From accountability victim to accountability entrepreneur: testing reputation-informed explanations of voluntary accountability among European Union agencies

Recent research reveals that EU agencies have initiated a whole set of voluntary accountability practices. Reputational considerations have been put forward as an important mechanism driving such organisational behaviour. This paper tests this theoretical explanation in a quantitative manner based on a survey among EU agency leaders. We find that the factors explaining voluntary accountability differ depending on the audience to whom account is rendered. Nonetheless, a consistent finding is that media salience is associated with voluntary account-giving, which supports the argument that voluntary account-giving helps agencies to mitigate the risks of reputational threats. The analysis also suggests that voluntary accountability is useful for highlighting the agency’s competence when principals are not paying close attention to the agency’s performance. These results show that a reputational, multi-audience perspective helps us understand which EU agencies are likely to become accountability entrepreneurs and to whom they will expand their accountability.