 2007, p.456). In the context of the economic logic of public sector

management reforms over the last thirty years, that obligation to explain and justify has

been conceived as a contractual one in which a ‘contracted’ agent is required to give an

account of the extent to which it has met the pre-defined requirements of a principal.

The worth that accountability then seeks to justify is associated with efficiency,

productivity and predictability. Boltanski and Thévenot describe this as an “industrial

world” of clear cause and effect relationships, control of which:

… requires a correct vision of the space (environment) in which the problem

is inscribed, so as to detect, discover, identify, bring to light, measure, analyse

and decompose the relevant elements. … The operations of standardisation

and formalisation make it possible to see the world expressed in numbers,

quantified, ready to be processed, combined, added up (Boltanski and

Thévenot , 2006, p.210).

In this world negative signs of worth are associated with weak controls that lead to

waste and deterioration that occurs unexpectedly as a consequence of unidentified or

un-managed risks.

Worthy actors in this world exist in a hierarchy of states of worth that reflect

professional qualifications, competencies and management responsibilities. Thus:

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A more worthy person is in relation to a less worthy person primarily through

the responsibility he assumes for production, by the control he has over the

future. (ibid. p.209)

For New Zealand’s TEIs, external financial and operational oversight is provided by

the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), the New Zealand Qualifications Authority

(NZQA), and, for the universities, the Academic Quality Agency and the Committee

on University Academic Programmes (CUAP). This complex web of administrative

accountability relationships within which the TEIs operate therefore involves not just

vertical accountability to a single principal but potentially to a series of different

principals who provide financial support and/or academic accreditation.

Boltanski and Thévenot explain that in the industrial world tangible expression of worth

is contained in formal plans, agreements, contracts and reports. Thus, a senior

polytechnic manager described his organisation’s accountability relationship with the

Tertiary Education Commission as being, theoretically, based on return on investment

in which “the discussions now are very much based around employment outcomes”

(P3). However, he also suggested that in practice, and possibly because of

measurement problems, that relationship was still very much based around measures

such as course completions, retentions and progressions.

Similarly, when asked what he was accountable for, an interviewee who was a senior

university faculty member responded by reaching for the university’s strategic plan and

then explaining the goals that it contained. The instrumental logic thus evidenced was

explained as follows:

Its fairly clear what I’m accountable for … it’s laid out there. In fact, at the

beginning of each year, the vice-chancellor and I agree what the priorities are

and that is my performance goals and throughout the year we talk about

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progress on these. And at the end of the year I provide a report to the vice-

chancellor, who then assesses performances against those agreed goals. (U5)

In contrast, it was only as I was leaving at the conclusion of an interview with three

members of a wānanga that one of them went to look for a copy of their annual report.

Perhaps not surprisingly, accountability in Boltanski and Thévenot’s “industrial world”

was not always viewed favourably by those who were interviewed. One polytechnic

chief executive suggested “we are a compliance sector”, noting:

When the education performance indicators drive a very punitive regime,

which they do – if you don’t get this and this and this you lose funding in the

next round – it drives you to some odd behaviours, or it could. (P3)

Similarly, a senior university manager described the reporting requirements related to

the university’s funding plan with the TEC as: “a reward, punish, accountability type

method” (U4). Another polytechnic chief executive also stated: “TEC needs to

understand that they have created a control environment and the smart among us can

play the system: (P1). The burden created by this model was explained as follows:

The figures are quite frightening when you see there might be 150 of these

target areas. It’s not just course completion, it’s course completion split at

level 1 and 2, level 3 to 4, level 5 to six and level 7 to 8. … Then it's separated

in each of those to Māori, Pasifika, under 25s and the organisation as a whole.

And there will be measurement of how many EFTs and the results of those in

primary industries, agriculture, science and technology, [and] engineering.

