Il ruolo critico dell'accountability nella gestione delle performance nel settore pubblico

The aim of the paper is to analyses the role of the accountability, i.e. the accountability of those who have worked to achieve the performance in question in their various aspects. In fact, a neutral concept of performance management, not anchored to that of responsibility, would not make much sense in the reality of organizations. Performance accountability is therefore an essential factor in both public and private organizations, although it should be emphasized that accountability as a concept is almost always anchored to the context of public organizations. In the public administrations, the essential function of accountability is substantiated above all in providing information to a wide category of subjects, consisting not only of politicians, who institutionally assume the role of controllers of public managers, but also by those who use public services utility and stakeholders. The main objective of the paper is to analyse how the accountability of performance in the public sector and its ability to highlight the public value created calls into question the role of the accounting tools that can be adopted for this purpose. In fact, while the legislator, aware of the critical role of accountability in the various public contexts, in recent years has introduced regulatory innovations that have impacted on the reporting methods for performance achieved in the public sphere, the need to "report" the performance achieved in the public sphere raises the need to implement tools capable of providing reliable evidence of the performance itself. In this regard, accounting constitutes a valid support for measuring and evaluating performance and for "accounting" to the various stakeholders.