Achieving Accountability in Business and Government

Management effectiveness and its responsiveness to the needs and demands of its various constituents is critical, not only to organizations themselves, but in the private sector, to the efficient operation of the capital markets. Extensive attention has been directed in recent years to management inefficiencies, self-serving deals, waste and fraud, with the result that management is suffering a crisis in credibility. How to regain credibility, and how to make organizations work better not only for their own benefits, but for the benefits of the publics they serve, is the theme of this timely, challenging book. Sheldon urges management to adopt performance audit strategies within their organizations, and at the same time communicate their managerial achievements more successfully to the world outside. Filled with practical, experience-based advice, Sheldon's book will be an important contribution to our understanding of a major social and business problem, and a guide for public and private sector managements to solving it.

D. R. SHELDON is Professor at the School of Business and Public Management, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. She specializes in financial management, accountancy, and controllership, with other interests in regulatory issues in business. Among her various publications are Value-for-Money Auditing in the Public Sector: Strategies for Accountability in the 1990s (1991) and Research in Governmental Financial Management (1989).