And this goes on for pages and pages and pages of goals and targets. (P2)

For universities, who are financially less dependent on the TEC, the influence of this

world is not seen as so significant. As a senior university manager suggested:

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There are some performance measures which the TEC have established to

monitor the performance of universities. My own view is that some of those

are not well conceived, but they have them … they are performance measures

which as a university we may or may not prioritise. That’s for us to decide

how well they fit with our strategic plan. (U5)

Or, as another senior university manager observed, while the government is wanting

universities to report a standard set of performance indicators on their websites, the

universities do not see this as a priority. It was suggested:

When you talk to vice-chancellors about government involvement in

monitoring, their eyes glaze over because they feel they’re doing a fair

amount of stuff already. And also, I guess, they feel that well actually

government’s a 40% shareholder – the majority shareholder in terms of size

– but not the only one, and it’s increasingly becoming less. (U4)

This perspective was further extended by a senior member of a wānanga who believed

that TEC’s accountability model was not applicable to that institution: “a funder just

has to provide the funding and let us get on with it – don’t get in the way. Don’t impose

your model on our model because they are different” (W1).

A criticism of TEC’s formal accountability model that was also repeated was that it is

inherently short-term in its focus. A senior manager in a polytechnic suggested:

… the risk is that [the TEC] have become too technical, too transactional if

you like, and focus on the shorter-term rather than the longer-tern

contribution. Which, yes, is hard to measure and it’s hard to report; but it

doesn’t mean to say we should lose sight of it. (P1)

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The Market World

… in a transactional sense, we’re accountable for a whole variety of different

things for a whole variety of different exchanges. (U4)

In Boltanski and Thévenot’s “market world” worth is associated with desire or demand

for objectified objects or commodities and is reflected in much of the discourse

associated with neo-liberal reforms of the public sector that, as much as any other

sector, have impacted on the governance of education. As one critique of their impact

has claimed:

Higher education has been transformed from a public good, funded

collectively, to a private good which comes at a large personal cost. …

Tertiary education has become increasingly a private benefit to satisfy a

market, not citizen’s preferences, capabilities or aspirations. (Grey &

Sedgewick, 2014, p.113)

In this market world of ‘buyers and sellers’ the worth of actors is:

… proportionate to their own value, which they know how to sell, and which

is expressed by their success designated in particular by the vocabulary of

competition: getting ahead, challenging oneself, taking the edge, being a

winner, a top dog. (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p.197)

Thus a number of the interviewees described being “in competition” with other tertiary

institutions in respect of the student numbers, retentions and progressions that are

central to their TEC Investment Plans and related funding.

A polytechnic chief executive who described herself as “a marketer” suggested:

I’m breaking down 40 years of tertiary stodge. Right, so I’ve now - and I’ve

got a lot of work to do. The next time you come and see us, you might see the

Spark approach to a front office. No more people sitting behind desks, no

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more waiting in queue. You walk in, there’s an iPad, there’s someone roving

that’s going to help you. (P1)

Another senior polytechnic manger described how that institution “trades” under their

brand but are:

… struggling, as are others, in terms of really finding our market niche to a

degree as well, and that’s very much driven by the international market

dynamics rather than the needs of New Zealand. (P3)

That interviewee also explained the importance of the market for international students

by explaining: “… our Auckland campus, to be brutally honest, is very much a business

model based around revenues”.

The concept of a market exchange was also applied to funding received from alumni

and donors who:

… will be expecting to influence the research direction of [a funded] chair in

return for the money that they provide. But they might also be expecting to

sit at the table with other people who have an interest in that particular

discipline so they can collectively exchange ideas and information. (U4)

The Civic World

We wouldn’t be able to deliver these programme areas if we didn’t have the

correct accreditations and approvals. (P2)

In what Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) broadly describe as “the civic world” worth is

associated with the collective interest and belonging to, or representing, the collective

such as a professional body or accreditation agency. Signs and symbols that

acknowledge that membership or mandate:

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… stabilise and equip the collective persons, to objectify them in such

a way as to give them body, permanence and presence. (Boltanski and

Thévenot 2006, p. 185)

In this world accountability relationships reflect the interdependence of organisations

working towards common objectives. These relationships are frequently governed by

professional bodies that:

… lay down codes with standards for acceptable practice that are

binding for all members. These standards are monitored and enforced

by professional and supervisory bodies on the basis of peer review.

