The Case for Systemic Accountability

One significant area of weakness in any systems-thinking approach can be the question of accountability. Who is responsible for what can get lost in a system, where everything is interrelated and interdependent on everything else. The anti-corruption field represents a deeply systemic social issue where questions of accountability have been foremost and therefore is likely to be instructive to any other Just Systems approach. Embedding accountability mechanisms system-wide can be focused into four areas: compliance, reporting, oversight, and enforcement. Systemic accountability needs to come from within organisations, government departments, and businesses, but also externally from civil society, human rights defenders, and the media.