Management of Multiple Accountabilities Through Setting Priorities: Evidence from a <scp>Cross‐National</scp> Conjoint Experiment

Public sector actors are continuously being held accountable by a multitude of accountability forums. Responding to the forums’ demands often requires prioritizing between them. This study investigates how those prioritization choices made. Drawing on two competing perspectives: classical view as “answerability” which emphasizes hierarchy and control, modern interpretation “management expectations” highlights strategic management relations, we identify four factors whose influence investigate. Using conjoint experiment, investigate decisions civil servants in United Kingdom Netherlands. We find that threat sanction, is central answerability perspective, consistently most important driver decisions. The expectations, focusing forum expertise relationships with forums, appears be largely context dependent helps explain additional, more fine-grained variations.