(Bovens, 2007, p.456)

For the TEIs professional accountability relationships therefore exist with the various

international organisations from whom they seek accreditation as well as between

different staff groups and the professional bodies to which they belong, such as those

that exist for accountants or nurses. Particularly for university business schools, worth

is demonstrated by the accreditation provided by international organisations such as the

Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the Association of

MBAs (AMBA), or the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and

Administration (NASPAA). In each case accreditation is provided for a limited period

and its initial achievement and subsequent maintenance involves a substantial process

of review and reporting. Nonetheless a senior university manager described them as

important because:

… they allow us to benchmark ourselves against international standards

across a range of factors, such as the way programmes are run,

administered, quality of staff, design of the curriculum and so on.

Assurance of learning processes. So the international accrediting

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agencies we decided as a Business School to pursue because we saw

advantages in leveraging continuous improvement within the Business

School to enhance our international reputation and keep us abreast of

international developments and standards. (U 5)

Oversight and accreditation by professional bodies and those representing industry

groups, such as industry training organisations, or even large employers can also have

a significant influence on the structure and content of academic programmes.

Engagement in this sense is arguably more intensive in the vocationally-based

programme environment of the polytechnics. A senior polytechnic manager explained

that the ability to integrate work practices into learning also resulted in employees being

more involved determining the content of programmes both at a national level, for

sectors like nursing and early childhood education, and regionally, for trade and

hospitality sector programmes that can more easily be locally customised. As a

polytechnic chief executive explained:

… it falls into regulation. So if we deliver a programme like social work: we

do a four-year social work degree. That’s regulated by the Social Workers’

Registration Board. In the same way if we did nursing it would be the Nursing

Registration Board. (P2)

That professional accountability is also reflected in:

… expectations on us from government to be more engaged with our industry

partners so we can increase the net worth of New Zealand’s economy and our

place in the global market. (U5)

In further contrast to the cliché of academic isolation in ivory towers, TEIs identify a

broad accountability to not just students and staff but also to local communities,

citizen’s and, at times, humanity as a whole. An obligation to explain and justify may

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then be framed not in terms of a formal contract between an agent and a principal but

in the context of relational contracts and deeper social, religious or cultural

expectations.

Bovens (2007) describes: “… more direct and explicit accountability relationships

between public agencies, on the one hand, and clients, citizens and civil society, on the

other” (p. 457) that have developed with an increased interest in corporate and social

responsibility.

Some of New Zealand’s tertiary education institutions, including most of the

polytechnics, are very regionally focused – although the Open Polytechnic draws

students from, and functions across, the whole of New Zealand. Engagement in a

broader sense was therefore explained by a polytechnic chief executive who stated:

“We have an accountability, I think, to the community” (P1). This local focus was

described not just as an accountability to employers but also to the families of students

and other elements of the community that they will impact. So that families: “… are

above the poverty line; kids go to school with breakfast and shoes; and there’s internet

in [the community]” (P1). That interviewee’s desire to “create citizens in the

community who feel they have worth” (P1) was echoed by another polytechnic chief

executive who wanted that institution’s students: “ … to have beliefs and ethics and

interests outside themselves, so that they are connected to the community” (P2).

Another regional polytechnic manager similarly explained that institution saw itself as

“part of the community” and accountable not just for providing students with skills and

qualifications needed by the local economy, but also in terms of a broader social

responsibility:

… that’s very much about meeting the needs of the community; and a lot of

those are social needs. So that could be providing a central computer hub, for

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example, so that a lot of the community can access some of their social needs

as well as getting training. (P6)

This can be seen to reflect Considine’s (2002) conception of public accountability as

being an obligation to be “responsive to the legitimate interests of those affected by

decisions, programmes and interventions”. In more formal sense a senior university

manager discussed an accountability “to make a difference to society” by explaining:

We’re accountable to the public in general because we’re seen as the critic

and conscience of society and a source of objectivity, a fountain of knowledge

in a number of discipline areas. (U4)

In respect of research, the international research community also operates a rigorous

system of accountability through its peer review process. (Although this may be

associated with the recognition by specific, highly rated, journals – not of the

publication itself. Those publications, such as books, that are not normally peer

reviewed are thus rated as much less worthy.)

As Broadbent and Laughlin (2009) have suggested, accountability in this context:

… will be less like a defined project, less short term in nature and more

concerned with the long term survival and sustainability of the

organisation/unit through which the stakeholders are working. (p.289)

The World of Renown

It’s all very well, anyone can claim they’re high quality but how credible is

that? And for overseas students, and in particular overseas staff, they want to

know what sort of institution they’re likely to come to and they want some

independent assessment. (U5)

Such accountability relationships are also central to less economically framed

conceptions of public governance and the ways in which public value is generated. That

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perceived value can be either developed or eroded but its existence is vital to the

continued provision of resources and support. Its absence is often reflected in defensive

strategies and an increased external involvement of the organisation’s affairs.

Thus, in what Boltanski and Thévenot (1999) describe as the world of renown, while

“worth is nothing but the result of other people’s opinion” (p. 371) the value it

represents may be reinforced as:

… the publication of results indicating that a majority of persons has a given

opinion reinforces the opinion of these persons, underwriting it, as it were,

and influencing the opinion of others. The regular publication of surveys thus

contributes to ensuring the transparency of the state of worthiness of famous

beings who cannot hide the fluctuations of their standing. (Boltanski and

Thévenot. 2006, p. 181)

Reputation has arguably always been important for both tertiary education institutions

and their alumni although, as a senior university manager explained, the components of

reputation will differ for local and international audiences. In respect of domestic

students it was suggested:

It’s not what the TEC says about the university – it makes not one jot of

difference about where the student goes. It’s about do we have the right

offerings for them? Is it a city they can relate to? Are their friends going

there? What their influencers say about it. These are the things that matter to

students. (U4)

On the other hand, that manager argued, more formally measured criteria are important

for international students. Thus:

23

… we do know that the QS3 rankings are important to our international

students; and the QS Stars, which is about student experience. But these

things are more important to international parents than they are to domestic

parents and prospective students. (U4)

Nonetheless, university interviewees did comment on the importance of their New

Zealand PBRF4 rankings, “because it very much impinges on our reputation” (U5) and

also provided “bragging rights” (U4).

Whilst a university manager explained a plan to routinely survey “each of our

stakeholder groups to find out exactly what they think of us” (U4), a polytechnic chief

executive stated:

We survey students as they go through the course formally, but there’s also a

real-time evaluation where they can give star ratings and comments as they

go. We also work with BERL to do much broader economic studies of our

worth as a polytech, not just to a particular student or a particular vocation,

but more to the nation of what the worth of the organisation is. (P2)

In this context the increased role of, and need to interact with, the media, particularly

those elements on the internet, should not be underestimated. Reputation, both

professional and social, matters a great deal to TEIs and impacts on their ability to

attract students, staff and funding.

The Domestic World

That sense of belonging is really important. It was really important to my Dad

and it’s really important to me. And I want my grandchildren – my children’s

3 The QS World University Rankings are compiled based on academic and employer surveys as well as

research citation data. The rankings reflect performance criteria that assess universities in respect of

their research, teaching, employability and internationalisation. 4 PBRF: the Performance Based Research Fund is a model that assesses the research performance of

degree related institutions and funds them accordingly.

24

grandchildren to understand that: that’s important to us, that sense of

belonging. We call that ukaipotanga – that’s one of our 10 kaupapa tuku.

(W8)

In what Boltanski and Thévenot’s (1999 and 2006) describe as the “domestic world”:

… people’s worth depends on a hierarchy of trust based on a chain of

personal dependencies. The political link between beings is seen as a

generalisation of kinship and is based on face-to-face relations and on the

respect for tradition. The person in this world cannot be separated from his/her

belonging to a body, a family, a lineage, an estate. (Boltanski and Thévenot,

1999, p.370)

As explained by an interviewee, for wānanga accountability may be defined in terms of

the Māori tribes to which they are affiliated:

We are accountable to our people … we report to them annually, visit them,

tell them what we’ve been going and ask if there are any questions. (W6)

And while the need to meet the accountability requirements of the TEC was

acknowledged:

… actually that’s awkward for me to be talking about reporting on Māori to

the Crown – that’s a matter of convenience. I don’t like the idea of reporting

on Māori performance to the Crown. Our primary target for reporting are

Māori – it’s partly the students but it's the Māori people. (W1)

That interview with three members of a wānanga was led by the more senior of the

three to whom deference was shown and who was referred to as “uncle”. Thus

Boltanski and Thévenot explain: “ … important persons are chief’s, bosses, or even

relatives. Their main qualities are to be distinguished, straightforward, faithful and to

have character. (1999, p.370).

25

The wānanga interviewees explained how the performance of both that institution as a

whole and that of its individual students is assessed according to their conformity with

the wānanga’s kaupapa (underlying values and principles) and tikanga or behaviours

that enact and demonstrate those values.

Uncle has talked before about having the tautau in our veins – having the

blood and being Māori – but there is a behaviour and there is a way in which

we act and behave that makes us distinctively Māori as well. (W8)

It was explained that this strong focus on kaupapa Mäori also affects how the

institutions programmes are framed; so:

… whatever programme they want to do here, every student who is full-time,

a quarter of their load will involve studying the Māori language. Another

quarter will involve studies including interviewing kaumātua5, studying and

writing about their marae, writing about iwi history, where they’ve come from

and how do they belong. And they choose a specialisation to keep themselves

occupied for the other half. (W6)

In this domestic world:

… the exercise of worth is subject here to constraints of place and time linked

to the need to present oneself in person in the presence of others, in order to

manifest one’s own importance. (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006 p.164)

A polytechnic chief executive thus explained;

… the most important stuff is the relationship I have developed with probably

eight or nine people at the TEC. That’s an individual relationship that I

maintain in all sorts of ways. So they come to our chief executives’ meetings

5 a senior elder or person with status.

26

that we have every month in Wellington and they’ll always stay for lunch. I

make lunch appointments with them. (P1)

Conclusions

This research began in a discussion with New Zealand’s Tertiary Education

Commission in respect of the question, how should tertiary education institutions be

accountable? Subsequent conversations with members of those institutions identified

what Stark (2009) has referred to as a “perplexing situation” in which “there is a

principled disagreement about what counts” (p.5).

It is evident that for the tertiary education institutions from which the interviewees were

drawn, the conception and practice of accountability is far more complex than one

represented by a simple agent-principal relationship with the TEC. Being accountable,

or providing an account, does not always require an explicit obligation or contract; it

can also reflect social, moral or cultural beliefs and practices in respect of what is

appropriate behaviour. Indeed such normative rules are central to the practice of giving

an account.

However, the danger exists that the response of actors to divergent, and potentially

conflicting, conceptions of worth will involve the corrosive decoupling of what is

accounted for and what counts (i.e. is valued) (Oldenhof et al, 2014). Boltanski and

Thévenot (1991) have argued for a process of compromise, that is ultimately a form of

satisficing and therefore fragile and potentially short term. Alternatively, in the

acknowledged absence of an overarching norm, Stark (2009) has suggested that it is

possible to constructively organise dissonance in a heterarchy of “…distributed

intelligence in which units are laterally accountable according to diverse principles of

evaluation” (p.19). He proposes that such dissonance, arising from the need for

27

simultaneous responses to conflicting values, can facilitate a more reflexive and flexible

approach to understanding and managing organisational performance. .

The challenge for all those communities of interest who are affected by the decisions

of tertiary education institutions, and to whom accountability is therefore due, is to

recognise and learn from these diverse conceptions of worth. Given the limited

empirical research supporting this paper, further research is warranted to explore the

extent to which those differing conceptions cam influence and inform one another.

28

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